[zebrasign]

My PowerMac G5 is exhibiting strange behavior that appears to affect reading and writing files, but may be video related.

When opening or saving files, the directory tree (whichever I'm using) does strange things like folder names changing case (upper and lower), folder locations moving in and out of alphabetical order, clicking on a folder sends you up one level instead of down.

We were ready to assume the Mac is dead and we should buy a new one, when I commented to someone that it reminds me of my old Corel Draw days, when I had these vague visual problems until I turned off the video accelerator. Then a different friend came in and remarked "sounds like the video card".

Could this be? If so, is there a way to test for this, like turning off the video card, before replacing it? I'd hate to buy a card only to find out the problem remains.

If I do buy a card, should I try to replace what I have or what?

The system is a G5 with dual 2.0G processors and OS X 10.4. (I don't know what video card is installed but can check later today.

[ibookuser2]

Sounds more like potential hard drive/directory structure issues to me. Have you tried the "Verify Disk" function in Disk Utility to see if it reports any errors?

[Big Mac]

Like ibookuser says those aren't video card symptoms. That's a software-based error, either an OS problem or hard drive corruption.