Why is my mac no longer fast?

[civilizedrat]

Well, not to be a typical anal mac user, but...

My start up time is now in excess of 30 secs instead of the usual 14. What could be the problem?

iTunes takes about 6 bounces to finally open and there is the colourful spin each time it does. I only have about 10 GB in songs. Ditto for Safari.

When I check Activity Monitor as soon as I boot up, the free memory just starts dropping from about 700MB all the way down until everything is in Inactive.. with NO PROGRAMS OPEN!!!

Shutting down used to be around 10 seconds but now it lingers Windows style and then when the blue screen fades in, a circle spins for a bit before it shuts down.

I tried Disk Utility to verify and repair disk. Still the same for each problem. Should I reinstall?

Why is my mac no longer fast?

BTW: Desktop is clear, files are neatly packed in folders etc.

 

[plinden]

Does the same thing happen with a different account?

What do you have in login items for your account?

When you sort the process list by memory (while showing "all processes") what's at the top?

 

[FF_productions]

Do you fold/SETI, anything that runs in the background?

Did you install lots of crap?

Something is sucking out the memory, go to Activity Monitor and select ALL processes and see which one is killing ur machine.

Download Onyx, run some maintenence on your Mac.

 

[civilizedrat]

thanks for the replies. The process which is on top is kernel_task followed by iTunes, Safari and Adium. I have no other programs open.

I don't know what fold or SETI is.

What do i do?

 

[FF_productions]

thanks for the replies. The process which is on top is kernel_task followed by iTunes, Safari and Adium. I have no other programs open.

I don't know what fold or SETI is.

What do i do?

Well with 1 gig of ram, that kinda sounds normal. Quit out of every single application, REBOOT and go straight to the activity monitor.

Then use this key combo, +SHIFT+4 and now take a picture of the activity monitor and report back.

 

[civilizedrat]

Pictures were taken immediately after a reboot, and 3 seconds apart. As you can see, no programs are open. Plus, usually I could be on for hours without having any page outs. But, already in the first 10 seconds there are close to 300.

 

[Killyp]

Hmmm, do you install much in the way of 'enhancer' apps, such as Sizzling Keys? They'll really slow the system down.

Also, turn of any unnecessary Sharing services you don't need.

Leave the system to slow itself down, and the take a picture of activity monitor for us...

 

[Mac-Addict]

I just checked Activity monitor after reading this thread.. Turns out Safari was running under rosetta and slowing my whole MBP down I fixed it and now its going much faster !

 

[Eraserhead]

Like Windows sometimes the data on your Mac can become fragmented, especially the system files which makes it slower.

If this is the problem you need to back up your data (which you should do anyway) and then do an "Erase and Install", it is also worth making sure you have 5-6GB of free space as that will also slow down your computer.

 

[gkarris]

Fix your permissions and turn off "Windows Server" also...

 

[civilizedrat]

Fix your permissions and turn off "Windows Server" also...

How do I turn off Windows Server?

Can you believe I called Apple, and they told me that this rate of memory hemorraging is normal??

I doubt that. It wasn't that way before 10.4.10. I'm considering an Erase and Install.

Does anyone think this'll fix it?

 

[FF_productions]

Well I'm clueless now. Did you run Onyx like I told you?

You haven't modified OS X at all, install any crazy applications?



Of course, if all else fails, erase and install.

Also try another screenshot of the activity monitor, BUT expand activity monitor so we can see if the apps are Intel/PPC