[kramer3380]

is there any way of speeding up ur Mac.. like kinda how windows has disk clean up and stuff like that.. my mac seems to be running a little slower than usual, especially on start up.. its still faster than windows will ever be.. maybe its just my patients has run low because my mac has always been so fast.. i have over 80 gigs of memory left so i know its not low memory.. just really wondering if theres a tip to tune up my mac if you will.. thanks for your time!!

[Big Mac]

It could be file or disk catalog fragmentation. It could be your drive, which gets slower as it fills. It's really hard to say without knowing more details (at which point do you see the slow down, and how much slower is it).

[macintologist]

Download and run Applejack

[- - e r i k - -]

Buy more RAM.

[eccentricref]

Yeah ram is the cheapest and best way. I have 3 gig and it flies.

[seanc]

I would like to point out that your 80 gigs of memory is actually hard drive space. You can find out how much memory you have by clicking the Apple menu and then About this Mac.

What Mac do you have and what are it's specs?

[ibook_steve]

Just a comment: you might want to rethink that thread title. I was 2 clicks from calling this thread spam.

Steve

[Veltliner]

Disc Warrior is a good software maintenance tool.

[Veltliner]

I found this on the web, but I haven't checked up on it yet.

It's called "52 ways to speed up OS X".

http://www.imafish.co.uk/articles/po...up-os-x?page=1


I found the tip to emtpy the disc cache.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

I found this on the web, but I haven't checked up on it yet.

It's called "52 ways to speed up OS X".

#1 is Repair Permissions.

I stopped reading right there...

[kramer3380]

My computer takes a little longer to boot up when it is shut down and there is a little lag when i click on something til when the program opens. When i first got my mac everything was instant and i just want to know if there is any way to do this. I tried applejack but i have no idea how to use it.

[EndlessMac]

Originally Posted by kramer3380 

My computer takes a little longer to boot up when it is shut down and there is a little lag when i click on something til when the program opens. When i first got my mac everything was instant and i just want to know if there is any way to do this.

A friend of mine uses Tech Tool Pro on his computer and he said that it made a great improvement but this is all second hand information so I can't say for sure if it works.

I do know what you are talking about because my computer was definitely fast when it was new. It's also not because I have limited disk space left because I have an external hard disk to transfer files to. I do work on large files and I know that OS X only defrags smaller files so I think I might have to invest in a good defragmentation program.

[jmiddel]

kramer, this is totally normal. When you first got the mac, it came with basic stuff that did not need that much time to load. Now you have your stuff on it, including all the preferences of your own programs. This stuff takes longer to load than the basic original installation. Also, when you click on a file that needs to call on a program that is not yet open, it will take a certain time for it to launch. This is because the program has to 'initialize' itself, meaning it must recognized you as a licensed user, and then load all the needed sub-routines into memory.

Applejack is an essential program to have, for fixing deep problems such as disk repair and permissions. This will not speed up your computer, only repair the cause of system failures. To use it, you would restart in single user mode, holding both the command and the 's' keys. Then you type 'applejack' (without the quotes), and press return. Then you just follow the on screen prompts.

Remember, nothing is really instantaneous, your mac is doing its job, so please relax and enjoy it.

[Big Mac]

Applejack is by no means essential, in my experience.

[anthology123]

Kramer,
If your computer is noticeably slower, it could be your hard drive. Hard drives have multiple speed levels, but when there is a problem, it could mean the early signs of failure. This is especially true during boot-up, when the drive is being heavily taxed to load the system and the creation of the swap file.
What I recommend is you start your mac up in verbose mode (hold down the v key or CTRL-v at startup, I forget which) and see if there are any spots where the bootup process seems to stall and let us know what those spots are.

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by anthology123 

Hard drives have multiple speed levels

I stopped reading right there.

The reason the OP's Mac feels slower is probably because:
a) He's got all sorts of kernel extensions, daemons, and utilities running on it now that weren't there when he first got it, and he's running low on RAM. Think VMware, Quicksilver, Little Snitch, Growl ...
- OR -
b) His hard drive is filling up and the file system can't optimally write new files/modify existing files without fragmenting them. As you apply OS X updates, app updates, install new apps, etc. on a drive with <15% free space, the file system is hard-pressed to find enough continuous free space to write the new files unfragmented.

Give us your About this Mac info, and write out what the "System Memory" tab of Activity Monitor reports. :-)

[kramer3380]

i have 2 gigs of ram and i have over 70 gigs left on my hard drive and i also have an external hard drive. I have growl on there but i dont know what its for, and as far as the other applications you listed i do not have them. all i really want to know is if there are any things i should be doing on my part to help keep it from slowing down. My computer is noticeably slower, perhaps it is because i have other programs on there. I dont normally run more than two programs simultaneously. i dont think it has anything to do with my hard drive space or my ram, 2 gigs is more than enough.