system lag and beachballs

[chibianh]

I have never had my system running for 2 weeks.. I've always had to reboot it before it ever reaches 2 weeks of uptime. Reason..

After a while. when I try to launch a program, it launches, then stalls... beachball for about a minute or two. it's the same for any application i launch. At quit, same thing.. beachball for a minute or two, then it quits.

Any suggestions as to what I should do to fix this? or prevent this? Thanks.

Anh

[Catfish_Man]

...
1) running macjanitor
2) looking at top (open terminal, type top), and see what's using resources
3) use tinkertool/force quit to quit and relaunch the finder

I don't know whether these will help, but it's worth trying.

[evildead]

It could be that your RAM is fragmented and the OS is having a hard time finding large chunks of RAM to use. OS X is supossed to take care of that kind of stuff but I dont know. My uptime is longer than 3 weeks right now but I do have 1.2GB of RAM and a 2GB dedicated Swap partition on a drive separate from my boot disk. I wonder if OS X server takes care of RAM fragmentation better than OS X desktop.

There is not much you can do about it I dont think exept get more RAM, use a bigger Swap, or maybe find a util that clears out swap, RAM, and Cash while the OS is still running and de-frags your RAM. There are such things for UNIX and probably could be proted over to OS X by compiling the sorce.


-evildead

[alex_ant]

Instead of rebooting, have you tried logging out and back in again? That always solves the type of problems you describe for me.

[AlphaTech]

You didn't list any system spec's to let us know what system you are running OS X on... Where did you get your RAM, is it all from Apple or did you get it from a third party??? We really do need that system info in order to provide better help. I would suggest the logging out/in thing as suggested by alex, or you could just shut down as I do when I am done for the day. We sometimes have power failures, so I would prefer to have the computer off when that happens to avoid any kind of power splike damage from it coming back on. Spikes when power is restored is NOT uncommon.

[mmmdreg]

all Macjanitor does is provide a GUI for the unix commands "sudo sh /etc/daily", "blah.../etc/weekly" and ".../monthly" so you can do that in the terminal providing you have root enabled...on another note, evildead, you do realise that that ridiculous amount of space for your swap partition is most likely all being wasted?

[Beej]

Originally posted by mmmdreg
on another note, evildead, you do realise that that ridiculous amount of space for your swap partition is most likely all being wasted? Yeah 2 gig is a huge swap partition. I used to have a 500 meg partition (back when it actually helped, ie before 10.1) and I only ever used less than 80 meg.

[chibianh]

Originally posted by AlphaTech
You didn't list any system spec's to let us know what system you are running OS X on... Where did you get your RAM, is it all from Apple or did you get it from a third party??? We really do need that system info in order to provide better help. I would suggest the logging out/in thing as suggested by alex, or you could just shut down as I do when I am done for the day. We sometimes have power failures, so I would prefer to have the computer off when that happens to avoid any kind of power splike damage from it coming back on. Spikes when power is restored is NOT uncommon.

Powerbook G4 800mhz w/ 512mb ram.

RAM came with the machine. Logging out/in doesn't work. I try to log out and the Finder hangs. Thanks for the suggestion about shutting down at the end of the day. I will think about it.

Anh

[mmmdreg]

so have you done a quick fsck-y?

[chibianh]

Originally posted by mmmdreg
so have you done a quick fsck-y?

Nope.. what is it and what does it do?

[buffsldr]

Originally posted by chibianh
I have never had my system running for 2 weeks.. I've always had to reboot it before it ever reaches 2 weeks of uptime. Reason..

After a while. when I try to launch a program, it launches, then stalls... beachball for about a minute or two. it's the same for any application i launch. At quit, same thing.. beachball for a minute or two, then it quits.

Any suggestions as to what I should do to fix this? or prevent this? Thanks.

Anh

Reboot once a week

(this is akin to telling the doctor "it hurts when i do this" and she says, "Stop doing that")

But seriously, I have noticed i get longer uptime when I "push" my system less. Hey, 2 wks is better than twice a day.

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by chibianh


Nope.. what is it and what does it do?
filesystem check...command-s on restart and then type fsck -y

[cb911]

i had the same slow down problems when i first got my 667 TiBook. i think i could only use it for about 3 days and then everything was reeeeaaalllyy ssslllooooooooww. i tried logging out and then back in and that didn't really help much. i just shut down every night now. i wish i could just put it in sleep every night, it sort of annoys me having to sit down and watch it boot up every morning.
BTW, i've only got 256MB RAM, could this have anything to do with the slow down? is it true about it being hard to find large chunks of RAM to use?

