Suddenly very slow...

[vinrouge]

I've got an iMac (1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB SDRAM) running Snow Leopard (10.6.3). It's running the usual sort of stuff (Mac Office, Evernote, Itunes, Time Machine etc).

Problem:
If it has been left on for a while (eg. overnight) it very often gets very sluggish to the extent that I have to restart it - this solved the problem... for another few hours.

I have iStatPro installed as a widget and when the problem arrises, that shows massive CPU usage by the user leaving only 1 or 2% free. When I look in activity monitor, I can't see anything that is using those sorts of resources.

I was thinking on reformatting and restoring from time machine (it's in my blood - I used to have a PC), but has anyone got any better ideas?

 

[LPZ]

I've got an iMac (1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB SDRAM) running Snow Leopard (10.6.3). It's running the usual sort of stuff (Mac Office, Evernote, Itunes, Time Machine etc).

Problem:
If it has been left on for a while (eg. overnight) it very often gets very sluggish to the extent that I have to restart it - this solved the problem... for another few hours.

I have iStatPro installed as a widget and when the problem arrises, that shows massive CPU usage by the user leaving only 1 or 2% free. When I look in activity monitor, I can't see anything that is using those sorts of resources.

I was thinking on reformatting and restoring from time machine (it's in my blood - I used to have a PC), but has anyone got any better ideas?

I'd prefer to find out what's hogging the CPU and deal with it directly. The next time this happens, open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and enter

top -o cpu

at the command line. This ought to reveal what's using the CPU.