Finding programs running in Activity Monitor. Speeding up Leopard.

[2Sunny]

I recently upgraded from Tiger to Leopard just so I could use a wireless keyboard and magic mouse . . . I know foolish but . . .

My Mac is noticeably slower so I'm looking to clean it up before I try a clean install on the hard drive. I found a Kodak printer program and an HP printer program both of which I deleted from applications, but both of which are chewing up 500MB of process memory, and when I force a quit they just pop open again a second later.


Question:

Where are these programs hididng?
How do I kill them?
Any other tricks to speed my Mac up (I verified permissions already).


Thanks,


Joe




Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 3 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version (system): 1.9f4
Serial Number (system): W86468BFVUV
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-0017F2C75549

 

[2Sunny]

self answered

I found an answer for the first question:

In Activity Monitor I clicked:

inspect > open files and ports

and found a list of program hideouts and then trashed them all. Seems to have done the job, but the Mac is still slow. May have to go back to Tiger

 

[aeaglex07]

I found Leopard to be quite messy with how it handles RAM and other resources. Its apple's "vista" in my opinion. On my PPC i downgraded to tiger and my machine ran so much better. I upgraded to SL on my intel and it is what Leopard was supposed to be.. much more responsive and contrary to what alot of people here say SL is relatively bug free. Since yours is an intel i would recommend purchasing SL, its worth the 30$

 

[2Sunny]

Thanks for the recommendation! A very well spent $30 later and my iMac is as speedy as it ever was. Although when I completed the upgrade I initially couldn't get my iMac to connect to the internet. It connected to my router, but couldn't get through to the internet. A quick search through another computer online took me to the Sysem Preferences>Network>Advanced>Renew DHCP and I was back in business.

Anyways, my iMac is humming along and I have a new Magic Mouse and wirelss keyboard all working great now. Thanks again for the input!