Mac acting very strangely!

[robincard]

I booted my computer this morning, it took a while on the initial grey screen with the apple and spinny icon...and it's started acting very strangely today.

a) hardly any of my fonts are listed in photoshop and many fonts in firefox/safari appear as Times New Roman.

b) No sound when I go to control panel i just see 'No output devices found'

c) my gmail notifier icon at the top right has disappeared.

d) generally being very sluggish.

I have an iMac core2duo 2GHz Late 2006, 160MB, 1GB, 17". OS 10.4.9 (build: 8P2137). Latest Firmware (updated 6 days ago).

This is all very vague I'm sure. But are these problems symptomatic of anything in particular?

Thank you for reading my thread.

 

[barhar]

'But are these problems symptomatic of anything in particular?' - yes, of a problematic MacOS X.

Turn OFF the Mac, wait 40+ seconds, turn ON the Mac. Did it boot correctly, and relatively quick, this time?
Are all of the fonts, 'System Preferences', gmail, and overall performance issues resolved?

If not, insert your Macs' installation / restore disc and reboot the Mac.
With the '<option>' key pressed - wait until a list of boot able volumes appears, and the cursor icon becomes a pointer. Click on the installation / restore disc icon button, and then the '-->' button.
Launch the installation / restore disc's copy of 'Disk Utility' and perform a 'Repair Disk' (at least twice) and 'Repair Disk Permissions' (at least twice).
Reboot the Mac, to boot from the Macs' boot drive.
Are all of the fonts, 'System Preferences', gmail, and overall performance issues resolved?