Is My Computer Eff'd?

[jack0545]

I'm on my third G5. The first two had bad hardware and needed to be returned. Last week, on the new computer, I was exporting a non-compressed 30 min. quicktime file from final cut. my computer froze and had to be manually shut down. when i restarted, it would only get to the gray screen with the apple and would not boot. It wouldn't run disk warrior from the disk drive so i ended up, despite macs advice to wipe the drive, installing panther on my second drive, running disk warrior from there and cleaning my original drive.

i was then able to boot from the original harddrive and access all of my files. it was shaky, i had to reinstall some programs, lost some music, and safari and word got all buggy, but after a while my computer seemed to be almost back to normal... but being strange. for instance, when i am starting my computer, on the gray screen sometimes the apple is large and the spinning dial icon is bigger and it boots very slowly, other times the apple is small and it works fine. sometimes my computer acts sluggish too. i run disk warrior, use system utilities, mac janitor, macsweeper... but is that enough? do i have a virus? i tried to install norton but my computer wouldn't even boot with it on there, so i had to erace it all from the second drive in panther.

are there any other tests i can run to get to the bottom of this?

is it possible i'm having these problems because i'm constantly having power outages and the computer abruptly looses power? thanks in advance for any responses.

jack

 

[CanadaRAM]

is it possible i'm having these problems because i'm constantly having power outages and the computer abruptly looses power? thanks in advance for any responses.

Um, yeah, that might have something to do with it.

Not to completely rule out hardware defects, but crashing your machine by power failure is a really good way to bork the OS and data files on your drive. Whatever sector of the drive is being written to when the power goes down will likely be corrupted. If that's a sector in the middle of a data file, you've destryed the file. If it is a sector in the the volume catalog, you will probably have to repair by DiskWarrior.

If you have unstable power, you need to get a good (800VA +) UPS (battery backup power supply). That will give you 5 - 10 minutes to power down your machine gracefully if the power goes. Get one that is line-interactive or has Automatic Voltage Regulation built in. When you are away from your machine, don't let it sleep - power it down and switch off the surge suppressor (you do have a good surge suppressor, don't you? Not a $14.95 power bar?) because the power when it comes back on will generate a surge that may damage equipment.

PS: Don't tell Apple about this bit... they may be justified in concluding that the warranty does not cover this type of electrical abuse...

 

[jack0545]

thanks a lot, good advice. i do only have a $8 powerstrip. i'm very poor right now, but will see what i can do about a back-up battery pack.