[G4] My G4 is slow. I get the spinning pinwheel for a long time before an app will open

[Philip J Robar]

On Sep 26, 2006, at 10:29 PM, david duffey wrote:

> I have a G4 running OSX 10.4.7
>
> My G4 is slow. I get the spinning pinwheel for a long time before  
> an app will open.

After the fix below, it might be a good idea to try something like  
Onyx or Yasu to clean things out a bit. If you don't leave your  
machine running at night the there are three scripts that are not  
getting run regularly like they should. Onyx and Yasu will let you  
run these scripts manually and also help you flush caches, swap files  
and the like.

> When I run the disk utility I get this message. What should I do?
>
> Verifying volume “untitled”
> Checking HFS Plus volume.
> Checking Extents Overflow file.
> Checking Catalog file.
> Invalid node structure
> The volume untitled needs to be repaired.
>
> Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
>
>
> 1 HFS volume checked
> Volume needs repair

Boot into safe mode, this will automatically do a disk check in a  
manner such that it can fix the problem. It be a while before the GUI  
shows up as the disk check runs right after start up. After the GUI  
shows up run disk utility again to verify the fix and then reboot.

See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393 for and the  
related docs section at the bottom of the page for details.

An alternative is to start from another disk or cdrom and run disk  
utility from there as you can't fix a startup volume that you are  
actively booted from.


Phil