[jam8]

my ibook g4 from november 2004 at times decides to become EXTREMELY rediculously slow. It will be fine for a few weeks, and then it will pick one day and just fry out. It will take over 5 minutes to log in, and another 5 before im allowed to do any task. the beachball just keeps rolling. the simplest tasks take an enormous amount of time to load, upwards of 2 or 3 minutes for mail, safari, etc. All day today it was laughably slow like this, and now it's snapped back into normal operation. i need to know why my computer acts like this.

i have 256mb of ram, and possibly one of those batteries that got recalled. whenever it slows like this, i hear a very faint noise coming from inside the computer, like a "sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh. " it doesnt make a "shh" sound but i don't know exactly how to describe it. this has happened more than once, and i cannot figure out if i'm causing this or if it's a manufactering flaw or what!
i'm a musician and do all of my recording using garageband or logic, and when i do this, the computer becomes extremely hot.


please help me!! thank you very much!

[chabig]

The first thing I would recommend is to max out your RAM. That will probably solve your problems, as you appear to be putting a heavy load on a machine with the minimum memory.

Chris

[Mojo]

From your description it sounds like you are asking a LOT from that G4 iBook and with so little RAM I am amazed that it works at all. GarageBand is barely usable on a G4 iBook with maxed-out RAM if you are laying down a lot of tracks, using software instruments, etc. I suspect that your iBook is having to use Virtual Memory to run most of your applications, so the drive is working quite a bit, it is likely highly fragmented (especially if it is not partitioned and is being used as a scratch disk), the iBook heats-up under your left palm (that is where the harddrive lives...) and it is Really Slow.

[Tomchu]

I hate to raise worry, but it could very well be your hard drive. I've been hired to "fix" a number of PCs that were experiencing similar problems (at times they would just take eons to do anything), and when I heard odd noises coming from the tower during one of these bouts, I ran the hard drive manufacturer's testing utility, and sure enough the utility reported a few test failures. The drive was replaced and it all works perfectly now.

I would back up your stuff while the hard drive is still workable, and then maybe run the Apple Hardware Test, or check on the SMART status.

[Mojo]

I think that is good advice Just In Case. I interpret his description of the sound as being the fan, which is why I focused on the load he is putting on his machine. But if you have seen these kinds of symptoms lead to a drive failure, I would take your advice (and I hope he does too.)

[jam8]

I have Applecare, and i've run the hardware diagnostic, and all the hardware is 100% fine according to the test.

[Mojo]

Backing-up is just a sensible precaution; your hardware is probably fine. It just seems wise to me until you find out what is going on (you likely regularly back-up all that work anyway.) It still sounds to me like the iBook is being asked to do too much with too little RAM.