Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Another mac running slow - Macbook pro 2.5GHZ 4GB ram

M

Mr. Tech

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2008
4
0
I bought my mac a few months ago... i've got 75GB free space, 2.5GHz processor, 4GB of ram. Thought this would be a totally insane machine!

The last few weeks it's running like a windows machine on 1GB of ram. What the?

FireFox 3 is crap which I discovered from doing a but of searching..

I've also done other searches on why my mac is slow and most answers were not enough ram ect but I beleive I have more then enough ram.

I've ran some software from this page: http://www.kenrickparish.com/jgeerling/articles/computing/mac-slow.html

Is there anything else I can do? Is there anywhere I can go to monitor my macs performance such as an equivalent to a task manager or something. It gets to the point where I want to through it out the window which wont do me any good.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated ;)
 
Fresh install, I did with mine, and gave up on the iLife tosh, working great so far a good two months in.
 
Mr. Tech said:
I bought my mac a few months ago... i've got 75GB free space, 2.5GHz processor, 4GB of ram. Thought this would be a totally insane machine!

The last few weeks it's running like a windows machine on 1GB of ram. What the?

FireFox 3 is crap which I discovered from doing a but of searching..

I've also done other searches on why my mac is slow and most answers were not enough ram ect but I beleive I have more then enough ram.

I've ran some software from this page: http://www.kenrickparish.com/jgeerling/articles/computing/mac-slow.html

Is there anything else I can do? Is there anywhere I can go to monitor my macs performance such as an equivalent to a task manager or something. It gets to the point where I want to through it out the window which wont do me any good.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated ;)
Click to expand...




Has the machine been on 24/7 for weeks on end? If so try a reboot it'll clear the ram etc..
 
Use Activity Monitor to see what's running and how much system resources are being used. It's in your Applications > Utilities folder.

iPhil said:
Has the machine been on 24/7 for weeks on end? If so try a reboot it'll clear the ram etc..
Click to expand...

I'd like to understand why you suggested this. I can run for weeks at a time without rebooting and have no performance issues. This was the sort of thing necessary with Windows, but I'm unaware of any reason to do this with Mac OS X. Enlighten me?
 
Fresh install? Not the idea I had in mind. I'd rather not if I don't have to... I appreciate the thought though. I'll keep that one in mind. Sounds like a pain. Maybe Mac's aren't all they are cracked up to be. I guess everything has its faults.

I turn my mac off every night so it is cleared a fresh every day...

Perhaps there are other maintenance stuff I can do to speed it up?

I know windows comes with a defragmenter but from what i've read, mac does it for you... I also used to use a program called ccleaner which cleared all the temporary stuff off the machine... don't know if that really sped it up but it cleared about 5GB of crap off a friends pc last week...

Maybe there are programs that use a lot of memory? I have a few running all the time for work. Can I look at how much memory they are using to I can diagnose?
 
ggjstudios said:
Use Activity Monitor to see what's running and how much system resources are being used. It's in your Applications > Utilities folder.
Click to expand...

Wow you guys are quick. Didn't even get to write a psot before you replied. Will look into it
 
Mr. Tech said:
Fresh install? Not the idea I had in mind. I'd rather not if I don't have to... I appreciate the thought though. I'll keep that one in mind. Sounds like a pain. Maybe Mac's aren't all they are cracked up to be. I guess everything has its faults.
Click to expand...

How did it run when you first got it?
 
Mr. Tech said:
I bought my mac a few months ago... i've got 75GB free space, 2.5GHz processor, 4GB of ram. Thought this would be a totally insane machine!

The last few weeks it's running like a windows machine on 1GB of ram. What the?

FireFox 3 is crap which I discovered from doing a but of searching..

I've also done other searches on why my mac is slow and most answers were not enough ram ect but I beleive I have more then enough ram.

