[NDBounce]

My sister has a 12 inch powerbook, 1.33GHZ, superdrive, model w/1GB Ram, and OS 10.3.9. She is connected to an Airport Express Router (cable modem internet service).

She has been experiencing issues where her apps will unexpectedly quit (no rhyme or reason) and her PB freezes constantly (for the past 4 months or so).
She generally is only using iTunes, AIM, and Safari, and Word. There seems to be no rhyme/reason to the freezes. I walked her through a clean install of her OS, and that didn't solve the problem. Then last month, I reformatted her HD and reinstalled all her software. But today she called me and told me her apps were quitting again and her PB freesing (3 times in an hour and half period).

At this point I cannot believe that it is a software problem, as I run the same OS with a lot more software (Photoshop, dreamweaver, etc) than she runs, and I've never had my PB freeze and rarely does an app unexpectedly quit on me.

Could this be a hardware issue though? I had her run the hardware test about a month and a half ago (before I reformatted her HD) and that did not seem to find any bad hardware. But I can't imagine OS X 10.3.9 freezing, and I know all the apps she runs are stable (iTunes, AIM, Word).

Any thoughts? Her warranty will expire soon, so I want to get this fixed ASAP.

Peace,

O
B unce!

P.S. in addition to freezing, there are times when the machine has kernal panics

[seanc]

When was that 1gb of ram installed? Did you order it with the pb from apple? If you installed it after the pb was bought, try removing it, it may be failing.
I don't know how to remove extra ram, but it can't be that hard.
Definately sounds like hardware or a dodgy piece of software that she has only just re-installed.
Try removing that ram and take it to an apple store or apple service center if it still doesn't work.

Sean

P.S She doesn't have an external bluetooth adaptor does she / or built in? My Ibook sometimes has Kernel Panics when connecting to it from my phone.

[Draco]

I would suspect ram too. Take out the dimm and see how it behaves.

[crazeazn]

like they said it may be RAM. i had the exact same issue as well but it wasnt my ram, but rather my hard drive failing. do into disk utility and check the S.M.A.R.T. status on the hard drive after uve tried pulling the ram out.