[Bruck]

For some odd reason, my mac will boot, and then finder and any app i try to launch repeatedly crashes and won't let me do a thing. At first i thought it was a hardware issue (maybe bad data on hd) , but its booting at normal speed so os files seem intact, odd that the os has become EXTREMELY unstable.

any tips that i can try to restore it to a semi-working state?

i did not make any changes to the system prior to this problem starting. Actually i did run a program called Tweaker or something but i didnt make any major changes, and i thought i had rebooted since i installed it.

[Bruck]

solution: install/archive re-install of tiger. A little re-configuring to do but powerbook is back up.

[d.fine]

You fixed your own problem

[RMXO]

i would recommend you save all your data then do a fresh install. My friend & I did an archive/install & Tiger became unstable after a while. we had to do a fresh install to get things smoothly.

[Since EBCDIC]

I would suggest that you get DiskWarrior and weekly (or monthly at least) boot from that CD and check your disk integrity.

For some reason Panther and Tiger seem more fragile than other UNIXes I've used. *I* really wish Apple would just buy a license and include DW with Mac OS X, it's one of the few apps that I believe is truly indespensible.