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Mac is laggy...

rye9

rye9

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Ok, well my Mac is very laggy as of now. I have 27 GB of HD free, and still 100 MB RAM left. I was told to repair disk, repair permissions, and clean caches. I decided to download MainMenu, and use that to clean caches. Do I clean all caches because I have multiple options as for caches. Just do 'em all? Also, should I repair disk? I will repair permissions, but disk? Finally, I will run maintenance scripts. Is this OK to do?
 
Also, should I clean all logs? So, I have 5 things to maybe do: 1) repair disk 2) repair permissions 3) clean caches 4) run mainanence scripts 5) clean logs

Should I do all 5? Could this cause any harm?
 
I don't think any of these things can cause you harm. You might as well do all of them. You will have to boot from the system install / restore CD or DVD or another hard drive in order to do repair disk. But its harmless, and if there is a filestructure problem, you need to get it fixed.
 
mkrishnan said:
I don't think any of these things can cause you harm. You might as well do all of them. You will have to boot from the system install / restore CD or DVD or another hard drive in order to do repair disk. But its harmless, and if there is a filestructure problem, you need to get it fixed.
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How do I do that? Does that mean that I have to shut down my iBook, insert the disk it came with, and turn it back on? If so, should I just not repair disk or would repairing the disk make a big difference?
 
rye9 said:
How do I do that? Does that mean that I have to shut down my iBook, insert the disk it came with, and turn it back on? If so, should I just not repair disk or would repairing the disk make a big difference?
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The easiest way is to put the restore DVD in the drive, go to system preferences -> startup disc, select it there, and then click the restart button in the window. When the disc boots up, I think you use the options button, or maybe the menu bar, to get to Disk Utility, and then you run Repair Disk from there.
 
rye9 said:
Should I even bother repairing the disk?
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It was on your to-do list. I never asked you to do it. You haven't even told us what's wrong with your computer, except to say that it's "laggy." You were very informative about the amount of RAM and HD space remaining. But if you want me to answer that question for you, you have to be much more descriptive about what the problem with your computer is, when it started, and under what conditions it occurs. Sorry. 🙁
 
Buy more ram and go through the Mac Menu checklist. I can't even start to use my macs unless I've maxed out the ram.
 
mkrishnan said:
It was on your to-do list. I never asked you to do it. You haven't even told us what's wrong with your computer, except to say that it's "laggy." You were very informative about the amount of RAM and HD space remaining. But if you want me to answer that question for you, you have to be much more descriptive about what the problem with your computer is, when it started, and under what conditions it occurs. Sorry. 🙁
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OK, well um.. it started a couple hours ago and it exists everywhere, trying to open something, load somethiing, go to a website, anywhere i click in no mater what app. Even on the dock, the app name doesnt appear for like 10 sec. any more details?😀
 
rye9 said:
any more details?😀
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Thank you for the information above, but yes. What applications / utilities / system hacks / whatever are running? What OS version?

Try to run Activity Monitor (or top from the command line) and sort by % CPU. See what your highest items are... When you are not doing too much actively, you should usually see just a few items with <25% or so of CPU including the focused app and maybe a couple of system items. If anything shows up as taking >75% of CPU, then there might just be a task that has gone wild for some reason. You can often kill the task and it will just restart. Depends on what it is. It could be associated with a bad preferences file, which won't be solved by anything on your to-do list. But if you know what program it is, you can spotlight for the preference file and delete it. 🙂

Also, if that does not turn out to be the case, and this is a Tiger thing... try for a moment, shutting down Safari and seeing if other programs become snappier when Safari isn't running. I have had this weird issue recently where Safari occasionally causes the whole system to gum up. I have not been able to figure it out. Sometimes, the Reset Safari menu item solves it temporarily. Other times, I end up getting frustrated and using Firefox for a while....
 
mkrishnan said:
Thank you for the information above, but yes. What applications / utilities / system hacks / whatever are running? What OS version?

Try to run Activity Monitor (or top from the command line) and sort by % CPU. See what your highest items are... When you are not doing too much actively, you should usually see just a few items with <25% or so of CPU including the focused app and maybe a couple of system items. If anything shows up as taking >75% of CPU, then there might just be a task that has gone wild for some reason. You can often kill the task and it will just restart. Depends on what it is. It could be associated with a bad preferences file, which won't be solved by anything on your to-do list. But if you know what program it is, you can spotlight for the preference file and delete it. 🙂

Also, if that does not turn out to be the case, and this is a Tiger thing... try for a moment, shutting down Safari and seeing if other programs become snappier when Safari isn't running. I have had this weird issue recently where Safari occasionally causes the whole system to gum up. I have not been able to figure it out. Sometimes, the Reset Safari menu item solves it temporarily. Other times, I end up getting frustrated and using Firefox for a while....
Click to expand...

