[engaged]

Over the past month or so I've had regular lock-ups with an unstoppable spinner, and have had to shutdown with command + control + power key. Seems to happen more often than not soon after waking the iBook. I run 'fsck' as it reboots in single user mode, and I get the following:

Checking Multi-Linked Files;
Orphaned Indirect Node Temp ###### (several)

Checking Catalog Hierarchy;
Invaled Directory Item Count ## should be ##

FSCK will make repairs, but then it will happen again soon after.

Yesterday I reformatted the drive and did a fresh install of 10.2.5, thinking I'd seen the last. Was disappointed this morning to have another lock-up.

Any advice on what the cause may be? Is there a chance that this might be a hardware issue, perhaps the drive itself beginning to die..?

[bewebste]

Yeah, if you're still seeing the same problems after a clean reformat, it could very well be a hardware problem. The only other thing I can think of is if you have something installed that could be causing it, but if you did a clean install of OS X without installing anything else (except applications), then the biggest culprit would be something wrong with the drive itself.

You might try using Apple's hardware test CD that came with your computer to see if it finds anything wrong.