I've ran some software from this page: http://www.kenrickparish.com/jgeerling/articles/computing/mac-slow.html

Is there anything else I can do? Is there anywhere I can go to monitor my macs performance such as an equivalent to a task manager or something. It gets to the point where I want to through it out the window which wont do me any good.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated ;)
Click to expand...

you can download the iStat Pro widget and that can monitor your Mac's processes, memory usage, etc. at a glance.
 
ggjstudios said:
I'd like to understand why you suggested this. I can run for weeks at a time without rebooting and have no performance issues. This was the sort of thing necessary with Windows, but I'm unaware of any reason to do this with Mac OS X. Enlighten me?
Click to expand...

Only time you need to do this is for the programs which exhibit a memory leak type behavior.

Usually the app should run fine during the day but simple action of logging out at the end of the day should clear things out.

---

However installing Norton Antivirus, some of the USB All-in-One drivers, etc. can seriously cause issues and make the machine run like a dog.

---

Simply telling the guy to create a new user will see if the issue is something in his user folder causing problems.
 
djchiena said:
you can download the iStat Pro widget and that can monitor your Mac's processes, memory usage, etc. at a glance.
Click to expand...
iStat Pro is a great app and I agree it's good to have. However, it will only show the top few applications running, not all of them. It also doesn't show nearly the detail that Activity Monitor will.
Sun Baked said:
However installing Norton Antivirus, some of the USB All-in-One drivers, etc. can seriously cause issues and make the machine run like a dog.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't it make sense to look at what's actually installed and what's running, rather than assuming Norton AV or a USB All-in-One driver is installed?
Sun Baked said:
Simply telling the guy to create a new user will see if the issue is something in his user folder causing problems.
Click to expand...
I could be wrong, but it seems to me there are more basic approaches to isolating the problem, before creating a new account.
 
ggjstudios said:
I could be wrong, but it seems to me there are more basic approaches to isolating the problem, before creating a new account.
Click to expand...

Not to be flippant, but yes, you are wrong.

It takes all of 15 seconds to create a new user. Another minute and you have tested to determine if it's caused by your user or a general system-wide problem. Maybe go as far as rebooting and logging in to the new test-user without logging into your primary user first.

So in 2 minutes you could isolate this to a problem with software/settings installed in your account, or determine it is system-wide.
 
bplein said:
It takes all of 15 seconds to create a new user. Another minute and you have tested to determine if it's caused by your user or a general system-wide problem. Maybe go as far as rebooting and logging in to the new test-user without logging into your primary user first.

So in 2 minutes you could isolate this to a problem with software/settings installed in your account, or determine it is system-wide.
Click to expand...
... compared to two mouse-clicks to open Activity Monitor to see what's using resources. Hmmmm..... Plus, how exactly does creating a second user accomplish what the OP asked for?:
Is there anywhere I can go to monitor my macs performance such as an equivalent to a task manager or something.
Click to expand...
 
I've seen issues like this where it is the user account. Granted its on windows machines because thats what I work on but I would have a brand new install, create a new profile for the user, the new profile works awesome, but the second I load all of the info from the old profile into that newly created profile the machine bogs down and runs like sh*t. (Hence why you should only move necessary folders not all folders)

As for mac I have the same machine (I think) that you do, I have more software installed on it then you do (guaranteed) and havent ever had slow down issues. I would guess either something got corrupted down the line, a profile issue, or possibly a hardware issue.

Also, for reinstall it doesn't take long at all.
 
ggjstudios said:
... compared to two mouse-clicks to open Activity Monitor to see what's using resources. Hmmmm..... Plus, how exactly does creating a second user accomplish what the OP asked for?:
Click to expand...

Context, context, context.

If the original poster said "I'm new to Mac, and my system is running GREAT! But I'm curious, how do I do the equivalent of the Windows Task Manager?" I wouldn't have said anything about debugging.

Since someone already brought up Activity Monitor, and creating alternate users, as ways of debugging, I would have left it at that. But you argue that setting up a new user is not a good test case.

Let's say that Firefox is acting slow, but there is NOTHING ELSE taking up CPU. If you create a new account, and try FireFox, you may find out that your normal user's firefox cache is fubar, or that your normal user has other settings that are affecting firefox. Won't see that in Activity Monitor.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back