Please Help with old G4

Hi all

I recently had my last straw with my PC and this mac is starting off to be worse.

I purchased a g4 tower with the dual 867Mhz processors for not much money. It was a "primary computer" recently. I got a mouse and keyboard with it. The mouse does not seem to work all the time. I got a DVI-VGA adapter to use my monitor also.

When I power up, it boots up fine. After I go to safari and pull up a web page it freezes and goes into what I would consider hibernate. The fan goes berzerk and runs like crazy. Then shuts off. I can go to settings and as soon as the computer starts to "think", it freezes. By freezes, I mean the beach ball spins and I can not pull up menus or close windows. I doesn't matter what application I choose, it freezes. I can press the mouse or keyboard and it comes back up. Sometimes it is still froze. Within a few seconds it hibernates again.

Any suggestions?

Thanks Dave

First off it sounds a bit like you're trying to use the Mac as a Windows computer. Don't do that.

Second, it sounds like you have a problem with the RAM, or the hard drive.

Third, the mouse is probably on its way out.

Forgive my ignorance, but will any mouse work on this tower. Does it have to be an apple mouse?

retropulse said:

Forgive my ignorance, but will any mouse work on this tower. Does it have to be an apple mouse?

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Any mouse as long as its USB. I would recommend optical. Apple's wire mouse (called the Apple Mouse) is optical. But any USB mouse.

You might try (if you have the system restore discs, and if you don't you got ripped off) a "Nuke and Pave" (ie, completely wipe the HD, reinstall from the restore discs and essentially "start over as new").

Doing this will ensure that if you continue to have problems, they are probably hardware related (old hard drive or something with the Mac itself) and you can judge from there whether its worth fixing it up or moving on.

I hope everything works out well for you, that's a pretty old machine. I agree with Chris H. that, based on what you describe, you've either got a bad HD (very likely) or bad RAM (also possible) there.

I know I can remove ram sticks and retry to eliminate each. But how do I check the hard drive? Also I did not get the restore discs.

I also read this might could be a tempature problem. Is it possible a temp sensor wire came uppugged.

Thanks for the help.

retropulse said:

I know I can remove ram sticks and retry to eliminate each. But how do I check the hard drive? Also I did not get the restore discs.

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Disk Utility. If you can access it from the OS. If not, you'll need to get the install discs (which are also considered restore discs) specific to your computer. Or purchase ( from Amazon) Tiger/Leopard discs that are black. From there you can access the hardware test for these computers through that. Just make sure that if you buy the Tiger/Leopard retail discs, that you're not buying the Intel versions.

retropulse said:

I also read this might could be a tempature problem. Is it possible a temp sensor wire came unplugged.

Thanks for the help.

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It's possible, and if that were the case, the whole logic board is pretty much toast. There's no point in fixing it.