[G4] Re: Regular Disk & OS Maintenance?

[Al Poulin]

Hello Anne:

I hope a few comments below will help.

On Jan 17, 2006, at 6:19 PM, g4-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com 
wrote:

>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:30:46 -0500
> From: Anne Keller-Smith <earthpigz at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [G4] Regular Disk & OS Maintenance?
> To: <g4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
> Message-ID: <5AEFF66C-86D7-11DA-8AC3-00039368BC92 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> Hello All -
>
> I have not been doing my regular maintenance very regularly, and may
> now be suffering from it. The Mac is a little flaky (a little slow,
> some spinning beach balls, Preview not wanting to open files the other
> day, had to force quit), and today the monitor just started flashing
> on/off, on/off. Uh, oh. I don't think it's the monitor because the
> mouse (a Targus fiber-optic one plugged into the keyboard USB port) was
> flashing on/off too.

Unplug and reconnect your cables if you haven't tried that yet.  What 
monitor do you have?
>
> I have a Diskwarrior update on order from Aldus, but that takes a
> couple weeks, so they say.

Great, the number one test jockey.
>
> If it goes ga-ga again guess I'll call around and try to get a Techtool
> or Norton (would prefer the former) to see what's up.

TechTool Pro the number two test jockey.  Norton - NEVER!
>
> I did boot up on the Jaguar CD to run Disk Utility both to fix
> permissions and do a disk repair. Don't know if the errors it found
> were serious or not. It did say "Disk Repaired."

It is good to do the Disk Utility First Aid Disk Repair from the Jaguar 
CD.  But the Jaguar CD does not know about the third party applications 
that you have added to your system.  It only knows about what is on the 
CD itself.  So, you should run the Repair Disk Permissions from your 
startup hard drive.
>
> Did not do Apple Hardware Test as the CD is old (2001) and came with
> original OS 10.1.1? Should do? Should d/l one from somewhere? Doesn't
> matter what OS because we are talking about hardware? Also did not do
> as would have to unplug everything and yank the internal memory card
> and PCI card (ugh) but will do if you guys say I must.

Nothing wrong with using the original hardware test CD that came with 
your machine.  But, I would depend more on the TechTool Pro for this.
>
> What should I be doing on a regular basis? Using my Macjanitor MORE
> often, I would think - daily? weekly?

Weekly, biweekly should do fine.
>
> Using Diskwarrior every month?

No need unless you suspect something.
>
> If the drive crashes altogether, well, it's a 4-year-old computer,
> it'll be time for a new one. Files all backed up pretty much daily. So
> it wouldn't be too bad.

I would not suspect the hard drive yet.  But after all this time, it 
may need reformatting.
>
> P.S.: Does it sound like a kernal panic?

No.

Finally, I recommend you double check your backups files.  Then fish 
out your Jaguar install CD, reformat your hard drive.  Use the option 
for OS 9 drivers if you still want to startup in OS 9.  Read the .pdf 
file on the CD about your installation options.  In many cases people 
recommend using the Archive and Install option for which the 
instructions are obscurely place near the end of that .pdf file.

Best of luck,


Al Poulin
Anger, hate, and revenge are for the devil, forgiveness is for God, 
proactive self-defense is for the rest of us.