os problems

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 12/12/2013 8:10 PM, John R. Sowden wrote:
> <[snip]>
> I started being concerned when the computer seems to be going slow 
> (previous messages).
> I wonder if the repeated log entries are what is slowing down the 
> computer.
> I also saw, when it was booting that (something failed) after several 
> pages of attempts scrolled past the screen.  That is whey I was 
> attempting to use the system log menu selection.
>
> Help?

My condolences on the "illness and continued suffering" of your 
long-term computer system.

You may be of an age to appreciate the mental picture of four people 
attempting to accomplish a square dance inside a telephone booth. Many 
observers might suggest that either a much larger room for the telephone 
and the dance, or three fewer dancers in the booth, would be more 
conducive to success.  Too many files in too small a hard drive -- 
similar result.

Perhaps you could arrange for a larger replacement hard drive in this 
computer, with a fresh install of the same operating system on one or 
more of its partitions.  Then perhaps installing the original hard drive 
in a new external enclosure, and connecting it via a USB connection to 
the computer, and the new instance of the operating system installed on 
the new internal drive, would allow you to copy selected important data 
files from the old drive to the new one. After as much as can be 
usefully recovered is transferred between old and new hard drives, then 
the old drive might be reformatted to remove the remaining unusable 
files and storage structures, and then used as an additional drive on 
the computer, perhaps for backup data storage.


Ken