how can clean up my mac?

[joko]

I have a G4 powerbook and recently its started going slow in all applications and occasionally crashing.

Does anyone know any way to clean this up and make it more efficient?

I know PCs have scandisk and chkdisk etc but is there any equivalent for macs?

thanks

[Morticiah]

Hi Joko,

you need to find your 'Disk Utility' ... it's normally in the Applications folder inside the Utilities folder.

Open up Disk Utility, on the left hand side of the window you should find your Hard Drive. Click on it, and then you should see that you will get a Choice of 4 or 5 Different Tabs (in the middle of the box).

Choose the one called First Aid, then click on Verify Disc. It might take a while to run through. After it's done should be able to chose the Repair Disk option, along with Verify/Repair Permissions. Run through all of those if you can.

Hopefully this will help, but my G4 also recently started to go very slow (just after I'd installed a well known new program) and tho' I did all the repairs and had loads of space left, it never really recovered. How old is your G4 and how much space have you got left on your HD?

Mort

[gary baldy]

I agree with mort - how much of your HD is free?
You could do with a good clear out and even go as far as uninstalling some applications you never use.

To hear you are crashing is a bit worrying and makes me think you may have a piece of corrupted software installed or have downloaded something that perhaps your lovely mac doesnt like.

I had great problems with what turned out to be a font i (illegally) downloaded. Once it was removed everything was fine.

My advice would be to methodically go thtrough all your files and applications and ask yourself "Do i really still need this?" and if not get rid of it!

What OS are you using aswell?
If you are using an 'older' OS you may not be fully 'optimised' for some applications.

Beyond all that perhaps you could sell a kidney and buy one of the beautiful new Macbooks (i'm considering selling one of my kidneys at the moment!)

[Morticiah]

Hi GaryBaldy and Joko, most of the Macs we have probs with at work are full of downloaded Music/Software which have filled up the HD! :-) As soon as they start slowing down, we suggest people check how much space is left.

My old G4 was so messed up that I managed to persuade my boss that I needed a new Laptop, so I'm now proudly working on a brand new MacBook Pro! Whoopie! (I KNOW you are jealous! :-D

and dare I name/shame the the program that so completely messed up my trusty old G4???? ... Micro$oft Office 04 upgrade! My trusty old G4 had worked brilliantly for years, never crashed, was really fast! until I upgraded Office! Lesson learnt I feel!

Good luck Joko ... let us know how you get on.

Mort

[gary baldy]

When free space on my harddrive gets down to 2 or 3 gigs things start slowing down.
Ive invested in an external hardrive and dump photos and music files over on to that freeing up a lot of space and speeding things up.

Like i said i had a real purge of apps aswell - daft games, third party downloads and the like - which use up a lot of memory and are usually the source of problems.

You only have a boss to persuade Mort - i have to persuade my missus that i 'need' a new laptop so it aint gonna happen any time soon!

BTW joko there is a way of partioning your hard drive so different apps and files sit in different parts of the hard drive which speeds things up and stops dodgy files corrupting each other.
Unfortunately i dont know how to do this but your local macnerd will and may be cheaper than buying a new laptop or external hard drive.
I was told how to do it once (its relatively simple) but was a bit scared that my incompetence would f**k everything up so didnt bother doing it!