L
lintmagnet
Guest
Greetings all. I was hoping that consulting other Macophiles might provide me with some insight as to what is going on with my precious Powerbook G4.
I purchased my 12" Powerbook G4 (60 GB, 1.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM running OS X 10.3.9) in July 2004. I've had a relatively problem-free career with the computer--until last Sunday. I left in the morning to do a few things and when I came back, my computer had frozen on the screen saver and had this bizarre command-line-looking white text on black background over the frozen screen saver. Immediately I forced a restart, but the screen just stuck on the blue welcome screen with the apple and the spinning thingy, spinning indefinitely. I used my roommate's computer to try to seek guidance from Mac's online help and eventually resorted to shelling $50 to Apple to get the computer running again. If you're curious, I had to force it into Single-User Mode (I don't have the Mac OS X Disc with me here) and run some stuff through there. By the end of the phone call, my computer was back to normal.
...Or so I thought. Since then, I've been having an increasingly annoying problem. My computer will be acting fine, but then the screen saver comes on, as it is supposed to after several minutes of inactivity. At that point, once I put my finger on the mouse or press a button, the hard drive starts making incessant clicking noises and the cursor turns into the beach ball of doom. I can move the beach ball around, but everything comes to a stand still. The only thing that has been able to alieviate this problem is tilting the computer sideways (I read that this somehow stops the harddrive from doing things like clicking because of the sensor built in). In this position, the computer functions normally, but the second I lay it flat on the desk again, it proceeds to do the hard drive click/beach ball of doom thing.
I have been perusing other internet sources and a friend of mine had to recently have her 15" Powerbook replaced (which she purchased around the same time) because of numerous hard drive failures. Does anyone here have any thoughts or similar experiences to expound upon? I'd really appreciate it, as this computer contains prettymuch everything important in my life, at least for school. Thanks!
I purchased my 12" Powerbook G4 (60 GB, 1.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM running OS X 10.3.9) in July 2004. I've had a relatively problem-free career with the computer--until last Sunday. I left in the morning to do a few things and when I came back, my computer had frozen on the screen saver and had this bizarre command-line-looking white text on black background over the frozen screen saver. Immediately I forced a restart, but the screen just stuck on the blue welcome screen with the apple and the spinning thingy, spinning indefinitely. I used my roommate's computer to try to seek guidance from Mac's online help and eventually resorted to shelling $50 to Apple to get the computer running again. If you're curious, I had to force it into Single-User Mode (I don't have the Mac OS X Disc with me here) and run some stuff through there. By the end of the phone call, my computer was back to normal.
...Or so I thought. Since then, I've been having an increasingly annoying problem. My computer will be acting fine, but then the screen saver comes on, as it is supposed to after several minutes of inactivity. At that point, once I put my finger on the mouse or press a button, the hard drive starts making incessant clicking noises and the cursor turns into the beach ball of doom. I can move the beach ball around, but everything comes to a stand still. The only thing that has been able to alieviate this problem is tilting the computer sideways (I read that this somehow stops the harddrive from doing things like clicking because of the sensor built in). In this position, the computer functions normally, but the second I lay it flat on the desk again, it proceeds to do the hard drive click/beach ball of doom thing.
I have been perusing other internet sources and a friend of mine had to recently have her 15" Powerbook replaced (which she purchased around the same time) because of numerous hard drive failures. Does anyone here have any thoughts or similar experiences to expound upon? I'd really appreciate it, as this computer contains prettymuch everything important in my life, at least for school. Thanks!
