Usually it just freezes - no response to any key or mouse, so I have to force-restart. Every once in a while it puts up an error "restart" box, or at least starts to draw one. These aren't consistent, but at least sometimes refer to a bus error. On at least one startup attempt it read "address error."
It can happen any time, though it tends not to happen when I'm not doing anything with the computer (when it's just sitting there checking email every so often).
It's done this occasionally on & off for several years. When it started to get bad a couple years ago I pulled one of the RAM chips, thinking it might be bad - at the time I had a 256 & a 128 - and it got better for the next year or so. Then it started again. Recently it added freezing while booting (it hadn't done that before), & now I often have to start it up 2 or 3 or even 4 times to get it to complete booting. There's no one place that it freezes at - it could be anywhere in the process.
So I finally tried to figure out what it was - & so far have only figured out what it ISN'T - the RAM & the processor. I've swapped my RAM chips around (new & originals & left each slot empty in turn) & figured out it's none of them. I've put the original processor back in & still had the problem.
Is there anything that it's really likely to be that wouldn't be too expensive to try?
I don't need this to work any more - my husband got tired of my bad language when it froze up on me as I worked, so I got a "new" 17" powerbook (original model, deeply-discounted floor model from CompUSA). I could dump the wallstreet, or see if anyone wants it for parts on eBay. But it's still fine for basically everything I was doing on it, if only it wouldn't freeze, and I'd love to know it was working & going to someone who would use it. (I'm really too emotionally attached to my Macs!) Since it's no loss if I screw up, I figure if it might be reasonably cheap parts I might as well go ahead and try.
More information, if any of it is useful: It's most likely to happen when I do two things quickly - say open an app or window & then double-click on something else while the first is still opening. But it also often happens randomly as I work or browse the web. The file copies to its replacement were a nightmare - it would freeze every few hundred megabytes for most of it, so I'd have to restart & figure out how far the transfer had gotten. Then the last 6 gigabytes or so transfered without error!
Any ideas?
Anne
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