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Eveleigh · Sep 21, 2007, 03:38 AM

Good morning,

A member of my family has recently given me an old MAC. She couldn't remember her password, so I formatted the hardrive and reinstalled the operating system - MAC OS X 10.1.5. I have recently been connected to the internet, but find that the computer cannot load images or video and freezes up all the time. Do I need to reinstall the Operating system again, or do I need to upgrade the Operating system? If I need to upgrade, how do I do it and which would be the best one?

Thanks

Paul

pinenuts · Sep 21, 2007, 08:34 AM

Hi, Paul.

First, a minor correction. The computer is called a Macintosh and the short name is Mac. MAC is something entirely different. See here- Message authentication code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Second, which Mac is this? I will tell you off the bat that 10.1 is an extremely old version of the OS. It came out in 2001 or 02. Nonetheless it's VERY slow and almost nothing works on it. If you want to come into the modern age you'll have to buy the lastest version, 10.4 (aka Tiger), or wait until next month when 10.5 is released.

Please feel free to come back here and ask lots of questions.

pinenuts

Hal Itosis · Sep 21, 2007, 03:47 PM

Originally Posted by pinenuts

Hi, Paul.

First, a minor correction. The computer is called a Macintosh and the short name is Mac. MAC is something entirely different. See here- Message authentication code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And here too: Media Access Control.

MacosNerd · Sep 21, 2007, 06:24 PM

Originally Posted by pinenuts

First, a minor correction. The computer is called a Macintosh and the short name is Mac. MAC is something entirely different. S
...
Please feel free to come back here and ask lots of questions.

Why so he can be berated when he has MAC questions???

And one minor correction, they're called Macs not Macintosh. Apple has not called them Macintoshs now for several years Macs

imitchellg5 · Sep 21, 2007, 07:50 PM

Originally Posted by pinenuts

Hi, Paul.

First, a minor correction. The computer is called a Macintosh and the short name is Mac. MAC is something entirely different. See here- Message authentication code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Second, which Mac is this? I will tell you off the bat that 10.1 is an extremely old version of the OS. It came out in 2001 or 02. Nonetheless it's VERY slow and almost nothing works on it. If you want to come into the modern age you'll have to buy the lastest version, 10.4 (aka Tiger), or wait until next month when 10.5 is released.

Please feel free to come back here and ask lots of questions.

pinenuts

Believe it or not, I'm running 10.1.5 right now with no problems. It's pretty quick. I think you're thinking of 10.0. That was HORRID! 10.1.5's a lot better. What machine are you using it on? And welcome to MacNN!

rehoot · Sep 22, 2007, 08:25 AM

First, be sure that you OS has all the updates by going to System Preferences (in the Applications->Utilities Folder) and clicking on the button for "Software Update."

Second: how big is your hard drive? Is it nearly full? A full hard drive will cause many problems.

I think the computer should work with at least 10.1 assuming the disk isn't full, but if the disk is OK and you installed the updates, you might have a different problem. If you are confident that there is no hardware problem, I would get a new OS X, maybe wait for 10.5.

ghporter · Sep 22, 2007, 06:37 PM

Yeah, ignore the apparent rudeness-we tend to be picky about some terminology around here. However, it's impossible to give you much help if we don't know what computer you're talking about. And "officially," Welcome to the MacNN Forums!

Eveleigh · Sep 23, 2007, 12:46 PM

Good evening, Thanks for the replies. I have found out I have an imac G4 and I think it is running OS X 10.1.something. The Problem is that it keeps freezing then crashing when I use the internet. When I try and download updates from the Apple site it just freezes. I thought to get round this I would just get a newer operating system on disk and install it. Would this work? If it would, which operating system would be best? Someone replied earlier that it may be a hardware fault. If that does sound like the case, what would be the best thing to do?

Thanks

Paul

CheesePuff · Sep 23, 2007, 02:53 PM

If you plan to actually use this computer for some time, invest in RAM. To check how much you have, go to the Apple icon at the top right of the screen and choose About this Mac, the first choice in the menu. It will tell you the speed of your processor and how much memory you have installed. If it is 512 MB or less, invest in more. You're model probably takes 266 MHz DDR or 133 MHz PC133 RAM, which is pretty cheap nowadays. Try to get to 1 GB.

Next, I would purchase Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which can be had for $100 online legally. Sure, Leopard (10.5) is coming out in a month, so you can wait, but who knows on that hardware it might run slower (have yet to use any of the beta's yet.)

The crashing may be due to many things -- if you're not going to buy the new Tiger OS X, then see if you have Restore CD's that came with it.

chris v · Sep 23, 2007, 03:29 PM

With all the freezing and crashing, the first thing I'd do, if you have the original CDs, in find the one labelled "Apple Hardware Test," boot from it, run the test suite in extended mode and determine if perhaps it has some bad RAM in it.

Gee4orce · Sep 23, 2007, 03:51 PM

I'd check your free disk space before you do anything else: old macs have very little disk space by modern standards, and you need to keep some of it free for the system to work properly.

If you want to totally start form scratch, the best thing would be to buy OS X Tiger and use the 'erase and install' option, to clear the hard drive and install the OS from scratch.