[edesignuk]

Originally posted by cb911

BTW, i've only got 256MB RAM, could this have anything to do with the slow down? is it true about it being hard to find large chunks of RAM to use?
I would have thought it could well be part of the problem, OS X is very memory hungry and 256Mb isn't really much these days, I would say stick in another 256Mb atleast asap, you should get better performence.

[dantec]

I had major problems with OS 10, after once IE unexpectadly quitted. As amazing and impossible as it seems, I think IE managed to corrupt the carbon framework. EVERY carbon app, would not quit, and get stuck with a beachball, if it did manage to open (in some cases it managed to not open, and bounce forever).

If you notice, once a disk gets fragmented with OS 10 (installing, swapfiles, etc.) there is really no way of getting it back to the speed it once was. This is because defragmenting utilities like Norton Speed disk, rate important system files as "other" and unimportant, and it sees no connection between the them, and as a result it puts them in any order near the end of the drive. This can cause OS 10 to be EVEN SLOWER, than it once was.

My advice is to reboot, log into root (via the GUI way) and destroy all the swap files (by putting them into the trash, restarting, logging into root again and deleting them). You have to use tinkertool to make the hidden folders and swapfiles seeable.

So I reinstalled OS 10, and now everything works randy dandy. This time I didn't install OS 9, so this is my first machine without that. It's been 5 days now without classic, we will see how longer I last!

[dantec]

And by the way I had a Quicksilver with 384 Ram.

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by dantec
If you notice, once a disk gets fragmented with OS 10 (installing, swapfiles, etc.) there is really no way of getting it back to the speed it once was. This is because defragmenting utilities like Norton Speed disk, rate important system files as "other" and unimportant, and it sees no connection between the them, and as a result it puts them in any order near the end of the drive. This can cause OS 10 to be EVEN SLOWER, than it once was.


Way not true dog-breath... I actually ran Norton last night and the result, if anything, is a faster system, along with less issues. I ran it after running Diskwarrior 2 and TechTool Pro 3 on the system (booting off my utility cd that I created). All the utilities found things wrong, and fixed them (damaged directories and such).

As for placement of items on the drive, it really doesn't matter too much where in the graphic the items reside. As long as they are not fragmented, and stay as continous files.:p

[dantec]

Firstly, i don't have dog-breath.

Secondly, I wasn't talking about utilites like Norton Disc Doctor, I was specifically talking about speed disk. yes it does matter for placement. The OS 10 system files are marked as "Other" and no resemblance is seen between them. This can cause everything to be slower.

Opening files (big projects) and apps might actually be faster, that you are right, but the core system gets slower.

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by dantec
Firstly, i don't have dog-breath.

Secondly, I wasn't talking about utilites like Norton Disc Doctor, I was specifically talking about speed disk. yes it does matter for placement. The OS 10 system files are marked as "Other" and no resemblance is seen between them. This can cause everything to be slower.

Opening files (big projects) and apps might actually be faster, that you are right, but the core system gets slower.

Wrong again Bubba.... :p I USED Speed Disk last night (the last utility part that I run) and everything is just fine. I don't open up large files and such, so I am talking about system performance. If anything, it has become faster AND more stable. Hell, it might have even fixed the issue I was having with the airport card. Apple is still shipping me a replacement, which I will install tomorrow and return the original one.

Ask eyelikeart about his system performance after he ran Norton on his TiBook (Speed Disk IS part of that :rolleyes: ).

[dantec]

Ok... i'll shut up now...

After being flamed twice, I won't try to prove my point any furthur... I know it is slower, I have seen it on 3 machines, but it doesn't matter anymore!

[sjs]

Alpha upgraded you fron "dog-breath" to "Bubba". Being from the deep south myself, I can tell you that that is a big improvement. You have nearly won Alpha over! Don't quit now!

BTW, I use Norton speed disk and it make a big difference. Less time at the beach.

[dantec]

Originally posted by sjs
Alpha upgraded you fron "dog-breath" to "Bubba". Being from the deep south myself, I can tell you that that is a big improvement. You have nearly won Alpha over! Don't quit now!

BTW, I use Norton speed disk and it make a big difference. Less time at the beach.

