[beazer4444]

I know, I know. Mac viruses are nearly non-existant. Yet I've noticed some strange things lately. I've got an iBook G3 and this is what I've been noticing:

a) She runs very slow at times. Granted she's only got 900 Mghz, but she has got about 700 in ram and she hasn't had a problem before.

and

b) Her wireless has always worked like a charm, connecting without a hitch to every wireless signal I needed it to. Recently however, since about a week and half ago, she has a hard time connecting to signals and if connect is very very slow at loading.

Am I just paranoid?

[icruise]

You don't have a virus. You might have some other problem, like a hardware malfunction or some kind of software corruption.

[amazing]

wireless performance is very susceptible to all sorts of interference. Download iStumbler from versiontracker.com and fire it up. Check how many WAPs (wireless access points) you can see, and what channel they're on. If one of them is using the same channel as yours, then you've got potential interference problems (change the channel to either 1, 6, 11, but if those are taken try anything else.)

Also, someone nearby might have bought 2.4 ghz cordless phones, etc, etc. All sorts of reasons for interference so it's very hard to diagnose or correct.

About running slow, how much empty HD space do you have?

And you don't have a virus...

[DeathMan]

The first thing I thought of was also hard drive space. Thats an easy one to get away from you. Especially on the iBooks. What you have got? 30GB?

[ghporter]

700MB of RAM is not much for OS X on a slower machine. And background activity can make things seem VERY slow at times. Unless you leave the computer ON (not even asleep) 24/7, you'll miss the opportunity for the OS to do some maintenance and housekeeping tasks that prevent some slow-downs. I'd look into "Mac Janitor," a utility that does a lot of great things for you that aren't done because your computer isn't on 24/7.

As for newly encountered problems with your wireless, that could be a number of things, including someone nearby with an interference source (as amazing points out). You don't have a virus.

[Yakov]

When I first read the thread title, I thought it was a request. Ha ha.

[beazer4444]

Thanks for the help you guys.

-slap my wrist- for ever doubting OS X right?

I've got about 10 Gigs left on my 40 gig hard-drive. Too little?

P.S. No thanks... I'll pass on the virus Yakov. haha.

[turtle777]

type "top -uw" in the terminal when it's running slow.

It will list all active processes, with the CPU hog right on top. It will show you what process / app is slowing down your computer.

I have an iBook G3 500 Mhz with 512 MB. While it's quite slow, it's good enough for email, some internet and Word.

-t

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by beazer4444

Thanks for the help you guys.

-slap my wrist- for ever doubting OS X right?

I've got about 10 Gigs left on my 40 gig hard-drive. Too little?

P.S. No thanks... I'll pass on the virus Yakov. haha.

Cleaning up the stuff you don't use on your hard drive can't hurt! It also gives the OS more room to use when it optimizes the drive (that's the last step in most Mac programs' installations, by the way). And really look into MacJanitor, because it will do a LOT of cleanup for you. I noticed a big difference when I ran it on my wife's 800MHz G4 iBook-the computer had just gotten less peppy, but after MacJanitor it seemed really quick again.

[krx]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Unless you leave the computer ON (not even asleep) 24/7, you'll miss the opportunity for the OS to do some maintenance and housekeeping tasks that prevent some slow-downs.

ghporter, can you explain this? I've never heard of leaving my iBook on 24/7 for maintenance purposes. What do you mean?

[chris v]

Originally Posted by krx

ghporter, can you explain this? I've never heard of leaving my iBook on 24/7 for maintenance purposes. What do you mean?

There are unix scripts that run automatically in the middle of the night that perform some maintenance routines, like deleting some cruft daily, rotating log files, rebuilding databases, etc. I think by default they occur at 3:00am or so. Cocktail is a great program that allows you to run these manually at the click of a button.

[ghporter]

What chris v said. One of the wonderful parts of OS X is its Unix heritage. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks is that some of that heritage is NOT aimed at desktop machines that people turn off now and then. I think Apple should tweak OS X so that it's easy and simple to adjust the scheduling of these tasks so the user can stay on top of dumping caches and deleting temp files and such without having to resort to a third party (though free) application.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by chris v

There are unix scripts that run automatically in the middle of the night that perform some maintenance routines, like deleting some cruft daily, rotating log files, rebuilding databases, etc. I think by default they occur at 3:00am or so. Cocktail is a great program that allows you to run these manually at the click of a button.

What scripts are there that AREN'T automatically run the next time the system is woken up since 10.4?

AFAIK, Cocktail is great, but completely superfluous since Tiger, at least from the "regular maintenence" point of view.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by analogika

What scripts are there that AREN'T automatically run the next time the system is woken up since 10.4?

AFAIK, Cocktail is great, but completely superfluous since Tiger, at least from the "regular maintenence" point of view.

So it backlogs the scripts and runs them at the next opportunity? I hadn't heard that -- then agin, I leave my machines up 24/7 except for my Powerbook, wich is the most stable machine I've got, so I haven't seen the need to run Cocktail on it, anyway. (Uptime 176 days, crash logs 0kb. Amazing)