[iBook] IBook Freezes, Takes Many Re-Boots To Come Up

[Fred Stevens K2FRD]

Lately, my 14" iBook G3 900 (640 RAM; 40 GB HD) has taken to 
freezing/locking up: the mouse arrow won't move using either my 
Macally Optinet mouse nor the trackpad and nothing on the screen 
moves (if was moving at the time of freeze).  There doesn't seem to 
be any correlation between the application I'm using at the time of 
lock-up nor anything else. It seems to be doing this more frequently 
since I upgraded to 10.4.4, but it did it before. It does not respond 
to any keyboard commands except the forced Restart (command + control 
+ power button). The screen always comes up with the apple and the 
little gear rotating endlessly, but just stays there. I'll wait a few 
minutes (sometimes a lot more than a few minutes), then do a force 
quit with the power button. After waiting the prerequisite ten 
seconds (or more), I'll press the power button to start it with the 
same results: apple and rotating gear. After I do this a number of 
times, something finally happens and it boots up normally. I've run 
DiskWarrior, Disk Utility, and the hardware check CD a few times, but 
that doesn't seem to solve anything and they come back with no 
trouble found. The ONLY good aspect of this situation is that sooner 
or later, it WILL power up, so I haven't reached the panic level. I 
don't know if it's relevant, but when it finally comes back up, the 
screen is exactly as I left it after I open the application which I 
was using at the time (but minus anything in RAM with which I was 
working, e.g., if I was reading an email when the computer froze, 
when I opened Eudora after finally getting the computer back up, the 
in-box would also open along with the message I was reading; if I was 
composing a message, it's gone).

Anyone have any experience with or insight into this problem?

TIA,
Fred

PS - Other operational details, but probably not related: access via 
Direcway satellite internet; I bought my machine in Aug 03, had 
Airport and additional memory installed shortly thereafter. Can't 
think of anything else germane to the problem.

-- 
73 de Fred Stevens K2FRD, VO2FS
http://homepage.mac.com/k2frd/K2FRD.html