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emac has really slowed down...

QCassidy352

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Original poster
Mar 20, 2003
12,028
6,036
Bay Area
I'm typing this on my family's 1 Ghz emac running 10.3.9 with 640 MB of RAM. It's been a while since I used it much, but right now I'm house sitting for my folks for a few days. Maybe my memory is just faulty (I used to have a 1Ghz 12" powerbook), or maybe I've gotten too used to my G5, but I'm finding this machine very very slow. Safari takes many (6? 7? 8?) bounces to open, webpages load slowly, and just switching between folders in iphoto is nightmarish. It seems like everything hangs before executing.

A 1 Ghz G4 with 640 RAM isn't blazing, but these are simple tasks, and the response time shouldn't be this bad, should it?? I know my PB wasn't like this, and my brother tells me that this emac does seem to be slowing down. I've repaired permissions, done the PRAM, all the usual basic maintenance. Any ideas?
 
devilot

devilot

Moderator emeritus
May 1, 2005
15,584
1
QCassidy352 said:
A 1 Ghz G4 with 640 RAM isn't blazing, but these are simple tasks, and the response time shouldn't be this bad, should it?? I know my PB wasn't like this, and my brother tells me that this emac does seem to be slowing down. I've repaired permissions, done the PRAM, all the usual basic maintenance. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
I've heard that not having enough HD space left can greatly impact the speed of use. Sorry that's the best I could come up w/. :eek:
 
QCassidy352

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Original poster
Mar 20, 2003
12,028
6,036
Bay Area
Thanks for the idea; unfortunately, this machine has 39 GB free on a 60 GB hard drive, so I don't think that could be a factor.
 
IJ Reilly

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
Please do not reinstall OSX!!

Repair permissions.

Reboot.

If that doesn't work, plenty of other things to try before dragging out the heavy artillery. But I'll bet it does.
 
Sun Baked

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
IJ Reilly said:
Please do not reinstall OSX!!

Repair permissions.

Reboot.

If that doesn't work, plenty of other things to try before dragging out the heavy artillery. But I'll bet it does.
Click to expand...
Add to that:

If it's a machine that is always left on, log out and log back in.

Applications with memory leaks will hog resources ...

Checking with fsck and/or disk first aid is always a good idea -- since any catalog/system irregularities will slow the system.

Check for Norton Antivirus/System Thrasher also ... since they hog resources along with HP all-in-on USB printer-scanner drivers.

Other than that reinstalling is always a last resort unless you bork the system with some 3rd party mods that don't want to go away.
 
devilot

devilot

Moderator emeritus
May 1, 2005
15,584
1
IJ Reilly said:
Please do not reinstall OSX!!

Repair permissions.

Reboot.

If that doesn't work, plenty of other things to try before dragging out the heavy artillery. But I'll bet it does.
Click to expand...

QCassidy352 said:
I've repaired permissions, done the PRAM, all the usual basic maintenance. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

QCassidy has already done that...
 
joecool85

joecool85

macrumors 65816
Mar 9, 2005
1,355
4
Maine
Why is everyone so against him reinstalling os x? It's not that hard, nor does it take that long, and it will almost definetly take care of his problem unless he has some sort of hardware problem. I say do it.
 
QCassidy352

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Original poster
Mar 20, 2003
12,028
6,036
Bay Area
Sun Baked said:
Checking with fsck and/or disk first aid is always a good idea -- since any catalog/system irregularities will slow the system.
Click to expand...

mmm, that's a good idea. That will be my next step.

I'd rather not reinstall because it would require a lot of backing up, and unfortunately, I don't have an easy way to do that atm.
 
IJ Reilly

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
joecool85 said:
Why is everyone so against him reinstalling os x? It's not that hard, nor does it take that long, and it will almost definetly take care of his problem unless he has some sort of hardware problem. I say do it.
Click to expand...

Not everyone, just Sun Baked and myself as nearly as I can tell.

Because it is a waste of time, is why. I've been running OSX on three Macs for five years now and have never reinstalled the OS. Not once. Not even on upgrades. How is that possible?

Here's how: I've been running my Cube very hard over the past few days. It started to get really draggy. It was even taking about ten seconds just to go into sleep mode. So I logged out, logged back in. Everything back to normal. I do this regularly, and never have any major problems. If anything more serious occurs, I run a session of AppleJack, which I recommend with tiresome regularity. If you haven't tried AppleJack, then by no means have you tried everything and by no means have you justified an OSX reinstall.
 
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