Last night, after almost a week of weird stutters and freeze-ups on my normally absolutely reliable computer, my Powerbook (PowerBook DVI 800 MHz, for those wondering) suddenly died. It was not a messy death - no blue-screen-of-death as you might see on a PC - but suddenly the "I am working" pinwheel appeared in place of my cursor (a name which was suddenly appropriate 
) and nothing worked. I tried to reboot the computer, only to see the graphic which indicates that no hard drive was found. WHAT?! 
After several more reboots off of CD-ROMs, FireWire external hard drives, and others, I finally was able to bring up the hard drive and it seemed fine. I ran Disk First Aid and it said everything was honky dory. Not the first time a computer has given me a non-reproducible glitch, so I figured it was okay. Reboot. The computer came up. Then it refroze. 
I attempted to run a backup overnight, but it froze again, and again, and again. Finally, this morning I tried to boot off of a CD again and... nothing. The computer would not even recognize the hard drive again, nor would it recognize the Hardware Diagnostics Disk that came with the Powerbook. I left for work depressed and wondering just how much money I would have to spend to fix this computer, or whether I would have to buy a new one.
Work was not fun, but I mostly tried to forget about the issue while there. But during the lunch time I did some checking. No help on how to fix the device. I did find a local Apple Store which could help me fix the computer via the Genius Bar. And I did some research on just how much I'd have to spend for a new one. Let us just say there was a lot more depression going on.
But when I got home after work, I decided to give it the old college try, one more time. First, I managed to get the computer to boot off of an external FireWire hard drive. (Not bad.
) I was able to back up all of the important stuff from my laptop's internal hard drive. (Better! 
) Then I managed to get the Hardwarer Diagnostic Disk to boot, and ran all of their tests. No problems reported. Disk First Aid again, no problems reported. Hmm... Maybe this implied the hardware was fine, but my operating system had a bad file? (Good idea! 
) So I used Apple Software Update and updated my O/S to 10.3.4 - something I had been waiting to do because of some problems reported with the update. It worked! (Woo-hoo! 
)After several hours now, and a full back-up of my hard drive, things are looking good. It is probably too soon to be sure, but I am optimistic. Crossed fingers, but I am much encouraged. Here is hoping things are back to normal, and I will be posting to Mod-Blog regularly again!
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