For about four days, my Powerbook started to act slower than usual -- a lot slower. At first, I wondered if it was related to the recent apple update, so I ran the disk thingy and fixed the permissions. But, no improvement showed.
And, about an hour ago, my computer went so slow that it started to freeze up and then it crashed -- the OS X screen of doom came up. (A rare site!) So, I pressed the power button and restarted the computer, and everything worked. All of my files were there and intact, ready for me to continue working.
I love OS X for its abilities to recover after a crash. Im an editor for a local publication, so Im busy editing content (text) and working on the design layout; I have deadlines, so losing everything due to a crash wouldnt be good for business.
I have a friend that uses Windows XP, and his computer crashed last night. But for him it wasnt an easy fix. He ended up trouble shooting his computer last night, as well as this morning and afternoon. In the end, he ended up reformatting his entire computer, and I believe hes still in the process of installing his software. His most recent files, of course, are all gone.
Ive had my Powerbook for a year, and Ive had few problems. The problems that Ive had were easy to fix and Ive never had to re-install my OS X. Meanwhile, I have windows friends that spend a lot of time repairing and maintaining their computers. Every few months it seems my Windows friends are re-installing their Microsoft OS.
Anyway, back to how I repaired my slow Powerbook
I tried reducing the amount of applications I had open, but it didn't work. So I opened up activity monitor and watched my CPU -- it was running like mad. Under the processes, I had has several smbd processes going on that were taking up more than half of my CPU power.
From experimenting in the past, I found out that smbd stuff has to do with the Internet and transmitting packets of information back and forth. Well, there must have been a lot of packets for it to be using that much CPU power, and I wasnt downloading anything off the net.
I use Firefox, so I figured it was possible that some sort of spyware could be configured for FF and work on the OS X. So, I clicked on pref. and cleared all of the cache and cookies.
Now, my Powerbook works as fast as it normally does, and I have all of my applications open, like normal.
I dont know if I had spyware, but it sure seems so. When I used to have a Windows machine, spyware would always slow everything down to a crawl. Plus, clearing out the cache and cookies seemed to fix the problem, which also makes me wonder about, too.
--nate
And, about an hour ago, my computer went so slow that it started to freeze up and then it crashed -- the OS X screen of doom came up. (A rare site!) So, I pressed the power button and restarted the computer, and everything worked. All of my files were there and intact, ready for me to continue working.
I love OS X for its abilities to recover after a crash. Im an editor for a local publication, so Im busy editing content (text) and working on the design layout; I have deadlines, so losing everything due to a crash wouldnt be good for business.
I have a friend that uses Windows XP, and his computer crashed last night. But for him it wasnt an easy fix. He ended up trouble shooting his computer last night, as well as this morning and afternoon. In the end, he ended up reformatting his entire computer, and I believe hes still in the process of installing his software. His most recent files, of course, are all gone.
Ive had my Powerbook for a year, and Ive had few problems. The problems that Ive had were easy to fix and Ive never had to re-install my OS X. Meanwhile, I have windows friends that spend a lot of time repairing and maintaining their computers. Every few months it seems my Windows friends are re-installing their Microsoft OS.
Anyway, back to how I repaired my slow Powerbook
I tried reducing the amount of applications I had open, but it didn't work. So I opened up activity monitor and watched my CPU -- it was running like mad. Under the processes, I had has several smbd processes going on that were taking up more than half of my CPU power.
From experimenting in the past, I found out that smbd stuff has to do with the Internet and transmitting packets of information back and forth. Well, there must have been a lot of packets for it to be using that much CPU power, and I wasnt downloading anything off the net.
I use Firefox, so I figured it was possible that some sort of spyware could be configured for FF and work on the OS X. So, I clicked on pref. and cleared all of the cache and cookies.
Now, my Powerbook works as fast as it normally does, and I have all of my applications open, like normal.
I dont know if I had spyware, but it sure seems so. When I used to have a Windows machine, spyware would always slow everything down to a crawl. Plus, clearing out the cache and cookies seemed to fix the problem, which also makes me wonder about, too.
--nate
