Too Many Processes

[Jacob1447]

Recently I've noticed that my macbook's performance hasn't been so great. I opened activity monitor and sure enough there was a huge list of active processes. Is it normal to have that many things running? If not what are the ones I should get rid of and how? The screenshots of activity monitor were all taken immediately after logging in and opening activity monitor. Thanks


Jacob

 

[miles01110]

I think you forgot to attach the screen shots...

 

[belvdr]

Sure some could likely be killed, but know what you're doing before you kill it. Additionally, what may seem like a lot to you is likely nothing for the system. I've never heard of anyone claiming that too many processes were killing a box. Likely, it is a few processes using too much CPU or I/O time.

 

[Jacob1447]

Sorry forgot to add the attachments

 

[belvdr]

I'm not seeing much of anything wrong here, except one process confuses me:

GarageSaleHelper

I googled and learned this is a widget. You might check your widgets to see if you can eliminate some of them. Another one is "SIMBL Agent". I'm guessing you have installed many apps trying to customize the living daylights out of the OS. This type of behavior will drag any OS down the hill.

 

[spinnerlys]

Those processes seem okay, as Mac OS X and any other OS run a lot of processes in the background anyway and each doesn't consume more than 0.1% CPU power anyway.

Next time sort by CPU usage and see what process might hog up the CPU.

Btw, how much GB of how much GB is left on your HDD?

 

[belvdr]

Those processes seem okay, as Mac OS X and any other OS run a lot of processes in the background anyway and each doesn't consume more than 0.1% CPU power anyway.

It could be disk I/O as well slowing it down, which doesn't show on that particular screen.

 

[Jacob1447]

I'm not seeing much of anything wrong here, except one process confuses me:

GarageSaleHelper

I googled and learned this is a widget. You might check your widgets to see if you can eliminate some of them. Another one is "SIMBL Agent". I'm guessing you have installed many apps trying to customize the living daylights out of the OS. This type of behavior will drag any OS down the hill.

Yeah that's the problem I've downloaded tons of add-ons and apps that run in the background that I eventually don't use and forget about. The SIMBL Agent has something to do with Greasekit, a Safari version of Greasemonkey for Firefox.

 

[belvdr]

Yeah that's the problem I've downloaded tons of add-ons and apps that run in the background that I eventually don't use and forget about. The SIMBL Agent has something to do with Greasekit, a Safari version of Greasemonkey for Firefox.

Honestly, you may spend more time cleaning up than reinstalling. I'd backup, reinstall, and go from there.

 

[seb-opp]

don't worry about the number of processes, the average user isn't expected to have to look at activity monitor anyway. Lots of processes are background ones, and its perfectly normal to have lots running!

what you could do is have a look through your start up items and widgets and remove any that you don't use often. Another thing could be looking under sharing in system prefs and remove any shared items that you don't use, e.g. if you have windows file sharing on but never actually use it, turn it off.

 

[Jacob1447]

Those processes seem okay, as Mac OS X and any other OS run a lot of processes in the background anyway and each doesn't consume more than 0.1% CPU power anyway.

Next time sort by CPU usage and see what process might hog up the CPU.

Btw, how much GB of how much GB is left on your HDD?

I have a 500gb HDD with 214GB free. I mean it's not extremely slow just slower than it should be. When I log into another account that I rarely use the list of active processes is much smaller and it runs faster. The big problem that I solved a while ago was a huge list of login items. But yeah only about ten or so processes are using even 0.1 CPU. Just seemed like a long list to me especially since the other account has no where near as much.

 

[belvdr]

You are also getting page-outs, which means you are paging to disk (aka swapping). It's not necessarily bad, but something to look at.