Ok, so here's the specs of my computer:
15.4" unibody MacBook Pro (early 2009, removeable battery)
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
250GB HDD
Was running 10.5.8 (as I was having issues with Snow Leopard), with all the latest software updates (including Apple's so called "performance update"). Last night a very weird thing happened, Safari kept beachballing me and switching between Spaces was just painfully slow. Some apps (even simple IM stuff like Adium, which generally opens after one bounce) would take forever to open. Checked Activity Monitor and it said my CPU was running at only around 40%, and I still had over 500MB of memory left. Decided to reboot to see if that would fix anything, and it just wouldn't respond to any of my attempts (tried Apple menu -> Shut Down, pushing the power button and pressing Shut Down and even tried pressing Control+Option+Command+Eject). Played the startup chime, then just sat on the grey screen for, literally, two minutes. Then the Apple logo suddenly popped up, immediately followed by the loading gear. These disappeared after about five seconds (rather quickly) and then it logged me in. I decided to do some cleaning with OnyX, as that's always helped with problems in the past, but when it came to rebooting it still hung for several minutes on the grey screen.
I decided that I'd risk it and just go straight back to Snow Leopard. Did a clean install, erased 10.5 via Disk Utility before installing. Restored my settings, apps and my home folder from my latest Time Machine backup (which was from a day before the problems started) and at first there wasn't anything of concern to note... until I went to do a new Time Machine backup.
It would sit on "Calculating Changes... (99%)" for 5 to 10 minutes, then would start backing up incredibly slow. When I say slow, I started a backup fifteen minutes before I left for work, and by the time I'd left it'd backed up only 30KB. It was definitely still backing up, although at snail's pace - maybe 1KB every ten seconds or so. Because I reinstalled the system, this backup is some 56GB in size (system + all my own stuff), and I'm guessing that because it IS a reinstall that it's technically the 'initial' backup for this system, but still, I can't remember it crawling at this pace even under Leopard. I've left it running while I'm at work and will have a chance to check on it during my lunch break, but it's just concerning me considering the performance problems I had last night (although those previous issues have been nonexistent since re-upgrading). Would my best bet be to reformat the Time Machine partition on my external (it's a Western Digital 1TB, USB, been great the couple months I've had it) and then start fresh with my backups?
If it's relevant at all, I'd been using VMWare Fusion shortly before the problem started to occur. I booted up Windows XP while I had iTunes, Safari, Adium, Last.FM, iChat and Mail open, which has choked my system in the past, but it's always recovered the moment I've quit out of Fusion. This time it just seemed to totally screw up my system to the point where not even a reboot would help.
15.4" unibody MacBook Pro (early 2009, removeable battery)
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
250GB HDD
Was running 10.5.8 (as I was having issues with Snow Leopard), with all the latest software updates (including Apple's so called "performance update"). Last night a very weird thing happened, Safari kept beachballing me and switching between Spaces was just painfully slow. Some apps (even simple IM stuff like Adium, which generally opens after one bounce) would take forever to open. Checked Activity Monitor and it said my CPU was running at only around 40%, and I still had over 500MB of memory left. Decided to reboot to see if that would fix anything, and it just wouldn't respond to any of my attempts (tried Apple menu -> Shut Down, pushing the power button and pressing Shut Down and even tried pressing Control+Option+Command+Eject). Played the startup chime, then just sat on the grey screen for, literally, two minutes. Then the Apple logo suddenly popped up, immediately followed by the loading gear. These disappeared after about five seconds (rather quickly) and then it logged me in. I decided to do some cleaning with OnyX, as that's always helped with problems in the past, but when it came to rebooting it still hung for several minutes on the grey screen.
I decided that I'd risk it and just go straight back to Snow Leopard. Did a clean install, erased 10.5 via Disk Utility before installing. Restored my settings, apps and my home folder from my latest Time Machine backup (which was from a day before the problems started) and at first there wasn't anything of concern to note... until I went to do a new Time Machine backup.
It would sit on "Calculating Changes... (99%)" for 5 to 10 minutes, then would start backing up incredibly slow. When I say slow, I started a backup fifteen minutes before I left for work, and by the time I'd left it'd backed up only 30KB. It was definitely still backing up, although at snail's pace - maybe 1KB every ten seconds or so. Because I reinstalled the system, this backup is some 56GB in size (system + all my own stuff), and I'm guessing that because it IS a reinstall that it's technically the 'initial' backup for this system, but still, I can't remember it crawling at this pace even under Leopard. I've left it running while I'm at work and will have a chance to check on it during my lunch break, but it's just concerning me considering the performance problems I had last night (although those previous issues have been nonexistent since re-upgrading). Would my best bet be to reformat the Time Machine partition on my external (it's a Western Digital 1TB, USB, been great the couple months I've had it) and then start fresh with my backups?
If it's relevant at all, I'd been using VMWare Fusion shortly before the problem started to occur. I booted up Windows XP while I had iTunes, Safari, Adium, Last.FM, iChat and Mail open, which has choked my system in the past, but it's always recovered the moment I've quit out of Fusion. This time it just seemed to totally screw up my system to the point where not even a reboot would help.