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hamiltondj · Feb 15, 2005, 12:28 PM

Hi. I'm hoping some folks here can point me in the right direction. I have a 1 Ghz 12 inch PB with 1 GB of RAM running 10.3.8. Over the last 2 weeks I have noticed that I am seeing the spinning beach ball of death alot. OS X has slowed noticably on my machine.

I have tried all kinds of repairs - I repaired the permissions, ran cocktail and Oyx to run the maintenance and optimization scripts, removed all my non-standard haxies, just about everything you can do to limited results.

I'm at the point now where I am wondering if it might just be better to wipe the HD and install OS X from scratch. But, I've been using OS X on different Macs since 10.1, and I have never had to resort to the "fresh install" option of performance tuning (unlike windows and OS 9).

Does anyone have any insight to share on this issue? I have recently instlled iLife 05, iwork and the 10.3.8 updater. If I go for the wipe and re-install, any tips to share?

Thanks...

SWFan · Feb 15, 2005, 02:14 PM

That Mac should have come with a hardware test CD. Boot the machine with that CD and see if it might be some bad hardware.

If it doesn't find anything it doesn't necessarily mean there is not a hardware problem. But you can test that assumption by wiping and re-installing the OS as you mention.

Its not common, but every so often a computer may just get some bad system file corruption and the only way to fix that is generally with a re-installation.

CharlesS · Feb 15, 2005, 02:18 PM

Try creating a new user account and logging in as that account. See if the problem persists. If it goes away, then something's wrong with your user account that reinstalling probably won't help. If it persists, then it's something affecting the whole system.

TETENAL · Feb 15, 2005, 02:27 PM

Do you have a ton of fonts installed by chance?

hamiltondj · Feb 15, 2005, 02:50 PM

Originally posted by TETENAL:
Do you have a ton of fonts installed by chance?

No, No excssive fonts - just the stock install (which I will limit if I do a re-install).

I've checked the hardware and came up with nothing.

I'll try the new user account - thats a good tip.

hamiltondj · Feb 15, 2005, 08:50 PM

thanks for the help all. I think I found the problem
Somehow my energy preferences were changed from Highest processor preformance to automatic, which apparently takes out the 512 cache and reduces the processor setting by 30%.