Rainbow wheel is appearing much more frequently

[orvn]

I run 10.6.6 on my late 2009 unibody MBP. I've been using it for over a year now and it has become noticeably slower when performing day to day functions and starting/closing applications. I find myself using 'force quit' more often than I'd like.

I'm a mac user of about a year and a half, I know unix alright, but I never really delved too deeply into experimenting with my mac boxes.

The rainbow-wheel shows up a lot. It has become a real pain when browsing the web, using word or any of my CS5 apps. In the beginning, Photoshop for instance, would load all the tools instantaneously. Now when I click the [T] alone "initializing type tool"tends to take up to twenty seconds.

Problems were especially bad in Chrome, so I switched to FX4 and the browsing experience is a lot more manageable.

What's going on here? Are there maintenance procedures I can employ to minimize the rainbow wheel?

 

[SHADO]

Have you ever used DiskWarrior or repaired permissions? Reset the PRAM and SMC? Is there a specific process in Activity Monitor that is taking up a lot of resources?

 

[MacForScience]

I run 10.6.6 on my late 2009 unibody MBP. I've been using it for over a year now and it has become noticeably slower when performing day to day functions and starting/closing applications. I find myself using 'force quit' more often than I'd like.

I'm a mac user of about a year and a half, I know unix alright, but I never really delved too deeply into experimenting with my mac boxes.

The rainbow-wheel shows up a lot. It has become a real pain when browsing the web, using word or any of my CS5 apps. In the beginning, Photoshop for instance, would load all the tools instantaneously. Now when I click the [T] alone "initializing type tool"tends to take up to twenty seconds.

Problems were especially bad in Chrome, so I switched to FX4 and the browsing experience is a lot more manageable.

What's going on here? Are there maintenance procedures I can employ to minimize the rainbow wheel?

How much ram do you have?
If its less then 4GB buy more. (honestly if less then maxed out buy more since you use CS5)

Look in the activity monitor and see under the memory tab: if your page-outs exceed your page-ins? If yes more ram for you my friend.

How often do you restart?

How much free HD space do you have? I try to keep about half of my internal drive empty.

You must be in an administrator account.

Steps to speed your machine:
1.) Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility repair permissions and set show details to off
2.) in your user folder/Library/Caches/ delete contents NOT the folder
3.) Run cron task:
a.) Go to Applications/Utilities/Terminal
b.) After the prompt type exactly the following
sudo periodic daily
Then hit return a message will appear warning you about the sudo command and its dangers type your admin password in (you will see no evidence of your typing but don't worry it will work) and wait for the computer to finish. This will be indicated by the same prompt that you started from will appear.
c.) Step and repeat (a,b) for the following commands:
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly
If done in close succession you probably will only have to type your password in once.
When finished quit the terminal and disk utility and restart. Your computer should be faster.

Do not start by reseting PRAM (this should not be a first option) and the SMC reset is not a likely candidate see the following:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964. If the computer is still slow after the above step and fixing any deficits in HD space and ram then its worth trying the SMC and PRAM reset.

Cheers