safari (and other internet apps) open much slower than normal

[aStabell]

I have a powerbook 1.25 GHZ with 512 mb of ram. Lately I have noticed that safari, along with internet explorer and firefox, are opening extremely slow. This is most apparent in safari however. It will take up to a minute and a half to start up on bad days. All other apps start up just fine, exa. iTunes takes about 2 seconds. I used to have limewire, but deleted it from my computer to try to speed things up. I've attempted to restart it and repair permissions, but both are unsuccesful. I am running 10.3.9 (I'm getting Tiger in about a week), and have never had this problem before. Well all you computer geniuses have at it

 

[mad jew]

Check Activity Monitor for us and see whether there is a certain process taking up a significant amount of CPU cycles or RAM.

 

[aStabell]

Well, I have thought of that, but safari doesn't seem to take up any signifigant processing power during boot up, it just jumps up and down in the button bar and annoys me. If it helps, it only seems to do this after not being on the internet for an extended period of time.

 

[mad jew]

Well, if Activity Monitor is fine, then it sounds like you're doing okay for RAM, which is a pain because that would be an easy quick fix.

Is the problem across all accounts on the Mac?

 

[silence]

I have exactly the same problem.. Running Panther 10.3.9, Safari just takes forever to load - sometimes just freezes and doesn't load at all.

I'm no computer whiz, but i'm guessing its a bug relating to Panther.. and it doesn't help how Apple's development focus is entirely on Tiger now. Is anyone else running Panther and Safari have the same problem?

After Tiger was released, it sucks how we Panther users don't get any new software updates either. I guess its just Apple's way of saying.. "Upgrade to Tiger cheapskate!"

 

[mad jew]

I'm on Tiger, but I never had any major problems with Panther. Nevertheless, try resetting Safari (through the Safari menu) if you haven't already.

Next option is to delete the Safari preferences at Users/your user name/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist however, I'm not certain of the location because as I said, I'm on Tiger.

 

[yellow]

I'm no computer whiz, but i'm guessing its a bug relating to Panther.. and it doesn't help how Apple's development focus is entirely on Tiger now. Is anyone else running Panther and Safari have the same problem?

non-computer-whizzes shouldn't cry "bugs" then.

When was the last time you cleaned out your Safari cache? Your icon cache? What plug-ins are you using? Is this a problem if you log in as another user?

 

[aStabell]

YEllO WROTE: When was the last time you cleaned out your Safari cache? Your icon cache? What plug-ins are you using? Is this a problem if you log in as another user?

Well I did clean out my cache and it didn't help, and I don;t know what icon cache is I have no plugins except for the upgrades to safari, and I am the only user on this computer so no.

 

[yellow]

Well I did clean out my cache and it didn't help, and I don;t know what icon cache is

Quit Safari, go to ~/Library/Safari/Icons/ and trash everything in there.
Open Safari, use as normal. Faster?

and I am the only user on this computer so no.

Well, make another user. This is a critical step in troubleshooting. If the problem persists into another user, you know that it's a system wide problem. If it's fine in another user, you know the problem is relegated entirely to your normal user and this makes it much easier to diagnose and fix.

 

[aStabell]

Does reseting erase the icon cache, And just out of curiosity is it the pictures to the left of the URL

 

[yellow]

I'm not sure.

Yes, that is the favicon cache.

An overabundance of those things is a known issue in slowing Safari down.

 

[aStabell]

Alright I have narrowed this down to this only being a problem when I have not used safari for an extended period of time. After using safari this morning (10:00) I came back at 2 and it took safari 67 seconds to open. After quitting and opening again, it took about one second. I don't get it..... any ideas?

 

[aStabell]

ok I've done a few more experiments and all of them have ended up with the same result of 67 seconds. thats kinda weird anyways, does anyone know whats up

 

[mad jew]

It'll open quickly on the second attempt because it's accessing the RAM, not the hard drive and the RAM is much faster. Still, I have no idea why it's taking over a minute to do a "cold" start in Safari.

How much free hard drive space have you got? How many other programs do you run at the same time?

 

[neocell]

Could it be your computer initializing settings with your service provider, and potentially having some problem, but once it's connected it's fine until it needs to re-initialize? You said that it happens with all your browsers so maybe it's that? Have no idea how to check on this though

 

[aStabell]

It'll open quickly on the second attempt because it's accessing the RAM, not the hard drive and the RAM is much faster. Still, I have no idea why it's taking over a minute to do a "cold" start in Safari.

How much free hard drive space have you got? How many other programs do you run at the same time?

Well, I am using about half of my 80 gig hard drive, not enough to really clutter things.

Could it be your computer initializing settings with your service provider, and potentially having some problem, but once it's connected it's fine until it needs to re-initialize? You said that it happens with all your browsers so maybe it's that? Have no idea how to check on this though

this is what I have thought of, but I don't know what to do about it. Is it possible for them to fix it, or should I start looking for a new ISP.