iMac sluggish as a function of time

[goglamosh]

hello. i have a 17" iMac, with 512 megs of ram, running 10.2 only, and after a day or so of use the computer starts to become very sluggish. scrolling and opening apps becomes very slow. a restart brings everything back to normal performance wise. does anybody know why this happens? and is there anyway to stop it?

[janey]

10.2!!! ONLY 10.2!!! Upgrade to 10.2.3 (or 10.2.4) using Software Update or apple.com/downloads

Might just solve your problem...or maybe your comp just needs a restart once in a while :rolleyes:

[MacBandit]

Are you using HP print center?

[goglamosh]

i have 10.2.3, and no HP Print Center.

[hesdeadjim]

Do you put your computer to sleep? I have found that putting your computer to sleep seems to help. Also, it might just help to shut down at night. Like a previous poster said, sometimes the RAM needs to be reset. You shouldn't be having these problems continously though. All I know, if I keep my computer on for a week straight, it seems to slow down a bit but not usually a day. Hope that helps.

[Cursor]

Originally posted by übergeek
10.2!!! ONLY 10.2!!! Upgrade to 10.2.3 (or 10.2.4) using Software Update or apple.com/downloads

Might just solve your problem...or maybe your comp just needs a restart once in a while :rolleyes:

No, you shouldn't have to restart all the time. I have mine set to sleep. I haven't restarted in weeks. An that was only because I installed an update. I would say:

1) Update to 10.2.3
2) Did you install any fonts? They could be a source of a lot of problems.
3) Are you on a network? Sometimes that can slow you down.
there could be a bunch of other problems that I'm sure others will post.

[rainman::|:|]

Here's a question for you-- do you get the speed increase back when you logout and login again, or is it just restarting?

if it's also solved by a logout, there's some process that's just leaking memory or something, should be easy to isolate.

If not, there could be more substancial problems with your system...

pnw

[goglamosh]

thanks for everyone's comments. i used to have my mac go to sleep at night, but i thought that was causing the slow down, so i stopped. it turns out the sleep function has nothing to do with slowing the computer down. when i logout, the slowness still persists. i have not installed any additional fonts, and i am connected to a home network (mainly just for broadband internet). could there be memory leaking? also, i don't think it is virtual memory problem because the hard drive is not over active.

[ddtlm]

goglamosh:

I cannot think of any normal thing that should cause that sort of slowdown. You should not need reboots, and you should not need to put it to sleep. These days I leave my DP-800 on 24x7 doing folding, no slowdown and no crashes.

You might use the command-line tool 'top' to look for things that are eating up your CPU. You should be able to hear the hard disk seeking if swap space usage is growing with time.

Gather more information.

[MacBandit]

This sure sounds like the memory leak caused by HP Print Center. I know I asked about it already.

Are you running any HP utils at all?

[goglamosh]

i know it is not swapping, because the hd seems fine. i will use top next time to see if anything is hogging the cpu.

i just reset the PRAM and NVRAM. everything is running great since then. time will tell if this has helped.

i believe, like everyone else here, that i should be able to run OS X for days without a restart.

[irmongoose]

Sounds like a memory leak to me. What programs have you installed lately? As ddtlm has said, go to the Terminal and type top... and see if a program that shouldn't be taking too much CPU is taking alot... if you find one then take note of the 4 digit number next to that nameand press conrol-c. Then type "kill (4-digit number).

If the sluggishnesh stops, you've solved your problem... stop using that program or try finding and update to that program which might have fixed the memory leak. If it doesn't sstop, try doing the same proccess again.




irmongoose

[goglamosh]

i don't have any hp print center tools. i have an epson printer.