[TheNewSteve]

I have a 15" Aluminum PowerBook. Lately, when "waking the computer up," (usually I just close the screen to put it to sleep and open it back up to wake it up) it can take several minutes or a restart to go from nothing on the screen, to spinning ball cursor, to login screen that is not responding to me typing in my password or anything or any click response, sometimes even when the spinning ball is gone and it is just the regular pointer. Then for several minutes after its "instant-on" doesn't really occur, it will be slow getting the apps or documents open, even just a finder window.
What gives? I repaired permissions yesterday, I guess that's kind of like defragging a PC, but it still does it.

[Grant_G]

Like defragging a PC? No, I don't think so, but anyway you've done that and it was a good idea. When was the last time you actually did any housecleaning though? You may need to clear your PB of cache files and such that are hogging a lot of hard disk space. I would recommend either OnyX or Cocktail. They both have semiautomatic settings that allow you to do all this cleanup work at once. In Cocktail (my personal favorite, but it costs ten bucks) it's called Pilot. Just click on the tab, select everything except Prebinding (done automatically in Jaguar and Panther), and check Restart When Finished. In OnyX it's called Automate and is a bit more complicated so I would just leave the default check marks in place, then click Execute. OnyX is free.
If that doesn't do it, then run FSCK. Restart your PB while holding down the Command and letter 's' keys. You'll get some code, then the curser will stop. Type
fsck -y (in Jaguar) or
fsck -y -f (in Panther)
Note the spaces. Hit the enter or return key. This is the exact same thing as Repair Disk in Disk Utility, but easier than starting up from the Installer CD to run it. You'll get some more code and finally you should get a line that reads "the volume so-and-so appears to be OK." If you get a line that reads "the volume so-and-so has been modified," then run it again until you get the OK line. You might have to do it 3 or 4 times, since repairing one thing might lead to it finding something else on the next pass. Just takes about a minute for each one. Then type
Exit
and hit enter or return again to boot back into OS X. If you get anything other than the above, or it starts a scan and won't stop, get back to us for more steps you can take. (If it won't stop, you'll have to do a hard shutdown -- I'm not sure how that's done on a PB, but on a desktop just hold the power button in for 5 to 7 seconds.)
G

[Duke_Thomas]

In addition to what Grant said, if sleep is somehow being mishandled, then perhaps you might want to try resetting your power management unit. First though, I'd check the system logs to see if there is anything interesting happening corresponding to the time when you try to sleep, or wake up from sleep.
Oh yeah. I should perhaps mention, obviously do not clear the log files with these little Cocktail utilities before giving them a once over for signs to your problem.

[berg]

Go to Preferences/Energy Saver/ set "put computer to sleep when inactive" at never, and "put hard disk to sleep" when possible.
If that doesn't work ... it might be your PMU, and if not that could be your logic board.

[Grant_G]

PowerBook = sleep. It just has to be that way, unless he keeps it plugged in to a power outlet all the time.
G

[TheNewSteve]

I have CockTail, but haven't done anything besides it's once-over.
I actually do have the PB plugged in most all of the time on my desk....
Will try some of this, thanks!