[case649]

My mother recently purchased a used slate G4 tower with OS9 and OSX both installed. Came with one 128 RAM chip, I installed 3 more I had, bringing it up to 512.

OSX works great! Just like on the eMac we purchased new and have owned for a long time. Starting up in OS9, however, the machine acts surpremely underpowered.

The desktop, with about 10 icons on it, takes a good 15-20 full seconds to load up, loading the graphic for one icon at a time, each time you close a window, like our old OS8 tower would do when Photoshop and AOL ran at the same and it was actually running at its limit. The new OS9 tower will do this with no applications running, immediately after startup even.

In addition, it seems to take all the system resources and an unreasonable length of time to print. If you do as little as open and close windows while a print command is spooling, the printer light stops blinking momentarily while it processes. Applications run slowly too, but that's the least of our problems.

Any one have any suggestions why? It can't be a RAM issue, can it, since OSX operates as desired? Possibly a virus? Do Macs get that kind of virus? And at any rate, should reinstalling OS9 reliably fix the problem?

Really, any suggestions would be appreciated.

[DoorGah]

Hello,

First try going to the Extensions Manager Control Panel and for Selected Set choose OS 9 BASE. Then to Start up Disk Control Panel and select OS9 if not selected. Restart... Does it improve? If yes, check through those files that are OFF in Extension Manager, one or more is causing problem. If still slow...you may need to install OS again or...

Set your start up disk for OS 9 and shut down. Remove all the RAM you put in and try it with original RAM. Is it still slow? If yes, Shut down, take out that RAM and add 1 of other, try again....same? Swap and try again...

Zapping the PRAM or rebuilding desktop may help too. Check Help section.

Is your RAM matched? Sometimes 100/133 or dual bus RAM can cause issues...Let us know.
dp

[D0C_Hol1d@y]

What version of G4 is it? Fist thing I would do is buy Disk Warrior and optimimize the directory files. I would then open the Disk Utility in the Utility folder of the application folder and repair permissions. Also download Onyx from here http://www.titanium.free.fr/

After you install it run the automization and select all the features and let it rip. That will clean the thing up and optimize it a lot. You need to know the admistrative password for the main account on the computer to fix your problems. If you don't know it you are going to either need to ask the person you bought it from the password, or reinstall the operating system.