Huh bubba? ;) ;) ;) (joking) ;) ;) ;)

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by sjs
Alpha upgraded you fron "dog-breath" to "Bubba". Being from the deep south myself, I can tell you that that is a big improvement. You have nearly won Alpha over! Don't quit now!

BTW, I use Norton speed disk and it make a big difference. Less time at the beach.

Actually, I didn't want to offend the dogs out there. :D I know how the Bubba's (with the protruding brows) are rather difficult to offend, which made for a safer taunt.

Yet another happy customer for NUM... well, that more then beats your three systems there dantec.

[dantec]

Originally posted by AlphaTech


Actually, I didn't want to offend the dogs out there. :D I know how the Bubba's (with the protruding brows) are rather difficult to offend, which made for a safer taunt.

Yet another happy customer for NUM... well, that more then beats your three systems there dantec.

So you are saying that you are offending dogs by comparing them to me. Thanks I appreciated that.

Actually I never said I wasn't a happy customer with NUM. It actually does a great job optimizing my games. And norton disc doctor I think is great. It just makes me unhappy that the Carbonized version doesn't have an optimizer for X.

[Taft]

...is the certainty with which the people assert themselves. :rolleyes:

As many tech support people will tell you, computers are not all that predictable. A problem that exists on one system might not exist on another. To say, "You're an idoit!! It works fine for me, therefore you have no idea what you're talking about." ...to say that, well, thats just obnoxious.



I work for a company that has computers hooked up to a single network printer. A guy just called up and told me that his computer wasn't printing correctly. I told him that he should stop calling me and wasting my time because everyone else's computer was working fine. Since everyone else has no problems, I can only assume that his computer must be working fine too. Right???

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Taft

[AlphaTech]

Well, Taft, considering how the company location that I work at has about 250 Mac systems, where NUM works perfectly with, it's more then just my system(s). I have also used it on several systems with OS X and it resolves many issues.

How many are you supporting?? How many people are connected to that [one] network printer?? I believe that we have over 20 printers between the two floors at work (closer to 25 if I remember correctly, since I am not there to look at the moment). They are a combination of both color and black and white laser printers, all on the network.

If one person has an issue printing, we try to gather a bit of information before we go and check out the system. It could be a font issue, they might need to recreate their desktop printer, it could be a number of things. To just cast their issue asside is moronic. Considering how it could be an indication of larger problems lurking under the surface. :rolleyes:

[Taft]

Originally posted by AlphaTech
Well, Taft, considering how the company location that I work at has about 250 Mac systems, where NUM works perfectly with, it's more then just my system(s). I have also used it on several systems with OS X and it resolves many issues.

...

To just cast their issue asside is moronic. Considering how it could be an indication of larger problems lurking under the surface. :rolleyes:

It was a fictitious--and quite sarcastic--scenario. I was just trying to illustrate my point. Its hard to know how what causes wierd problems and why certain systems are effected and others aren't.

I find it unlikely that the location of system files on the hard drive would effect performance. But I do think its possible. I mean, in the extreme case, the system files could be spread all over the hard drive, making finding the files more work for the hard drive.

My point is that I think dantec could've had a valid point...which was immediately dismissed--with extreme methods--by people on the forum.

No harm intended--I was just getting pissed while reading this thread. Its probably my work frustration coming through here. :)

Taft

[cb911]

internet explorer unexpectedly quit on me a couple of times as well. i'm going to get the update today and see if that helps much.

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by Taft
It was a fictitious--and quite sarcastic--scenario. I was just trying to illustrate my point. Its hard to know how what causes wierd problems and why certain systems are effected and others aren't.

Don't make statements that sound factual, but in reality are your delusions. :rolleyes:


I find it unlikely that the location of system files on the hard drive would effect performance. But I do think its possible. I mean, in the extreme case, the system files could be spread all over the hard drive, making finding the files more work for the hard drive.


That is all the MORE reason to run NUM (and speed disk) :rolleyes: Files spread all over the place, and fragmented, will reduce your system's performance. Speed disk, puts them all together, which brings back the speed of your system.

[buffsldr]

Originally posted by dantec
Ok... i'll shut up now...

After being flamed twice, I won't try to prove my point any furthur... I know it is slower, I have seen it on 3 machines, but it doesn't matter anymore!

Consider the source. Maybe I need to check my internet dictionary, but at some point do the insults get so childish and personal, it's no longer flaming, it's just bitterness?

