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My 2008 MP is a bit sluggish

fluidedge

fluidedge

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 1, 2007
1,365
16
Now this thing should fly right? Quad core etc. Yet opening a finder window or a spotlight search or opening a 2mb QT file sends it beachballing for about 2-3 seconds.

Changing tabs in a web browser sends it beach balling for ~1 sec. Really annoying.

Not much you might think, but it really shouldn't be struggling with simple tasks should it?

Is there some cleaning up to be done?
 
How much RAM do you have? If you have 4GB or more, you shouldn't be experiencing issues like that unless you're multitasking several memory-hungry apps.

Another possibility could be the hard drive. Frequent beachballing can be caused by a failing hard drive.
 
I agree, it shouldn't be doing that. Mine lags when my external WD is plugged in, always waiting for it to spin up and down. It's quite annoying and I wish WD would do something about it.
 
bearcatrp said:
If you have set your disks to spin down, this could do it too.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's probably it. How much free space do you have left on your system drive? If you're below 5%, try moving some stuff to another location. If this fails, try doing a fresh install on another drive.
 
Hi

I only have 2gb of ram but thats still enough for simple tasks. I'll check the spin down and i have well over 150GB of HDD space. thanks.
 
fluidedge said:
Hi

I only have 2gb of ram but thats still enough for simple tasks. I'll check the spin down and i have well over 150GB of HDD space. thanks.
Click to expand...

to be sure, open activity monitor to view memory usage. If you go long periods between booting you could be paging out/in even if you don't have a lot open at the moment.
 
Failing HDD

fluidedge said:
Now this thing should fly right? Quad core etc. Yet opening a finder window or a spotlight search or opening a 2mb QT file sends it beachballing for about 2-3 seconds.

Changing tabs in a web browser sends it beach balling for ~1 sec. Really annoying.

Not much you might think, but it really shouldn't be struggling with simple tasks should it?

Is there some cleaning up to be done?
Click to expand...

I am having the exact same problem as you and it seems that its being caused by a dying/failing Hard Drive. Make sure to back up data as soon as possible!
 
Even a Mac Pro will drag with 2GB memory. Get at least 4, preferably 8. Memory is cheap now.
 
Although he has a low amount of RAM, for what he is describing that should be enough. So, the beachballing is either a problem with the hard drive or permissions. Repair permissions and see if that makes any difference.
 
-aggie- said:
Although he has a low amount of RAM, for what he is describing that should be enough. So, the beachballing is either a problem with the hard drive or permissions. Repair permissions and see if that makes any difference.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, since I am having similar issues as the OP, how do u reset permissions?
 
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