wow. thanks for all the help and the links. i'm going to pickup disk warrior this morning and give it a try. that way i will have it anyway. if all ele fails i will wait till i get my restore discs back and do a clean install and run software updater. if i keep this ibook, and don't get a 12" pb instead (i like the fact that i can boot into 9 on my ibook), i am going to take it apart and put a bigger/faster hd in it and do a little something to the cd player. (i am wondering if hd buffer size will make that much difference in system speed on the ibook... any hd suggestions? when i put a new drive in my old wallstreet it made the system much more responsive and quiet... on my ti667 a new drive just made it, a bit, quiter. i'll post a msg after i mess around with warrior. thanks again.