really sick lampshade iMac running Leopard

[LtPage1]

So. Whenever I click on the Documents tab in a Finder window, I get the beach ball for ~15 seconds, and then OS X crashes, and comes back up after ~25 seconds, without any error message. This also happens when I double-click the Documents folder under the user account, whether I'm viewing as a list, columns, icons, or cover flow. I can, however, click the arrow to view contents when I'm viewing as a list. It works fine when I do that. This persists after an OS reinstall.

Everything is really slow, I think mostly as a result of an almost-full hard drive. So- if no one knows how to fix the previous problem, I'm going to do a clean reformat/reinstall. Other than backing up music/photos/documents, what do I need to copy over to ensure that all user settings/passwords/etc. are included?

Thanks.

next day edit:
Its a 1.25GHZ G4, with the RAM maxed at 1GB. Also, there's this weird thing happening where a blank (no text) iCal Alarm window pops up, and I can't close it. The beach ball shows up when I click into the window, and never goes away. It seems to happen randomly, and persists until the machine is shut down.

 

[TheStu]

What are the specs?

 

[Kmax82]

You can do an Archive and Install, instead of a clean install, if you just want to get rid of any system clutter. It will keep your Home folder and Applications in tact, but just reinstall the OS itself. However, if that doesn't work, you will definitely need to do a clean install.

How much HDD space do you have free? This definitely could be caused by not having enough free space to cache things anymore. But you'd have to have next to no HDD space left, for that to be a factor.

 

[umrigar]

Rule of thumb: keep 10-15% space free on your system drive.

1. Create a new user account and see if it still happens - could be account-related also.

2. Run a utility like Onyx and clear out your caches, temp files, etc.

Also,
how much RAM do you have, processor speed, etc.

 

[LtPage1]

Its a 1.25GHZ G4, with the RAM maxed at 1GB. I'll definitely try the archive & install, and Onyx, asap. I just got Time Machine working again, and I'm waiting for it to finish backing up (I had to format the Time Capsule drive, so it's going to take a while to back everything up again). It's an 80GB drive, with just over 11GB free. I also like the new account idea, don't know why I hadn't thought of that. I'd like to avoid that, though, if possible, since there's a ton of preferences, etc. that I don't want to lose.

 

[TheStu]

Well, you should be ok with those specs since Leopard only requires 867MHz G4 and 512MB RAM IIRC.

 

[Kmax82]

Yea.. I think something has gotten screwy with something in your install. So definitely try clearing caches, repairing permissions, etc... with Onyx, and if that doesn't work, then give the whole Archive and Install method a go. The only thing with that, is that you're going to be left with even less space when you reinstall since it backs up the previous system install in the "Previous System Install" directory. So once you get it all setup, you'll have to delete that to free up the 6-11GB of system files.

 

[Tegeril]

That system can definitely handle it. I have a 1GHz lampshade iMac sitting in my kitchen running leopard (1.25GB ram) and while it's not the fastest system in the house (lol) it goes to foodnetwork.com fairly well.

 

[umrigar]

By new account I meant test account. Not to replace the other one.