Panther 10.3.9 G4 running very slow

[dylanm]

Hi,

I have the following setup...

Power Mac G4
2GB RAM
Dual 1.25 Mhz
Osx 10.3.9

Recently it has started running extremely slowly, I seem to be spending most of my time watching the Spinning Pizza of Death! This includes boot up and almost any operation I attempt on the system.

While the SPOD is showing, I can hear the internal hard drive cycling rhythmically....sounds like it is stuck in a loop. I am fearing a hardware failure in the not too distant future, but hear me out...!

I have completed the following standard maintenance....

• Verify & repair permissions with Disk Utility
• Scrapped preferences
• Ran each of the periodic (daily weekly monthly) tasks
• Ran update prebinding

None of this has helped, I'm still left with a slow system & SPOD. I've checked system.log & I'm seeing a number of Disk I/O errors while SPOD is displayed.

Anyway, I've backed up all my files & am now considering...

* Doing an archive & Install / complete reinstall. I want to completely eliminate any possible software issues.

* New hardware!

Any advice appreciated....am I on the right lines with my thinking?

Cheers
Dylan

[Kees Buijs]

Most likely the harddisk is having bad clusters, it solution is buying another harddrive. Check you harddisk throughly.


Good luck, Kees

[dylanm]

Kees.

Thanks to your info, I managed to find this article

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html

The info under 'bad sectors' sounds exactly like whats happening at the moment. I'll try the fixes it suggests, but I'll probably replace the hardware.

Thanks for your help