What is wrong with my mac?!?

Question

i am having some serious issues with mac. i have a 12 inch powerbook g4. everytime i try to use word, it pops up with things that say "auto recovery postponed" or something like "there is a problem with the media"..

then sometimes a box, from who knows where, pops up and says "your startup disk is almost full". i have no idea what this means. my iphoto has not worked for months. i took it in to get it fixed, and they reloaded everything, but it still doesn't work. it tells me that the iphoto library is damaged. when i click to fix it, it just quits the entire program. i can no longer see pictures through finder. all the pictures are still there, only grayed, so you can't click them. i have tried deleting word documents, emptying the recycling bin, etc, but it still shows as the documents being on my computer. do macs keep a record of every document every created even if they're still not on there anymore? i have tried to update software to fix these problems, but it tells me that i don't have enough memory to download the software. i don't understand though because i have deleted like everything from my computer to fix the problem!!

Answer 1

well it doesnt help that your still running that bucket of screws

Answer 2

You only have one disk, so your 'startup disk', the one that you computer starts from, is your one and only disk.

If your disk gets too full, you start to get lots of problems.  As you see.

So get rid of songs and movies that you don't want anymore, or burn them to CD and then delete them.

As a rule, keep the disk below 80% full.  That is, if you have a 160GB drive, try to keep 30GB free.

My recommendation:

Buy an external firewire drive and back up your entire system to it.  Then reinstall from scratch.  Put in your original OS X DVD and start up while holding the C key (to boot from the DVD).  Choose options to delete everything ('format' the disk) and install OS X, leaving you with a completely clean system.  Then download all updates to get your software current again.  Then, retrieve your personal files (documents, photos, music) from the backup.

Set up Time Machine to make regular backups to the external drive.

Your life will be better :)

Answer 3

What hangfire said, plus, be sure to EMPTY YOUR TRASH.

Answer 4

i was going to say  your hard drive is full  throw things you dont need  away  

but honestly from the sound of it  your hard drive is dying and deciding to take your files with it