[AmbitiousLemon]

actually dantec is pretty much right. although norton will defrag the drive its optimizations are set for os9, and therefore are well known to cause problems in osx (sometimes even making the system slower or unbootable). i refuse to run norton on any osx machine until they release an osx version, and anyone who does, is gambling every time they use it.

there is a lot of misinformation flying around this thread from both sides (in addition to far too much childish name calling. so i will say keep it 'cool fellas').

the root of this problem that chibianh is having is RAM not fragmentation. this was pointed out before the thread got hijacked but little info was given as to the details.

512MB is not enough RAM to run osx well. Things will be fine at first but after a day or two of normal use, or a few hours of heavy use the system will grind to a halt. So what is happening? people like to say 'osx is a ram hog' with little explanation.

i dont understand it completely but here is what i know. when you first boot up osx with all of your main apps running you will not likley use more than 250MB of ram. but you will notice that when you quit an app, the ram that was taken up when that app was launched is not completely freed up into the system. much of the ram remains unavailable. this is because osx caches a lot of information into ram. ever notice the first launch of an app takes a lot longer than any subsequent launch? this is because some info has been cached. so if you only have 512MB of ram, after a few days the ram gets full of various bits of information that has been cached there and so less ram is available for actually running apps.

so what happens when all the ram is used up? pageouts. or Virtual memory (VM) if you want to use os9 terminology. the os starts using hard drive space as ram. this is a lot slower than ram and so when your computer is writing or reading from virtual memory (hard drive) things will slow down as you mentioned. you can free up a little bit of ram by logging out, but to really clear things up you need to restart.

some people mentioned swap drives. what this means is they have set a hard drive or a partition aside just for virtual memory. the theory behind this is that if you use your main disk as VM then it can become fragmented. if you use a dedicated partition then the drive will always have a space set aside for VM that will remain unfragmented. Also if you happen to have a drive set aside just for this (rather than a partition) then the arm will be waiting for you to use the VM and will access it quicker. most people report that post 10.1.2 they didnt see much fo an advantage to using a swap drive, although if you are interested and dont want to dive into the terminal there is a freeware app called swap cop (find it at version tracker).

but really if you want to avoid this system hangs caused by ram the only thing you can do is buy more ram. most people who have 1gb or more never report having problems. seems excessive but its about all you can do, and ram is cheap again.

as far as speed issues due to other problems the there are three things you can do. update prebindings (optimize), run your nightly scripts, and defrag (optimize).

Updating prebindings is the big thing for speed in osx. there is a terminal command to do it and MANY freeware and shareware apps that do it (they all use the same terminal command, so they are all essentailly the same). many people run into problems updating prebindings. the big thing to remember is RESTART. so i would suggest using speedmeuplight if you are not comfortable with the terminal. so restart before running update prebindings (people are calling this optimizing for short). run update prebindings. restart twice afterwards. if you do not restart afterwards your system may actually become slower!

nighty scripts. your machine runs three scripts aroun 3am at night. if your machine is not running then these scripts can not be run. one script is run every day. one every week. and one every month. again a terminal command can execute these for you, but if you are terminal-phobe then there are a couple apps that do this for you. MacJanitor and Cronathon. there is no harm in running these too often, but you really only need to do them as often as each one is designed to be run (daily, weekly, and monthly).

defragmentation (called optimizing in os9 lingo). defraging requires a commercial software title such as Speed Disk from Norton Utilities, or TechTool, or Diskwarrior. Norton is the only one right now with osx support (though not complete). Micromat who makes techtool offer an osx title called Drive10 but it does not optimize. To run these software titles you should boot off the cd (all but drive10 use a os9 boot cd). Norton has always had the best optimization tool (speed disk).

Before running any optimization tool you should follow the instructions for the particular software title you are using. usually this entails running disk maitenance first. in the case of norton this title is called Disk Doctor. Again disk doctor is not designed for osx and has been known to 'fix' problems on an osx drive that are not real problems and will sometimes even make things worse. but even in os9 you will see that 'problems' found by these software titles are usually imaginary. techtool, norton, and diskwarrior all have different ideas about what is a problem so if you run them all you will see that they fight eachother a bit. norton undoing somethings techtool did and vica versa. optimization in norton and diskwarrior seem to be at odds as well.

but what is fragmentation? alpha described it briefly. basically what happens is your machine is writing and deleting information from the harddrive in an unorganized fashion based on your use. so if you write 5 100 MB files to the hard disk then delete 2 of those files there will be gaps in what has been written. what i mean is initially a 500MB section will have info on it but after deleting 2 of the files you may have 100MB written then 100MB free space then another 100MB written and another free space and so on. so when you come back and want to write a 200MB file to disk that file will be split between the gaps.

