Recent Powerbook troubles...

[Whigga Spitta]

As of late (past week or so) my Powerbook has been acting more and more like a Windows machine. I am noticing terrible lags for mundane tasks (often a 2+ second delay when highlighting a bookmark in Safari) and startup times for "pro" applications (FCP, Photshop, Dreamweaver) are ridiculous. It's a 1.5 Ghz with 1 gig of RAM running 10.3.7.

I've verified preferences, repaired permissions (numerous times), deleted cache files, log files, checked S.M.A.R.T. status, and run Onyx. Nothing seems to be helping. The fan is running almost 24/7 now and I'm starting to get worried.

I'm planning on defragging, but are there any other suggestions/remedies?

 

[Peterkro]

That Bookmark delay happens to me including when running on OS on external drive I asummed its a bug in Safari.

 

[KingSleaze]

Did you reset PRAM? command-option-P-R on startup until after the chime.

 

[Bear]

Have you tried rebooting?

 

[Whigga Spitta]

resetting PRAM didn't work, nor did rebooting

i saw a few similar problems on Apple Discussion, may coincide with latest update..? Symptoms that were described were longer-than-normal beach balls and slow response to typing...

looking at activity monitors, only thing that seems strange is that finder is always using ~70% of CPU, but that may be normal.

this is especially frustrating b/c i'm not at home, thus i can't easily take it to a genius

 

[PigDog]

I had a similar problem, I trashed the Finder plist and the fan stoped and all was back to normal and yes it happended after the last update.

PowerBook 17 1.5

 

[Whigga Spitta]

i trashed preferences file, restarted, thought everything was a-ok...

then i started up Safari to type this reply, the fan turned on...

great.

 

[vsp]

The finder shouldn't be at 70%. Mines been doing that recently also, not sure what causes it yet. Doing a force quit on the finder seems to solve my problems for a few days.

If anyone has any ideas why the finder would hog CPU usage like that please let me know.

 

[Whigga Spitta]

Force-quitting (relaunch..?) doesn't work for me either.

I don't have my restore CD's either so it looks like i may have to wait for the weekend.

EDIT: 'search' button never fails...I created another user and was able to pinpoint the problem to me. As someone suggested in another topic, one of the files on my desktop must have been corrupted (or its icon). A couple double-check procedures led me to a happy finder.

 

[insanelygreat]

I've been getting a lot of calls lately from Powerbook owners experiencing various and sundry issues after running software update, so I'm thinking we should/might be getting a patch cleverly concealed as a security update.

- Insanely Great

 

[vsp]

Force-quitting (relaunch..?) doesn't work for me either.

I don't have my restore CD's either so it looks like i may have to wait for the weekend.

EDIT: 'search' button never fails...I created another user and was able to pinpoint the problem to me. As someone suggested in another topic, one of the files on my desktop must have been corrupted (or its icon). A couple double-check procedures led me to a happy finder.

Congrats. Would you mind posting in more detail what you did?