[jian nan]

My powerbook keeps either freezing / the screen dims and shows the a big power button picture and says that my computer needs to restart. hold down the power button for 5 seconds to restart it. What is the best way to either remedy or at least figure out what is wrong with it?

Thanks guys for at least reading this

[Sherman Homan]

You are experiencing the thrill of a kernel panic. That can happen for a huge range of possible problems, from hard ware like bad ram, logic board failure and impending hard drive death; to simple permissions problems.
Start from the easiest: reboot in safe mode, launch Disk Utility and Repair Permissions
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
Pop in your original installation CD (the black one), launch Disk Utility and Repair Disk.
Mac OS X: "Broken folder" icon, prohibitory sign, or kernel panic when computer starts
Report back to us!

[jian nan]

I tried doing both of those and that got me nowhere. I am trying to reinstall OS X 10.4 but ugh it keeps freezing. What to do now.. Is my pbook dead? Say it isn't so!

[brza]

Have you done anything recently that might be causing this? Have you added RAM recently? are you using a keyboard and/or mouse that is 3rd party? ANYTHING outside of the ordinary (no matter how little you might think)

[jian nan]

no. i mean i added a stick of ram but that was when i first got the powerbook 2 years ago. the laptop was dropped once when someone knocked it over in a lecture as someone came late to the class and have to shuffle to a middle seat and that was last year. until recently, it still ran just fine though. and then suddenly one day, it just gave me that 'please restart. please hold down the power button for 5 seconds or press the reset button' message.