[drainyoo]

Everyday at random times, my machine bogs down and the harddrive starts cranking. It seems like the system is doing something cause my machine gets really slow and I can hear the HD working. Is this normal?

[Appleman]

no

[drainyoo]

So then what could it be?

[Appleman]

Originally posted by drainyoo:
So then what could it be?

Open Terminal in your Utilities Folder and Top. You can then see what is running in the back ground. Additionally, you could use Apples Activity Monitor. Does more or less the same.

[bergy]

See if any of this applies to you ...

Mac OSX Speed Troubleshooting
http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html

Printer Causes Slowdown
http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbth...o=&fpart=1

[drainyoo]

Thanks for those links but I dont see anything that has to do with my comp. Could it be something with Journaling?

[sbjordal]

Originally posted by drainyoo:
Everyday at random times, my machine bogs down and the harddrive starts cranking. It seems like the system is doing something cause my machine gets really slow and I can hear the HD working. Is this normal?

How much memory and how many drives u got?

[drainyoo]

512MB and one internal drive. I also have an external Firewire but I dont keep it connected. I have a 1GH Powerbook.

[drainyoo]

It might be Safari. I checked the Activity Monitor and it said that Safari was using 500MB of virtual memory. Is that normal?

[Brass]

In Terminal, WHILE this activity is happening, type "top" and then copy/paste the output here.

[drainyoo]

ok next time it happens Ill try to do it. The problem is when it happens, I cant launch anything. The computer basically freezes and I get the color wheel spinning.

[badidea]

In my opinion this is normal because I am pretty sure that it is happening because your computer is swapping memory (like virtual memory in classic days)!
I have it a lot (896MB Ram) because some app has a memory leak or I was looking at too many large pictures in Safari...

If anybody now wants to correct me, I would be more than glad to know how to get rid of it!

[drainyoo]

Originally posted by Brass:
In Terminal, WHILE this activity is happening, type "top" and then copy/paste the output here.

Here ya go man.

Processes: 53 total, 3 running, 50 sleeping... 162 threads 10:25:24
Load Avg: 0.31, 0.44, 0.33 CPU usage: 60.5% user, 21.9% sys, 17.5% idle
SharedLibs: num = 125, resident = 18.2M code, 1.79M data, 5.20M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 8732, resident = 314M + 7.11M private, 72.0M shared
PhysMem: 65.3M wired, 292M active, 147M inactive, 505M used, 6.52M free
VM: 4.35G + 83.2M 267736(4) pageins, 246969(1079) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
1065 top 9.6% 0:05.52 1 16 26 312K 392K 688K 27.1M
1062 bash 0.0% 0:00.02 1 12 15 128K 832K 744K 18.2M
1061 login 0.0% 0:00.04 1 13 37 132K 384K 496K 26.9M
1059 Terminal 0.0% 0:02.67 4 69 173 1.80M 8.39M- 15.6M 141M
1040 Mail 0.0% 0:21.46 9 145 331 3.84M 15.3M- 25.0M- 177M
1038 Spamfire 0.8% 1:39.48 5 88 343 12.8M 15.2M- 26.8M- 177M
1029 iChat 0.8% 0:51.68 6 201 414 5.58M 19.3M- 24.1M- 223M
1028 Safari 64.0% 9:44.75 9 242 1757 250M+ 20.1M- 257M+ 478M+
1007 lookupd 0.0% 0:01.25 2 35 97 312K 796K- 908K- 28.5M
383 AppleSpell 0.0% 0:01.98 1 38 37 140K 984K- 404K 36.3M
380 iChatAgent 0.0% 0:10.05 4 67 117 1.19M 1.57M- 2.03M- 102M
364 WeatherPop 0.0% 1:36.57 7 280 187 5.25M- 7.38M- 6.86M- 148M
360 Menu Calen 0.0% 0:06.91 2 68 167 4.72M 7.15M- 7.97M 145M
358 iCalAlarmS 0.0% 0:00.88 2 67 122 148K- 1.82M- 3.98M- 126M
355 StuffItAVR 0.0% 0:00.77 3 65 191 744K 7.75M- 4.02M 139M
354 MicrosoftM 0.0% 0:09.08 2 65 79 252K 1.59M 2.61M 118M

[drainyoo]

A friend of mine told me that my HD is about to die. Could this be a possibility?

[ginoledesma]

That's a lot of page-outs. And your Safari stats are really "large." The next time you run top, you might want to add a -u (e.g. top -u) so that it's sorted by CPU usage. Looks like Safari is your culprit.

[NeilCharter]

The behavior you are describing is typical of a memory leak. Basically a program keeps on asking for more memory over time. This additional memory will be in the form of virtual memory which is entirely normal. However if the rogue app continulally asks for more memory, eventually this will use up all the available free disk space. When this happens the system becomes unresponsive because even basic OS functions have to page in and out virtual memory.

From TOP it looks like you still have free VM available, but I'm no expert at looking at these. How much free disk space do you have?

Alternatively, Safari could well be your problem. I've seen many times that Safari will progressively take up more CPU time and possibly memory.

This happens regularly when I have multiple tabs open. Typically I have 10 tabs open for my favourite pages.

I have a CPU monitor showing the computer load in the menu bar. If the computer is not doing much in the background the usage should be low. When I see the CPU running at 100% without doing anything, then I know its time to restart Safari.

[eevyl]

And yes, an about to die hard disk can freeze your computer for some seconds while it tries to continue to work.

[drainyoo]

I have 33Gigs of free space.

Im going to use another browser for the rest of the day and see it anything changes.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by eevyl:
And yes, an about to die hard disk can freeze your computer for some seconds while it tries to continue to work.

Yes, just like the one I had to replace this morning. It had the click of death syndrome and it certainly froze the computer.
You can type sudo fs_usage in terminal to see what apps or processes are accessing your hard drive.

It will look something like this "
11:26:49 read 0.000007 VNCDimension
11:26:49 write 0.000041 VNCDimension
11:26:49 write 0.000049 VNCDimension

which reminds me, I need to close that app as it is constantly writing and reading from the drive, even when idle.

[NeilCharter]

If you have that much free space then it probably isn't a memory leak problem.

Next time it happens though, see you much free space you do have.

I love Safari, especially the multi-tab feature, but it does hog the CPU over time.

I would try Firefox since it's features are similar to Safari. It's still a beta though.