I have Finder, dashboard, safari, and activity monitor running, and I have nothing using over 10 % CPU, should I repair disk or not? I'm running Mac OS 10.4.3.
 
I was in your boat for a few months with Tiger. I was hoping to avoid upgrading the ram but after my Powerbook reached the 2 year mark I decided to throw in an extra gig chip. The difference it has made is phenomenal. iPhoto loads in under 10 seconds as opposed to before which literally was approaching a full minute, safari blinks open after clicking it and so on. That may not be in the deck of cards, if not give what you already knew a try!!
 
You wouldn't by any chance have McAfee Virex installed would you? Also, have you tried deleting your plist files from Preferences?
 
steelfist said:
how exactally did you fix it? 😕
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I repaired the Macintosh HD like I was told, repaired disk permissions, then used MainMenu to clean user and systme caches. Is this good. Also, when do maintenance scripts run? I also had to rebooot my computer 3 times in 10 minutes. Is that OK? I feel bad for some reason.
 
rye9 said:
I repaired the Macintosh HD like I was told, repaired disk permissions, then used MainMenu to clean user and systme caches. Is this good. Also, when do maintenance scripts run? I also had to rebooot my computer 3 times in 10 minutes. Is that OK? I feel bad for some reason.
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I found out about the maintenance scripts, but I would still like to know if what I did was good and if rebooting (restarting) 3 times in 10 minutes will cause harm. I'm letting my iBook sleep tonight, I dont want to turn it off...again.
 
I would'nt want to be responsible for a breakage (wow that would be weird), but I'm almost certain turning off a computer, especially a laptop will do it any harm whatsoever. 😀 As for the maintenance, your computer does this by itself by default, so it is very unlikely to do any harm.
 
Yup, first thing I do if the system is slow or acting weird is repair permissions. Installing new programs or software updates can sometimes foul things up a bit and I was suprised how much of a magic fix it seems to be. Nothing like defragging and running chkdsk on Windows.
 
I understand that Mac's running Tiger version 10.4.2 and later run maintenance scripts when it wakes up. How long does this take bc my Mac seems a little slow after a wake-up, could it be bc its running the scripts?
 
Actually, my iBook is laggy AGAIN. Is there a problem? I think I will run Yasu to clean caches and restart. However, restarting always helps but then it becomes laggy again every time as the day goes by. Why might this be? My HD is fine, and I have well over 100 MB RAM free. My symptoms include: dock magnification is very jumpy and sometimes my dock doesnt even respond by even showing the app name above it for 10 seconds. everything is jumpy and laggy. Also, even as I type this, every couple words my cursor becomes a spinning beach ball. This is happening everywhere, I get a spinning beach ball for 10 sec every 30 seconds. Web pages load fine but whenever I click somewhere, I get the spinning beach ball before anything happens which I know is not supposed to happen. Also, scrolling is exceptionally slow and laggy. Its hard to even type this with a beach ball coming every 30 seconds. Should I just run Yasu, or what should I do bc I dont want to run Yasu and restart EVERY NIGHT😕 🙁
 
rye9
I understand that Mac's running Tiger version 10.4.2 and later run maintenance scripts when it wakes up. How long does this take bc my Mac seems a little slow after a wake-up, could it be bc its running the scripts?
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Well it runs the scripts as I've been told around 1-2:00 AM, so if you leave your iBook on once a week over night this should help. Of course if you run the maint. scripts yourself then it's when you run them.
I leave my iMac on and just put the screen to sleep almost all the time as a restart is done once a week for me.
Looking at what you have I'd bet getting more ram would help out a lot as my gf has her iBook maxed out with ram. This made a big difference in performance for her and she is using 10.4.3.
 
After your last post I'd get out the hardware disc and give your iBook a test with it and see what it comes up with. This will take some time but it might help you out and hopefully nothing is wrong 😱
 
rye9 said:
Should I even bother repairing the disk?
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Just for future reference, in OS 10.4.3 and later, you can open Disk Utility and do a Verify Disk. This will tell you whether it needs repairing or not.
 
I dont think I need more RAM bc I havent even used all of mine yet, ever. What do u mean by the hardware disc Artful Dodger? Also, oddly, my iBook just became very responsive, speedy and fast again. It is blazing! But, about every 10 sec it happens. It is in its slow, sluggish, jumpy, laggy state for about 20 sec, then becomes very speedy for 10 sec, then goes back and forth. I hope this helps. I wish it would stay speedy all the time.
 
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