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jakethesnake

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2006
21
0
I got this 1.33 Ghz ibook in November of last year to replace an older ibook g3 that had more problems (the whole logic board was replaced 8 times, thank god for applecare), and now all of the sudden it has begun to run very slow. iPhoto is next to impossible to run now, and it takes about 2-3 mins to start up iChat, and dashboard is even longer. In addition to this it is also running very hot and the fan is almost always running (like right now just using firefox and itunes) It was not like this when I got it, so I know something it up. Does anyone know what could be causing this and what could be done to fix it? Thanks.
 

stridey

macrumors 65816
Jan 21, 2005
1,136
0
Massachusetts, Connecticut
jakethesnake said:
I got this 1.33 Ghz ibook in November of last year to replace an older ibook g3 that had more problems (the whole logic board was replaced 8 times, thank god for applecare), and now all of the sudden it has begun to run very slow. iPhoto is next to impossible to run now, and it takes about 2-3 mins to start up iChat, and dashboard is even longer. In addition to this it is also running very hot and the fan is almost always running (like right now just using firefox and itunes) It was not like this when I got it, so I know something it up. Does anyone know what could be causing this and what could be done to fix it? Thanks.

Open up Activity monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app) and see if any app is taking up a lot of CPU. Also, how much RAM do you have in it? Also, do you have at least 5 GB of space free on the HD?
 

jakethesnake

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2006
21
0
Sorry it took me so long to reply back I had a meeting for school I completely forgot about. Anyway it has 512 Megs or ram. There is a little less than 15 GBs left on the hard drive and the biggest program I have on it is firefox at 50%:eek: . Is that normal? IT is saying that it is using over a 1 GB of virtual memory too. Looks like it might be time to go back to Safari.
 

sjshaw

macrumors regular
Feb 18, 2004
207
0
jakethesnake said:
Sorry it took me so long to reply back I had a meeting for school I completely forgot about. Anyway it has 512 Megs or ram. There is a little less than 15 GBs left on the hard drive and the biggest program I have on it is firefox at 50%:eek: . Is that normal? IT is saying that it is using over a 1 GB of virtual memory too. Looks like it might be time to go back to Safari.

Firefox at 50% is not normal. There are some documented memory leaks from using certain extensions. I can find the link if you need it.
 

jakethesnake

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2006
21
0
stridey said:
May I suggest you use Camino? Like firefox (ie Gecko), but a Cocoa app, so written for OS X.
Thanks for the link. I switched over to Camino and my total % usage dropped from some 80% to around 20%. Nice browser too, just as fast as firefox. Thanks for all the help guys! Now I have to figure out why I can't use iPhoto. It is saying it is use 85-90% when I open it. But the dashboard and iChat are back up to normal speed. Any tips?
 

jakethesnake

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2006
21
0
mad jew said:
Perhaps try dragging com.apple.iPhoto.plist to the Desktop whilst iPhoto is closed. :)
While that did help load it quicker, it is still not usable because I can't do anything once it is open without it taking at least a minute (example: I can't scroll through my pictures at all if I click to scroll it takes about a minute for it to move):(
 

galstaph

macrumors 6502a
Jul 24, 2002
812
2
The Great White North Eh
I bought my ibook in september. I too have 512mb of ram, but firefox isn't taking that much cpu on mine, only .5%, (biggest is the timegame widget @ 30% [:eek: have to turn that off now]), but I too have noticed a slowdown from the original, many more beachballs since the last os updates. i don't use iphoto though so I'm not sure if mine has the same problem. I find if use onyx to do some maintenance it does get a wee bit faster. I'm planning on getting a gb of ram to add to it so that'll make it go faster for sure
 

newmaccanada

macrumors member
Jul 19, 2005
40
0
re. iphoto, try turning airport card off before opeing and using iphoto. I was having a similar problem and this helped.
 

jakethesnake

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2006
21
0
mad jew said:
Do you have any third party hacks or add ons for iPhoto? :)
Nope. I had only used it a few times before. Most of the pictures in the library are from a Canon if that matters.
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
Hmm, okay. Well, do you have any peripherals plugged in (printers, scanners and so on)? Also, if you create a new user account in System Preferences, do the problems carry over? :)
 

jakethesnake

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2006
21
0
mad jew said:
Hmm, okay. Well, do you have any peripherals plugged in (printers, scanners and so on)? Also, if you create a new user account in System Preferences, do the problems carry over? :)
No peripherals, and when I created a new account everything did seem to run smoother. Also I noticed that I have verison 5.0.4 if that helps.
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
Hmm... Well it could possibly be a corrupt image giving you grief. I'd use this new account to find the image(s). Basically, copy all your images over to the new account and add them album-by-album (or whatever you want) to iPhoto until you notice this slow-down. This should eventually help you find the culprit (on the assumption it exists :eek: ). You've tried all the usual techniques short of a full system reinstall and to be honest, if this is in fact the problem, a system reinstall wouldn't help anyway.
 
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