[mwiik]

I had to force-quit Firefox, on restart Firefox it froze, force quit again, tried one more time, all my running apps froze, including finder.

Pressed the power off button, over the next half hour, ir prompted that apps weren't closing properly, and asked if I wanted to force-quit.

Now, only finder is 'running', I hear the hard drive spinning, endless beach ball o' death.

I really don't wanna press the power button again, with the HD spinning. Any advice?

Powerbook FW 800 model (15", 1.25 gig PPC processor, 1.25 gigs RAM)

[Chuckit]

I think you're mistaking a symptom for a cause. Anyway, I'd just restart.

[mwiik]

The only way I might be able to restart is using the power button again. I can't access any menu. The finder is 'running' in the sense that I can cmd-tab to it, but I can't access the shutdown menu.

[Chuckit]

Yeah, hard restart with the power button. If nothing is running or runnable, there's not much you can do.

[mwiik]

Thanks Chuckit, that's what I figured. Had a similar situation just a couple months ago and on restart it wouldn't boot except in single-user mode. It was under warranty and Apple replaced the drive (the speed of the replacement process, 40 hours from pickup at my house to delivery of the repaired powerbook, made me an apple customer for life).

I'm a little better prepared this time, backup wise and such :-)