[schiano]

I have a g4 powerbook...

Whenever I turn on my laptop, it loads for forever, and by forever I mean it doesn't stop. I turned it on the other day before work and forgot about it and when I came home 11 hours later, it still said "Initializing Log-In Window" or something like that. And occasionally when it does turn it, it's really really slow. I can't open mail because it just totally slows the entire thing down. It'll take at least 5 minutes for it to open a new mail document. Also, if I leave it on while I'm sleeping, it freezes. The screen will come back on in the morning, but nothing works.

The problem started when I got back from being away this weekend. I left the computer on, but I've done that before so I didn't think it would be a problem.

Any suggestions?

[mdc]

i have never heard anything like this. maybe do an "archive & install" reinstall of the OS. doing archive and install will save your apps and homefolder, so you won't lose anything.

[Detrius]

Start with a surface scan of your hard drive. I have seen a rather large number of hard drives with bad blocks in the past month--likely due to the large number of thunderstorms around here. If you find 1 (one) bad block, it's time to back up your data (if possible) and replace the drive.

Once that's done, you can format the drive zeroing all data to map out the bad blocks. Install this drive in an external firewire case and keep an eye on it--run surface scan regularly (and format again, zeroing all data to map out the bad blocks again). If it seems to stay consistent, use it as a backup method--but not as a primary source of data storage, and run regular surface scans on this "bad" drive.