Of late whenever I try to use any command whether it be waking the computer, or moving the scroll bar the spinning rainbow beachball comences until I force quit whatever I am attempting to do.
I have tried running the sudo lists (mac maintence, daily, weekly, monthly) as well as repairing permissions but the problem persists. I have logged in using a test id and it seems to be system wide.

Mac OSX 10.3.9 G4 256 RAM Hard Drive 80 GIG of which 25 gig are free.

I wonder if it isn't a memory problem, 256MB isn't much ram these days. Have you tried running activity monitor to see what's being used?

Try the procedures in this article. You have already repaired permissions so you won't have to try that. Be aware that Disk Utility was comparatively weak in 10.3 and previous so you could also try a third-party utility such as Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro or Drive Genius if you have one of them. All are more powerful than Disk Utility.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode? If the problem does not occur in Safe Mode, that makes it more likely that it is software-related and it's even possible that the problem will continue to be abated when you boot normally.

Another possibility is to clean caches with OnyX 1.5.3 or similar utility. Be sure that you use one that is compatible with 10.3.9. It's also possible that you have enough open processes to swamp available RAM. 256 MB is probably bare minimum for running 10.3.9.

If you get any error messages, please post them.

Yes, when possible and it shows a spike of about 40% usually of the internet browser.

I agree in regard to open processes that swamp available ram, however I deleted all available cache. I will try the safe mode suggestion.

After rebooting in safe mode twice response is much better, opening and closing applications seem to function as well as the scroll bar without the beachball.

Well, that sounds like progress. I can only speculate about why Safe Mode improved things but one possibility is that SM itself was not responsible but simply restarting was. If you haven't restarted in quite some time, virtual memory could have been using a lot space on your hard drive and restarting would have cleared it. It's also possible that fsck, running in the background during startup in SM, might have helped. Fsck (file system check) is pretty much the same as using Disk Utility to run Repair Disk. Starting in SM also clears font caches so that's a possibility.

If things seem better and the you believe that hardware is not the issue, you should consider adding RAM. I would go for at least 1 GB and, if your budget permits, increase RAM to the maximum that your G4 (you didn't say which one) can handle. RAM is relatively cheap and increasing available RAM is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve performance.

Starting in Safe Mode only removes font caches in OS X 10.4 and later: Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

Heck, consider a new Mac! Yes, that's much more expensive, in the short term. But, your G4 is increasingly obsolete. New software isn't going backwards. You're already out in the cold on Snow Leopard, and there is more to come.

If you do continue to invest in the G4, the day is coming soon when you will be compelled to get that new Mac anyway. How long have you had it? I kept my G3 for 8 years before moving up to a Core 2 Duo processor, and I expect it to last that long as well. :knockonwood:

Well I also manually removed caches in the library.

Ya know I have considered that in the past but upon doing some looking around on support websites found that others with newer macs or operating systems at times had the same problems. (More specifically relating to Java and internet browsers.

I'll bet that there are more people without those problems than with. FWIW, I have no issues at all with my setup. I think that your key term is "at times".

Is that Java or JavaScript you are referring to? I suspect you are casting blame on the wrong language.

Java and JavaScript are not the same thing and in fact have no relationship with one another, other than the first four characters of their names and a passing resemblance in their grammar and syntax. JavaScript was originally developed for Netscape, but there are currently several dialects of JavaScript (a.k.a. ECMAScript or JScript) and the JavaScript interpreter is built into the browser. So every browser uses its own unique JavaScript interpreter intended to support some version of the ECMA standard and as in the case of Microsoft's JScript with proprietary extensions. There is One of the "features" of Safari 4 is an entirely new and very much faster JavaScript interpreter.

On the other hand, Sun Microsystems is solely responsible for Java and actually produces the Java Virtual Machine used by everyone but Apple. However, Apple's Java Virtual Machine is certified by Sun Microsystems and fully compliant with Sun's standard.

Yes the Java the is used in browsers.

Oh I see.

Well upon trying to wake the computer it is sluggish again. Maybe
it needs to reset the sleep mechanism, that buttom you press under the computer.