iMac Blazingly Slow But I Took a Few Steps - Still bad...

[meagain]

Hi. I'm really struggling with this new problem. My 24" iMac, 1gb ram, 2.16ghz, 10.4.10 is BARELY loading websites. Many beachballs doing various things, etc. I even have some delay in typeing text.

I loaded the firmware upgrade yesterday but the problem started a bit before that I believe. Note; I have VMWare Fusion but it still happens when off. I don't do gaming or anything, just the net and the 1gb ram has served me just fine running the same stuff.

I have run: Onyx (cleaning), MacJanitor, iFreeMem. I don't see anything wierd in my activity monitor. iFree mem states I have: 12 free, 218 inactive, 437 wired, 358 active. I have no idea what this means. I have rebooted my Airport Extreme & modem.

Is there anything I can do to puzzle this out? I'd really appreciate this.

 

[v-ault]

Hi. I'm really struggling with this new problem. My 24" iMac, 1gb ram, 2.16ghz, 10.4.10 is BARELY loading websites. Many beachballs doing various things, etc. I even have some delay in typeing text.

I loaded the firmware upgrade yesterday but the problem started a bit before that I believe. Note; I have VMWare Fusion but it still happens when off. I don't do gaming or anything, just the net and the 1gb ram has served me just fine running the same stuff.

I have run: Onyx (cleaning), MacJanitor, iFreeMem. I don't see anything wierd in my activity monitor. iFree mem states I have: 12 free, 218 inactive, 437 wired, 358 active. I have no idea what this means. I have rebooted my Airport Extreme & modem.

Is there anything I can do to puzzle this out? I'd really appreciate this.

You only have 230mb of free ram. What programs do you have installed? Do you happen to have any utilities like the logitech control center or something of that sort?

 

[emptyCup]

Is it only slow when you are browsing? What browser do you use? Is everything slow or just when you are using the internet? If you browse the iTunes store from iTunes is that slow? How about Mail? How much free disk space do you have? When did this start and dud you add any hardware or software right before it started?

Start with these questions.

 

[netdog]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Ignore the part about startup issues, but carefully follow the disk maintenance and fsck instructions. These steps always bail me out when I have beachball issues.

Also, be sure that at least 10% of your drive is free or Macs will start crawling.

 

[meagain]

Thanks for your responses so far. I did a final clean via Onyx and shut down for the night. This morning, it's worse. Some items in the dock have changed to a big question mark (iActivator, iPhoneRemote, MacJanitor). It took forever to load this page or refresh. It's akin to what one would experience with a bho, trojan, etc. in windows - a worsening slowdown.

I have 256 allocated to my virtual machine.

In activity monitor - I'm not sure what section to look at: Windowed processes, active proceses, etc. etc. Or Real vs. Virtual memory. In the bottom section - System Memory.... I'm currently showing: Wired 437, Active 375, Inactive 187, Used 998, Free 25. A bit ago, free was at 10.

V-ault - Not sure if I have any utilities running.

EmptyCup - iTunes was insanely slow, mail works fine so IDK if iTunes is slow right now or it's me, but I tried a few things and got out of there. Free Disk space? Looking under "Disk Usage", it says 117gb.
When did it start? 2 days ago? The only thing I did was remove VMWare Fusion Beta and load the paid version. Yesterday, I added the Firmware upgrade. But I'm 99% convinced I had this issue before the VMWare change and I know it started before the firmware upgrade.

Netdog - I'll look over those instructions.

In the activity Monitor - Which section do I look at that's critical? And do I care more about Real or Virtual memory?

 

[meagain]

It took about 1.5 minutes to refresh this page, then another after I hit reply. Yipes!

I am tending to think my VMWare fusion must be causing this problem despite thinking the problem started before this. Perhaps I didn't uninstall the beta version properly? I wish it wasn't so difficult to uninstall on a Mac.

In Activity Monitor - Active Processes:

Kernel_task - User 'root', CPU 1.3%, Threads 51, Real mem 99mb, Virtual mem 886mb.

vmware-vmx - User 'root', CPU 3.5%, Threads 8, Real mem 411, Virtual mem 619.

Firefox Real 82, Virtual 359

WindowServer - User 'windowserve', CPU .7%, Threads 3, Real mem 34mb, Virtual mem 280.

VirtueDesktops Real mem 8mb, Virtual mem 258.
VMware Fusion Real 25mb, Virtual 253. This keeps popping in/out.

Seems under 'Real memory', the vmware-vmx is the biggie. No clue what tha is or why it's so big. I have my windows open but nothing in it.

OK - Closing VMWare Fusion took me from 13mb free to 464mb free under "CPU" section of Activity Monitor. Hmmmm.....

 

[v-ault]

It took about 1.5 minutes to refresh this page, then another after I hit reply. Yipes!

I am tending to think my VMWare fusion must be causing this problem despite thinking the problem started before this. Perhaps I didn't uninstall the beta version properly? I wish it wasn't so difficult to uninstall on a Mac.

In Activity Monitor - Active Processes:

Kernel_task - User 'root', CPU 1.3%, Threads 51, Real mem 99mb, Virtual mem 886mb.

vmware-vmx - User 'root', CPU 3.5%, Threads 8, Real mem 411, Virtual mem 619.

Firefox Real 82, Virtual 359

WindowServer - User 'windowserve', CPU .7%, Threads 3, Real mem 34mb, Virtual mem 280.

VirtueDesktops Real mem 8mb, Virtual mem 258.
VMware Fusion Real 25mb, Virtual 253. This keeps popping in/out.

Seems under 'Real memory', the vmware-vmx is the biggie. No clue what tha is or why it's so big. I have my windows open but nothing in it.

OK - Closing VMWare Fusion took me from 13mb free to 464mb free under "CPU" section of Activity Monitor. Hmmmm.....

Maybe you should add more ram? Upgrade your iMac to 2 gigs. 1 gig does not seem suitable for what you want to run.

But one more thing, do you have anything like shapeshifter? I remember that caused my iMac to lag a lot.

 

[meagain]

I changed my windows allocation to 125mb and things seem to be working much better on both sides. I did find something called shapeshifter yesterday and deleted it. Yes, I plan on getting more ram some day or when I go to Leopard.

Thanks everyone. I'll be back if it goes south again.