I'm having a lot of trouble with my Power Mac G4

[GCP]

It was originally my husband's, and he passed it on to me when he got a new one. So I don't know whether it's a problem with keychains or what.
It runs on OS 10.3.8 and I install every upgrade as they come out. I run the "Mail" program, as Apple won't allow us to share the "Entourage" feature.
My Mail program crashes continuously, I get the message, "Mail has unexpectedly quit, do you want to report the problem". I've stopped bothering to report it as nothing ever seems to be done. If I go into my mailbox again straight away, the new mail I saw in there before the crash is gone. I can re-build the mailbox and get the messages, but last night when I did that, the mail program froze and I had to force quit to be able to shut down the computer.

The other problem is that I've been getting the "Gray screen of death" on start-up more and more often. It's the message written in multiple languages that you must turn of the computer and restart. This happened once or twice in the past, but now it's happening more often. I've tried disk first aid and verified passwords and keychains etc, but it seems I've got a schizo computer. I don't know if this is relevant, but the computer has 4 hard drives, could one of the others affect start up at all?

Any ideas?

[alfredo]

1. first thing you should do is trash the preferences.

See if that helps. If not, we can go from there.

it should be in Library/Preferences it should be called com.apple.mail.plist

Be sure to copy all account info before doing this.

As soon as you restart after a kernel panic go to library/logs/panic.log. Copy that info so you can give it to the tech. (if needed)

The four drives could be the problem, but do all maintenance you can do on your own first. Try repairing permissions and resetting the pram.

Do you hear any noises from any of the drives?

[eek]

4. re" Do you hear any noises from any of the drives?"

Jumping in here:

Hey - I have a high pitched whiny noise from my Powerbook G3 that's getting worse.

Drive noise maybe. If so,whatsit mean?

[alfredo]

6. Back up everything, then take it to the tech.

A clicking noise would be a sure sign. The noise could be the fan.

google your problem first.

high noise powerbook hard drive

high pitched noise powerbook g3

[Poiuyt]

2. Have you repaired permissions lately?

That's always the first thing I do when I'm having trouble. I agree with Alfredo about backing up your mailbox and then trashing your Mail preferences.

As far as the start up problems, it sounds like there's some corruption with the operating software. If you have some disk repair software like DiskWarrior or Tech Tool Pro, you could run that to repair any problems. You can also run fsck:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

(I'd recommend that you print out all the instructions before you start if you've never done this before.)

As a last resort, you can always back up all your documents and user files and reformat the hard drive. After you have a clean slate, you can reinstall the OS 10 and the rest of your software and files. It's a pain in the ass, but it usually works if the operating system is badly corrupted.

[GCP]

3. Thanks for everybody's help

My husband also said we'd need to re-format the hard drive. I was hoping maybe there was another way.

Thanks anyway.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

5. I started having trouble with my G4 as well.

Grey startup screens, constant spinning beachball, etc.
I realized that my boot HD was over 80% full. I backed up some stuff and now it runs great.
I've been told by techs that OS X likes alot of HD space.

[burrowowl]

7. Any operating system

likes at least 10 to 20% of hard drive space to operate. This has been so since VM on IBM mainframes and other. Room is needed to swap around stuff. It is like you have 2 glasses and want to add some liquid, if there is not enough room, the liquid spills over. In hard drives the system just gives up.