So with thousands of files you can see how files are going to get split up quite a bit. This means when the computer wants to access a file it has to access a bunch of different areas of the hard drive in order to access all the information, and this takes time. So what defraging means is it takes all the fragmented files and puts them together so when your computer accesses a file it can find the file all in one space. UNIX systems use lots and lots of different files to run things so the potencial to fragment a drive is tremendous and has the potencial to really slow a system down.

but norton does more than just defrag. it 'optimizes' as well. what this means is that it organizes the files as well as defrags them. this is where the os9ness of norton can cause problems. norton is designed to put certain types of files in certain places (it even has a number of different configurations you can choose from depending on your needs). so norton puts all the system files in one area, all the media files in another area, all the application files in another area. this makes accessing files on your drive much easier for the hard drive since it can find similiar files in the same general area.

the problem is that right now norton does not recognize osx types of files, and will cram your system files into a general category with a bunch fo other unrecoginzed stuff. This is where it can cause problems. problems are rare but experienced techs will have many stories of people who have screwed up their drives because of norton and osx.

Most people are simply waiting for an osx version to become available before using norton on a osx partition, others throw caution to the wind and just try it (it works MOST of the time so who cares, and if a system already is having problems you cant make things too much worse right?). i would suggest backing up everything and being prepared to wipe the drive and reinstall before ever using an os9 utility like norton on a osx drive (9 times out fo 10 you wont need to use your back ups, but its that other 10% of the time that you will be glad you handled things safely).

sorry for the long post but so much misinformation was being spread i thought i should try to clarify things a bit.

[AmbitiousLemon]

one last thing...

expereinced osx users will tell you that one of the best things to do to keep things running well is not to quit apps. the reason is two fold. one because of multitasking and easy access via the dock you can switch back and forth between multiple apps without waiting to reluanch or seeing any slow downs. and two because of caching issues. quitting and relaunching often can cause multiple instances of the same info to be cached and you eat up ram faster.

what we really need in here is a good unix geek though. my explanations of caching, multitasking, unix file systems and fragmentation, and memory usage in general could use some clarifying from someone with more intimate knowledge of unix systems.

[dantec]

Thanks abitious lemon.

I never knew you had to restart 'twice' after an update prebind thanks for all the help.

As explained above by abitiouslemon, we woun't have all of this 'fragmentation' without pageouts.

Just one thing to say about the swap. It still does make a slight improvement on machines which have 128 up to 192 mb of ram. My iBook has that, and it still helps a bit with 10.1.5. Not as much as with 10.0.1 but still good enough.

[cb911]

thanks for that tip about not quitting aps.
yep, i'm going to get that extra RAM as soon as i can.

and i was wondering, if you have about 40-50 icons in the dock, does that affect performance? i know that the icons in the dock would have to use up some amount of RAM, but would it make a big difference if there were alot less icons?

and where is the Unix geek? doesn't Macrumors have one?

[Grokgod]

This is the most interesting thread in quite awhile.

Great info on not creating multiple instances of app.
I mean quiting then restarting the app, I sometimes do that.
Now I knwo better, I just wanted to save some ram ,,,, till I upgrade to the extra 512,

This whole defrag thing has me worried.
I got the new Ti and after a few weeks of heavy use, I am seeing a bit of a slowdown.

And often IE crashes on me, I forgot who posted that an IE crash can cause some type of corruption, that made me freak.
I copy alot of graphic file to my computer and hope to defrag soon!
But with what, Norton doesnt sound liek the best option if it isnt made for OSX>

I sometimes get a " cannot load image because of ram shortage" boloney.
This bums me bigtime!

SInce I got nothing open but IE and 512 ram.
what the hell is up with that!>?

