Computer amazingly slow

[gr8tfly]

Still need more data, as the other replies have said.

Think back to what you were doing when this slow-down started. A lot of times, it's related to some new app/utility/driver install. "Beachball"s indicate some core service is busy. Again, as was already mentioned, run Activity Monitor (in Utilities folder) and set "Show" to All Processes. Sort by "%CPU". Hopefully, this will point you to the offending process.

If it's not a process, then the system may be "thrashing" the HD when swapping memory out. If the hard drive is very full, the system might not have contiguous free space for swapfiles. There's a performance hit when a swapfile is fragmented.

One more thought: is it just Mail that gives you the beachball? Try rebuilding your Mailbox(s).

 

[Ja Di ksw]

more info

Hi all, I finally got more info from her. I think it's going to be a combination of emptying some HD space and more RAM, but please let me know what you think.

She has about 13 GB available (out of 80), so a little under 20%.

Nothing really seems to be eating up tons of her CPU, for the most part it's not at 100%. If she's trying to play around with iPhoto it can get up to ~80%, though. For the most part, when not doing anything big, it stayed at 50% or below.

When she has sticky notes, Adium, and Safari open but isn't doing anything with them, her Free RAM is ~100 MB (out of 512). If she's working in applications such as Mail or whatever, it can drop down to 6 MB!

After a little over an hour of being turned on and used for simple tasks, her Page ins/outs were 18381/1279. After 3 or 4 days it was 91285/76554.

Hope that helps, thank you again

 

[kalisphoenix]

Definitely needs more RAM. You need to get that second number down to < 10% or so of the first number. Toss in a gig. It'll make the computer feel like new. Then toss in another.

 

[Ja Di ksw]

If it has "enough" RAM, will it always stay below 10%, no matter how long the computer is on?

 

[trainguy77]

If it has "enough" RAM, will it always stay below 10%, no matter how long the computer is on?

It should unless you do intensive things at some point in it being on.

 

[gr8tfly]

Couple thoughts:

If most of the files deleted were small, the drive might still be fragmented enough to affect swapfiles, but probably not.

512MB is getting a bit "skinny" these days. RAM's pretty inexpensive these days ($80 or so for 1GB). I'd suggest 1GB module, as a minimum. I don't remember if your PB shipped with 2x 256MB or 1x 512MB, but in either case replacing one of them with a 1GB should make a noticeable difference.

 

[gnasher729]

Also try repairing permissions sometimes if something is important is set wrong it can cause extreme slow down.

Well, trainguy, could you please tell us what gives you the idea that "repairing permissions" would do anything useful?

 

[gnasher729]

Nothing really seems to be eating up tons of her CPU, for the most part it's not at 100%. If she's trying to play around with iPhoto it can get up to ~80%, though. For the most part, when not doing anything big, it stayed at 50% or below.

When she has sticky notes, Adium, and Safari open but isn't doing anything with them, her Free RAM is ~100 MB (out of 512). If she's working in applications such as Mail or whatever, it can drop down to 6 MB!

After a little over an hour of being turned on and used for simple tasks, her Page ins/outs were 18381/1279. After 3 or 4 days it was 91285/76554.

CPU usage should be close to zero when doing nothing; usually Activity Monitor takes more CPU usage than anything else when you don't do anything - unless something is wrong. If you have close to 50 percent CPU usage while doing nothing then something is wrong.

Free memory down to 6 MB is not really a problem - "Free" memory is actually completely unused and doesn't do anything useful. "Inactive" memory is memory that contains data but can be freed up at any time; if that is low as well then your computer will slow down.

512 MB RAM is not much, and a bit more won't hurt, but the 90000/70000 page ins/outs in four days are not excessive. Noticeable, and a bit more RAM will help, but not something that would really upset you.

Is Mail more than a problem than other applications? Mail has to talk to some server, and that might be the cause of the slowdown. Or thousands and thousands of mails hanging around on her computer, for example if thousands and thousands of e-mails are in the trash and never emptied.

 

[IJ Reilly]

An easy diagnostic trick is to launch Activity Monitor and set it on the Dock to show CPU usage. Most of the time, when your hands are off the Mac, it should bottom out. If you see it get pinned to the top of the bar frequently, then you'll know what you're doing at the moment it happens is probably the reason.