[drissa]

Hi there

I've thought for a while that it's time I did a clean re-install of Panther and all my apps. My machine has become rather cooky over the last month or two.

However, it'd be good to find out why. iTunes seems to think it's open, but doesn't display and then won't force quit. Pro Tools LE simply bounces on the dock. And the machine won't sleep, restart or quit. I should point out that these issues are not happening 100% of the time - just often. Apps have slowed down and so have simple things, like launching a Finder window. I'm getting used to doing hard restarts/shut-downs.

I've repaired permissions. My system drive is pretty full - only 7.67 GB free, so I guess this is having an impact.

Any thoughts on what could be causing these things. I'm happy to start again, but I guess I should get more clued-up about maintenance.

Thanks

800Mhz G4 Quicksilver, 768MB, 10.3.1

[mAxximo]

7.67GB is A LOT of free space so your problems are definitely not because of that. My Dual 2.0 G5 has your same symptoms and I have 80GB+ of free space in all my drives for that matter. Typically Mail, Safari or Font Book won't open half of the time even though the Dock shows the black triangle underneath the icons. Many times I can't even Force Quit them and I have to log out.

And then there's one of my biggest gripes with OS X: Performance Degradation Over Time. If I don't restart the machine every two days or so even switching from After Effects to Illustrator or Photoshop (or Safari!) can take up to 10 seconds or more of beachballing while the hard disk fights for its life against those freaking swap files. I have 2.0Gb RAM. This is completely unacceptable in any professional workflow. A fresh restart can only do so much apparently since after a short while the system and all my main applications are lagging behind me again, as always.

I go through all the babysitting OS X needs periodically and I still get a huge performance hit every two days of intensive use or so.

The problem lies elsewhere.

[Chuckit]

There are a few things that I've seen cause symptoms like those:

1. File system corruption.

2. Corrupt caches (e.g. a messed up LaunchServices file).

3. Just like anything else that could go wrong in OS X, it could be bad RAM.

As mAxximo said, I think nearly 8 GB of disk space is enough that you shouldn't be running into problems because of that.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by mAxximo:

I go through all the babysitting OS X needs periodically and I still get a huge performance hit every two days of intensive use or so.

Do you have external FW drives? Sometimes I find my externals spins down, or even my iPod sometimes will cause a delay in the Finder.

I found unmounting my iPod and unused external drives eliminates an occasional beachball. Often times the Finder information of the drives are cached, but every once in a while it will need to spin the drive up, even when not directly accessing it. This also happens if I leave a DVD in the drive, and the Finder must wait for it to come up to speed and access it before being able to do other things, like launch an app or switch to one that has been paged out of RAM.

I don't use After Effects, and occasionally use PS, but not professionally as you do. I would like to see what top, in terminal reports for memory usage when you get the SWOD switching apps.

My mdd867 has uptimes of weeks and I don't notice any speed degradation. But I don't use the Adobe products you mention day in and day out.

Drissa - have you tried to see what happens in another user account? If the same problem exists there, it is an OS problem. If you don't have another user account, consider creating one, just for testing purposes.

Repairing permissions is an overrated fix for problems, albeit permission problems can cause issues.

[drissa]

Thanks for the advice/thoughts. Rather grim reading! My machine has been VERY reliable and stable for about 2 years - this is quite a recent issue.

I'll try setting up a user account for testing.

[kcmac]

I would download Onyx and run the full maintenance, clean caches, trash old logs, etc.

It's free, very good at what it does and worth a try.

[bergy]

General Sluggishness? Try these Regular Maintenance Procedures and Rediscover that Old Zip!

1. Repair Permissions .. especially Before and After any Update.

Close all files and applications on the disk you want to repair. Go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and double click it. Then select "Macintosh HD" in the left panel and First Aid at the top. Then click on "Repair Permissions."

For future consideration .. this app repairs permissions on a weekly basis and runs cron scripts that don't get completed unless you leave your computer on overnight.
Macaroni .. Just Set It and Forget It!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633

2. Repair Disk .. about once a month or two.

(1) Boot from your Mac OS X Install Disc 1 CD. Put CD in drive, wait for it to show up on the desktop, then go to upper left of screen under the Apple menu and choose restart. Immediately hold the "c" key down until you see the apple logo.

(2) When the Installer window opens, select Installer > Disk Utility from the Apple� menu bar.

(3) When the Disk Utility window opens, select "Macintosh HD" in the list on the left.

(4) Select the First Aid tab on the right

(5) Select the "Repair Disk" button on the lower right of the screen.
If errors are returned repeat this process 2 or 3 times until they are gone.

If you still get errors then you will need to use a third-party disk utility to repair your Mac OS X boot volume, such as Alsoft� Disk Warrior�

Still Sluggish .. empty caches with
Cache Out X
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9538

For other Speed Issues check out this link ..
Mac OS X Speed FAQ
http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html

[RayX]

800Mhz G4 Quicksilver, 768MB, 10.3.1

Combo update to 10.3.7 might help...

[mcsjgs]

A thought:

I just did a clean re-install of OS X because of Netinfo problems (which I caused), and it was the best thing I ever did. A bit of work (about a day and a half), but I got rid of all the accumulated Jaguar stuff I had, plus about 7 Gigs worth of useless crap I never used.

The machine runs much faster now, is less prone to hiccups, and I learned a lot about OS X in the process. Needless to say, I had a full backup before doing this. I really dreaded it, but now I could not be more pleased.