[AmbitiousLemon]

dantec: you will have fragmentation regardless of pageouts. fragmentation is basically caused by moving files around. writing to the hard drive. page outs would be included in this but not the only hard drive activity. peopel who download or create large files often will expereince a lot of fragmentation.

cb911: i sort fo doubt the number of apps in the dock will cause too much of a difference in RAM usage. right now my dock is using 4MB. i added 25 apps and noiced teh sue went up to 5.1MB. so i dont think thats really significant as far as ram usage goes, but i think having lots of app in the dock cause usability issues as far as how easy it is to access file and apps, but thats another topic.

grok: actually norton is probably the best utility for defraging because although it has only minimal support for osx it has something. drive10 doesnt do defraging and techtool is really only os9. it is rather disappointing that no one has come out with a complete osx utility. i was pretty shocked when norton7 and norton system works2 didnt give us real osx support.

as far as crashes go. any app crashing can corrupt other apps. but crashing apps can not disrupt the system. i had an early dreamweaver beta take down some of my carbon apps after a bad crash. ie crashes a lot for some people, so it is not surprising that some of thsoe crashes can cause problems. but i tend to think that if ie is crashing often you have other issues as well, that may underlay bugs you may encounter after the ie crash.

if you are encountering slow downs i woudl suggest trying updating your prebindings and running all of your nightly scripts. this is free, it is something built into osx, and is really the only kind of maitenance most people do for osx. i suspect you will see a significant speed improvement. if you still need to defrag, use norton but back up first. most likley everything will just be fine. just be aware that problems are not unheard of even if they are rare.

as for the ram shortage message. most osx users will NEVER see this. are you using a swap disk? you will only encounter this message if you have used up all of your RAM and have run out of hard disk space for pageouts (each pageout is in a 80MB chunk). some people who use swap disks dont give them enough space and will get the ram message you mentioned. the other issue might eb your drive is too full. filling a hard drive in general is bad, and filling teh hard drive taht has your system on it is very bad. you might want to free up some space as well as running utilities.

[dantec]

Ram shortage... cool! For some reason I enjoy making dialog boxes that I have never seen appear.

To abitiouslemon: Oubiously pageouts are not the only cause making defragmentations, but it seeems that if you are using very large apps which require lots of memory, this can be partly the case.

[dantec]

Originally posted by ambitiouslemon
if you are encountering slow downs i woudl suggest trying updating your prebindings and running all of your nightly scripts. this is free, it is something built into osx, and is really the only kind of maitenance most people do for osx. i suspect you will see a significant speed improvement. if you still need to defrag, use norton but back up first. most likley everything will just be fine. just be aware that problems are not unheard of even if they are rare.

[/B]

And by the way, what are the nightly scrips you explain above?

[AmbitiousLemon]

from my monster post above:

nighty scripts. your machine runs three scripts aroun 3am at night. if your machine is not running then these scripts can not be run. one script is run every day. one every week. and one every month. again a terminal command can execute these for you, but if you are terminal-phobe then there are a couple apps that do this for you. MacJanitor and Cronathon. there is no harm in running these too often, but you really only need to do them as often as each one is designed to be run (daily, weekly, and monthly).

[dantec]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
from my monster post above:



Ok thanks.

So what exactly do they do?

[AmbitiousLemon]

well a good description could be offerred by a unix geek, but since one does not seem to be around ill give it a shot.

the scripts are called 'cron tasks.' the unix subsystem of osx was originally written for computers that run 24/7 and apple seems to assume people will do the same with personal computers. the scripts run between 3am and 5am (rather annoying for me since im almost always awake at these times). these cron tasks are basic subsystem maitenance tasks such as backing up compressing and removing log files and system database files (all unixy type of things). these files can get very large and fail to be backed up if you do not allow the scripts to run. when you use one of these apps (cronathon or mac janitor) it will let you see what it is doing specifically (if you can understand terminalese). quite honestly i do not understand mst of what these tasks do, but i can see that they do need to be run as systems (such as laptops) that do not run at night will encounter many 'issues.' if you dont do any other maitenance i would say make sure these scripts get run (either by keeping your machine on over night or by using one of these apps). this is really the only maitenace built into osx that is necessary for day to day functioning of the system.

[Grokgod]

I get the beachball almost every time I try to load a page in IE!

I didnt get a speed up I got a slow down, any one know how to uninstall IE 5.2

[dantec]

Originally posted by Grokgod
I get the beachball almost every time I try to load a page in IE!

I didnt get a speed up I got a slow down, any one know how to uninstall IE 5.2

Yep, hopefully though, soon enough that beachball will have turned into a blue 'aquafied' beach ball.