Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Mallrat · Aug 17, 2003, 02:26 AM

My ibook started acting funny a few days ago... the screen would and still does get randomily brighter or lighter... it just kind of flickers back and forth every now and then...

today it got much worse... my time and date in the corner would go in and out... I tried to backup my files and sometimes I can't because it says an error occored...

entourage doesn't work.... sometimes IE works, but not often... Safari says it lost it's bookmarks....

Basically my computer went from good to bad real quick.

I own Norton Utilites and ran it, and it fixed some problems... used disk utitly and that did it's thing but found nothing wrong...

Is something else happening beyound software? Is my computer just dying?

I own an ibook 500 and got it back when they first came out.. so i guess it's been 2 years or so.. maybe more?

Any and all suggestions will help. Other software to try...

I guess this might be a good excuse to get that new computer I wanted.

Cipher13 · Aug 17, 2003, 04:22 AM

Norton Utilities is evil! Put that disc in your microwave now.

Fix permissions and use DiskWarrior to check out your hard drive.

andreas_g4 · Aug 17, 2003, 06:36 AM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Norton Utilities is evil! Put that disc in your microwave now.

Fix permissions and use DiskWarrior to check out your hard drive.

I can second that! Never use Norton Utilities. The microwave is a good option...

I would suggest to backup your data (as much as possible). If you have access to an other FireWire enabled Mac, shut your iBook down, connect both computers via FW and start your iBook while holding the "t" key. Now your iBook HD will be mounted on the other mac. Then create a disk image of your HD to avoid harming the other Mac.
After that format and reinstall your system. This should work.

Mallrat · Aug 17, 2003, 11:18 AM

Waht is wrong with Norton?

And you think DiskWarrior is far superior?

hunkhuang · Aug 17, 2003, 11:22 AM

Ohh... i really hate Norton and i did put the disc in microwave.. damn...

i faced the same problem and i formatted my iMac and re-installed OSX again... now.. my iMac acts fine...

Mallrat · Aug 17, 2003, 11:49 AM

Originally posted by hunkhuang:
Ohh... i really hate Norton and i did put the disc in microwave.. damn...

i faced the same problem and i formatted my iMac and re-installed OSX again... now.. my iMac acts fine...

I'm all for reinstalling, but the problem is I have so much stuff to back up and I couldn't do it with my CD-R drive.. it didn't seem to work.

Acutally I've never done it using Mac OS X, just 9. I couldn't figure it out in 10.. I just want the CD to show up so I can drag stuff onto it. I did that in 9, but of course it didn't work.. some error.

I have a ZIP drive and I'm backing up what can, but some files it just doesn't want to back up.

It is very angry. I am surprised that so many people hate Norton.

Should I go get Disk Warrior then?

And what is the best way to back up? Is there a good program to use?

-matt

sniffer · Aug 17, 2003, 01:22 PM

Do you have os9? Why not check if the same flicker problems remains after a reboot into os 9? Just so you get assured there is no hardware problems.

chabig · Aug 17, 2003, 01:49 PM

Norton has never had a good reputation on the Mac. It will never touch one of my machines.

Diskwarrior is very well regarded.

Chris