Should I reinstall...if so, can you advise?

[kerpow]

My Powerbook, see sig, is unbearably slow. i've repaired permissions, used OnyX for maintenance but its still terrible. Can take over 10 seconds to open applications when there's nothing else running.

If I were to do a rebuild what should I back up first? Currently I backup the Desktop, Movies, Documents, Pictures and Music folders of each user (me and the mrs).

What about data applications?

Can I backup all my themes in Rapid Weaver?
Is it possible to backup all email in Apple Mail?
Can I save all my Firefox extensions?

Do I need a proper backup program or is copying to an external drive ok?

Sorry for so many Q's.

 

[swiftaw]

How much free disk space do you have?

 

[mad jew]

Reinstalling the operating system should be the last thing you try. It can result in data loss and won't necessarily help. I recommend finding the cause of the problem before reinstalling the OS.

1. As a start, open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and see if that points to anything using a lot of your resources up.
2. Check that you have at least 8GB of free space on your boot drive.
3. Verify your drive in Disk Utility, and repair if necessary.
4. Open a new user account and check if things are running better there.

This is just a generalised start.

 

[kerpow]

Reinstalling the operating system should be the last thing you try. It can result in data loss and won't necessarily help. I recommend finding the cause of the problem before reinstalling the OS.

1. As a start, open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and see if that points to anything using a lot of your resources up.
2. Check that you have at least 8GB of free space on your boot drive.
3. Verify your drive in Disk Utility, and repair if necessary.
4. Open a new user account and check if things are running better there.

This is just a generalised start.

60gb drive, at least 20% free, which is a good rule on any computer.

I do use Activity Monitor regularly and aside from memory running out after opening a couple of apps everything seems ok.

Have done all the disk repair utilities and, as I said, the OnyX stuff as well

 

[mad jew]

Just to confirm, I'm not talking about disk permissions in Disk Utility.

 

[kerpow]

Just to confirm, I'm not talking about disk permissions in Disk Utility.

I know. To be honest its been a while since I verified the disk but I have done it, say, this year at least.

Could try to create a new account.

This computer is fairly old and I don't know use any other Macs. With Tiger, how long does it take you, once fully logged in and "settled" to open iTunes, iPhoto and then Safari, one at a time? It would take me about a minute.

 

[mad jew]

Opening them all at the same time with my iMac G5?... Yeah, probably a tiny bit under a minute, but not much. Even though you've verified the drive this year, maybe give it another shot. It'll freeze your system for a while, but it shouldn't take longer than five minutes or so (depending on disk speed and size).

 

[kerpow]

Opening them all at the same time with my iMac G5?... Yeah, probably a tiny bit under a minute, but not much. Even though you've verified the drive this year, maybe give it another shot. It'll freeze your system for a while, but it shouldn't take longer than five minutes or so (depending on disk speed and size).

I would think a G5 would be much quicker. Oh well, perhaps its working as it should. Its just Apple, and other people here, always say that Macs have such a long life but really mine is barely useable as a work computer. I shudder to think how a G3 copes. No better than a Pentium III running Vista I'd expect.

 

[mad jew]

Mine's fine after that first minute though. Are you noticing it's laggy in day-to-day stuff too?

 

[kerpow]

A little unresponsive in Finder, Spotlight seems slower than it used to be when I upgraded to Tiger. Expose a littler jerky. I've given up using Dashboard.

The applications themselves are fine though, can scroll through large rolls in iPhoto '06. Just launching anything **seems** like forever.