PowerMacG4 SloDown

[indago]

I am using a PowerMac G4 with OSX 10.4.11 Tiger. I have 1G memory. When I installed the OSX Tiger system, updating from OS 9.2.2, the system was really fast. Now, things have slowed noticeably. I am sure that my perusing the internet has created files and documents, hidden and otherwise, on my hard drive that are no longer used, and are clogging up the system.

I would like to remove unused files and folders, but where to start?

As an aside, what is TrueBlue Environment? I checked the Activity Monitor, and this seems to take up a lot of memory.

 

[aibo]

Not sure about the TrueBlue environment. Maybe you downloaded this?
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13049

How much free space does it say is available on your hard disk? Being at 90%+ capacity can really slow things down. You can do a Finder search for documents that are over a certain file size (1GB, for example) and see what is really hogging space.

Also, I'd recommend running Cocktail to clear out your caches. If none of this helps, download the 10.4.11 combo updater and do a reinstall — don't worry, it won't wipe your disk.

 

[indago]

I wrote TrueBlue Environment. It should be TruBlue Environment. I Googled it and found that it had reference to the Classic Environment that I use for my older OS 9.2.2 applications. I have a lot of old files and applications from there and still use a Claris application with the Classic. I turned the Classic off and the TruBlue Environment was missing from the Activity Monitor.

In the Activity Monitor, without any applications on, I can see data being transferred about every 5 seconds or so. I get a read and write data. What is that all about?

Also, in the Activity Monitor, there is a kernel_task item that uses around 730MB of virtual memory. That is the largest item in the Monitor. What does that do?

 

[robbieduncan]

Also, in the Activity Monitor, there is a kernel_task item that uses around 730MB of virtual memory. That is the largest item in the Monitor. What does that do?

The kernel_task represents the OS kernel. It's the heart of the OS dealing directly with the hardware. Without it nothing at all will work.

 

[indago]

aibo wrote:

How much free space does it say is available on your hard disk? Being at 90%+ capacity can really slow things down. You can do a Finder search for documents that are over a certain file size (1GB, for example) and see what is really hogging space.

The stats show that I am using only about 55% of the total disk.

Also, I'd recommend running Cocktail to clear out your caches.

Clearing out the Safari cache is easy enough, from the Menu, but there must be a lot of junk stashed somewhere in the computer that doesn't show up when looking for junk, that ultimately slows the computer performance.

 

[Dustman]

I am using a PowerMac G4 with OSX 10.4.11 Tiger. I have 1G memory. When I installed the OSX Tiger system, updating from OS 9.2.2, the system was really fast. Now, things have slowed noticeably. I am sure that my perusing the internet has created files and documents, hidden and otherwise, on my hard drive that are no longer used, and are clogging up the system.

I would like to remove unused files and folders, but where to start?

As an aside, what is TrueBlue Environment? I checked the Activity Monitor, and this seems to take up a lot of memory.

Out of curiosity, which of the PowerMac G4's is this? Sawtooth? Quicksilver? If your expecting performance from a G4 350 Mhz and a 16 MB Ati Rage Pro you're going to be quite disappointed.

 

[Firefly2002]

He already said that the initial performance was just fine for him, so obviously that's a non-issue.

TrueBlue environment is Classic Mode. You an turn that off. It sounds like you have that run at startup, which you don't need. It takes up some memory, yes, and a fair amount of virtual memory.

It doesn't sound like disk space is your problem; perhaps your drive is heavily fragmented. Try using something like DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro to defrag your hard drive and clean up the directory. That can slow things down quite a bit.

If you've recently installed something big or moved a great number of files to your computer, Spotlight could be indexing which seriously bogs things down. Go to the Activity monitor to see what's up.. or go to the terminal and type "top" for a table of processes.

Take a look both at memory usage, and at CPU utilization.

Also, if you haven't restarted in a while, do so.