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Dimwhit

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 10, 2007
2,068
297
So I have a 3-month old 20" iMac at work. The last few weeks, it developed a problem. After it's been on a few hours, things slow to a crawl. Apps take forever to launch, the system is unresponsive for extended periods of time, lots of beachballs, etc. I did all the usual stuff, including zeroing out the hard drive and installing a fresh system, repairing permissions, running the Hardware Test, etc. I called AppleCare and they didn't have anything more for me to try (nice to see I at least knew and did all the usual troubleshooting steps before calling), so they told me to bring it into a store for repair. I did that. They kept it over the weekend, told me the RAM failed a test, then realized the RAM needed to be reseated. They did that, it passed all the tests, worked great for them, etc.

When I picked it up, the repair guy said that if I have the problem again, it might be a network problem. Well, I'm having the problem again. So my question is, anyone know what they mean by network problem and how to troubleshoot it? I'd like to do what I can before calling Apple or bringing it back to the repair shop.

First off, being a network problem makes absolutely no sense. I've got an AEBS with about 5 other computers using it. No one else has this problem.

Any suggestions?
 

velocityg4

macrumors 604
Dec 19, 2004
7,328
4,716
Georgia
Well when I had network problems on my iMac and even G5 the computer would slow down to a crawl, sometimes the finder would lock up all together. However if left alone for ten minutes the problem would clear up.

The specific cause was when my Mac would lose a connection to a volume from another problem over the network. Once the Finder accepted that attempting to access it then it would remove the volume from the desktop and the Mac would work as usual again. An alternative response was to use the Force Quit command to relaunch the Finder.

If you are not mounting volumes onto your iMac I would suggest keeping Activity Monitor active with all processes displayed. Then when your computer slows down find the errant process that is using up your CPU.

However, if you are mounting volumes constantly. Then I would suggest setting up static IP addresses in your router and Macs. This has always made my connections stabler.
 
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