More Macintosh problems with large documents

nehama

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First, I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my earlier posting re problems with large documents. To answer their questions, it's a Power Mac G4, 2001, 10.3.9. I work in Microsoft Word, version X,2001. Several months ago we increased the memory to 1 GB, which helped a little. I tend to have problems when a document (words only, no graphics) approaches 1 MB. That's when it freezes and I can't open the document. Obviously now, I am forestalling that and splitting the document before it reaches that point.
If I end up investing in a new computer will that still be a problem?
And will my documents all translate into the new version? I've heard there are difficulties with Word 2008.
However, there are more problems with the current computer. I was using Disc Utilities every couple of weeks, which did seem to help, although there is a distinct lag between the time I delete something and the time it registers on the screen and the same for when I am scrolling thru pages and the page number is very slow to appear. Someone suggested we use disc warrior, which now seems to have caused problems rather than solving them, as things are slower than before. The computer doesn't have a DVD, so we obtained one to use, but it didn't seem to work right, as the image on the screen was so light it was virtually unreadable, although it said that it did what it was supposed to do.
In addition, when I ran disc utilities last night it said 'reserved fields in the catalogue records have incorrect data. The volume OSX needs to be repaired'. When I then did 'repair disc', it said that repair was attempted on two volumes, but one could not be repaired. The computer hard drive is partitioned in two. Was it related to that? Still, it never said that before. What does all this mean? Is there something I can do about it? Should I be concerned?
Someone recommended Yasu and Onyx as maintenance applications, but would they work on this computer and how do I obtain them? Do I need to find a DVD player that will work with this Mac and what should I look for?
Is it worth trying to continue with this computer or should I read the writing on the wall and get something newer?
I appreciate all your suggestions and am sorry to have asked so many questions at once.
 

spiros

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Well, now you're talkin' :)

Good news and bad news. The good news is MAYBE something like the free YASU utility http://jimmitchelldesign.com/projects/yasu/ can help.

It sounds like your system is "generally" wonky. If you go to the link and download the version for older (10.2 - 10.3) systems and give it a go, it might help. After dragging the application to your Applications Folder, open YASU and simply tick EVERY BOX on the YASU window that comes up when you run the application. Then restart. In general, you should run a utility like YASU every now and then.

If you still have problems, then you're looking at the bad news, probably a bad hard drive. 7-year old computer, I'm not surprised. If Disk Utility and Disk Warrior didn't help, you may have to get a new hard drive. Can't be more than $100-150 though. Based on your machine, you should be able to easily run v.X or even 2004 Word and not have problems with 1MB files.

I run Word 2004 through 10.4 on a 5-year old iBook with only 640MB of memory and it works fine, easily handling files larger than 1MB.

If Disk Warrior made things "slower" but everything otherwise works, you may simply be running low on hard drive space (in which case you again would need a new hard drive). When OSX runs out of RAM, it literally DEVOURS hard drive space to use and if there isn't a lot left (less than 10 GB) than you will experience real slowdowns, as disk drives are much slower than memory (RAM)

I really don't think you need a whole new machine. At most, a new hard drive. That, of course, involves moving over all your files and operating system. A bit of a chore.
 

kuwisdelu

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Well, in computer years, a G4 is pretty old by now.

That said, it should still work.

Like YASU, OnyX is also a free utility, you can Google it, but if you know how to use Disk Utility well enough, then it might not be a whole lot of help.

The problem shouldn't be related to being partitioned. If it can't repair the errors, though, you might be out of luck on an "easy" solution.

One thing that may work, if you have your original install discs, is an Archive and (Re)install. That way, you can keep all your files, but the installed system will be brand new, so that should *hopefully* fix your disc error problems.

All of this may or may not relate to having trouble with Word documents.

It's been forever since I used Office 2000 or Office X. Have you been able to use such large documents in the past without trouble? It's possible that an old version of Word just has trouble with large documents as an application, but I don't know about that. If you can find a cheap copy of Office 2004 (school, ebay, whatever) you might want to try that.

Alternatively, to see if it's a word problem, you can try saving as an RTF file and opening up the document in a plain text editor like TextEdit. See if that still gives you problems. Not a great solution, but if it works better, it would suggest Office X might just be sluggish with large documents in general.

And ditto the hard drive space. The system will start to crawl once you fill up most of the drive space. If your hard drive is very full--and you don't want the hassle of buying and installing a new one--you can try investing in a cheap external hard drive and moving as many files as possible to that to relieve hard drive space.

You don't need a new machine, but if *do* happen to have the spare change for one, after almost 8 years, it's well worth it to invest in a new one if you can. (Though if you start looking into a new one, but can work with the old one for a while, you might also think about waiting for Snow Leopard to come out--then the new systems will really fly compared to your G4.)
 

Deleted member 42

Wait a second.

Just slow down.

Have you started your mac up with the emergency CD or DVD that came with it, and run Disk Repair from that?

Second, in general, using a bunch of different utilities in sequence is not, really, a good idea; it's the equivalent of twelve people making the same pot of soup at once--or having twelve mechanics working on the same car.

You can inadvertently make things worse.

Now--what Kuwisdelu mentions is important.

You need to have at LEAST 10% of your drive empty, all the time.

How much free space do you have?

Do you have an Apple store with a Genius bar nearby?
 

spiros

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Second, in general, using a bunch of different utilities in sequence is not, really, a good idea; it's the equivalent of twelve people making the same pot of soup at once--or having twelve mechanics working on the same car.


Yeah, I agree. Using many maintenance utilites is kinda like taking a shower after taking a shower (as Gruber put it).

YASU, Onyx, Maintenance etc all do the same thing. I simply prefer YASU because it's by far the easiest. It's ONE window with some checkboxes. You check every box and press go. Restart yer machine and yer ready to go. If problems persist, then other utilities will, in all likelihood, not help.

The only other utility that I can think of that could help is AppleJack. It does the DEEPEST cleaning of a system known to man. But it requires booting up into console mode and is a little tricky.

Of course, if you've already tried fixing your disk with disk warrior, perhaps all the apps we've been mentioning are extraneous.

If your disk is really full and failing anyway, probably get a new hard drive.

Good luck.