[Daragon]

Hopefully someone can give a few helpful ideas.

First there's the booting, it boots fast to the point where it loads the desktop (so I can see the wallpaper, no menu, desktop files or dock are there yet), and then that colorful circle shows up and circles for a couple of minutes.
After those minutes the files, menu and dock etc. show up.

My brother has the same computer and his one hasn't got this problem, it boots completely in a few secs.


Second, there's Safari which is VERY slow, and now doesn't even work anymore at all (I'm typing this on IE ).
When I click it in the dock, it bounces twice, and you can see the black triangle beneath it, supposedly meaning it's loaded, but nothing happens.

In general, the overall speed is just slow, certainly compared to my brother's one.


It's a new G5 iMac 17", 1.8 GHz and 1Gig RAM.
What I'm wondering, will running Norton Anti-virus make a difference (perhaps there's some kind of virus, which I doubt...)
Or are there any other tools that might fix this?

[Randman]

DO NOT USE NORTON!!!!

[Randman]

Ok, now that I posted the anti-Norton message quickly. Never use Norton. Any Norton product on OSX. You'll increase the chances of something going very badly.
There's no real need for anti-virus on your Mac and running one all of the time can actually slow the system down. I run Virex every other month since I have to do lots of stuff in M$ Office, emailing back and forth, yada yada.

Do you put your computer to sleep regularly? That's better in the long run vs rebooting all of the time.

Do you run cron jobs such as Cocktail or Onyx? Do you have DiskWarrior? Do you ever repair permissions?

How much ram do you have?

On Safari, you can try emptying your cache (or better yet deactivating it). If you have autofill on, edit down the lists as that can really, really slow Safari down.

Oh, and stay away from Norton.

[Daragon]

I have 1GB of RAM.

Nope, I never let it sleep, I boot in the morning, and shut down in the evening .
I don't do cron jobs whatever they are, I do have Disk Warrior, and I guess I can try reparing permissions.

Problem with Safari is like I said, it doesn't work any more at all, it seems loaded in the dock (the black triangle), but nothing happens (no menu or window shows up).

Another problem I just discovered is the system preferences, some work, and others (like 'accounts') just freeze (again the color circle thingy spinning).
Luckily I can just force quit.

[bergy]

Slow Startup?
You should be doing routine maintenance to keep your Mac at optimum performance ...

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

Close all files and applications on the disk you want to repair. Go to Macintosh HD/ 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."

Use this app to run cron scripts and consider installing it to run automatically.
Macaroni .. Just Set It and Forget It!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633

2. Repairing Disk .. about once a month
and especially before any major system upgrade (Jaguar to Panther to Tiger)

(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�
http://www.alsoftinc.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

(6) After Repair Disk completes go to Disk Utility > Quit. Focus returns to Installer.

(7) Go to Installer > Quit. In the next menu choose Quit again and the computer will restart in OSX

When you are repairing your disk as part of (monthly) regular maintenance, you can do it without using the install disk by starting in "Safe Mode".

Start up in Safe Mode .. this will run the "Repair Disk" utility.

Be sure the computer is turned off.

Now press the power button.

Just after you hear the startup tone (NOT BEFORE), press and hold down
the shift key.

Now release the shift key when you see the start up screen with the gray
background with the Apple logo and the progress indicator.

During the startup, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.

To leave the Mac OS X Safe Mode just restart your Mac normally, without
holding any keys during the startup period.


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

Other things to try
Uncheck .. (turn off)
System Preferences/Date & Time/
Set Date and Time Automatically

Disable problematic startup items in
System Preferences/Accounts/Startup Items

Disable auto-mounting of networked volumes ... Finder/Go/Connect To Server/delete all servers listed.

You may have a Fonts Problem ..

Drag your user font folder to the desktop and log in again ....
Users/Home/Library/Fonts
If your startup problems disappear you have a font problem ...
Times RO is particularly problematic ..
If you don' t need it .. delete it

You may have duplicate conflicting fonts .. go to FontBook in Applications
and look for duplicates. Be careful not to deactivate any fonts in the System/Library/Fonts folder.

Clean your Font Cache with this ....
Font Finagler
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22795

Does Safari launch from the application? If not ...
Go to Macintosh HD/Users/Your_Name/Library/Preferences and trash the files:
- com.apple.ATS.plist
- com.apple.BezelServices.plist
Restart. If this did not help, go to Users/Your_Name/Library and drag the folder Preferences to the desktop. Restart and see if this solved the problem

Many of these suggestions are reference to this thread ...

Slow Startup
http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbth...b=5&o=&fpart=1

Failing all this ..
Run Combo Updater
Mac OS Standalone & Combo Updates
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/macosxupdates.html

Still no Joy ..
Archive & Install then Update ..
X-lab: Advice on Archive & Install
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/archiveinstall.html

[Big Mac]

I've probably posted this before (along with others), but people who ritually repair their permissions are wasting time. Permissions have nothing to do with system speed. Permissions only govern access to files, folders and programs.

[bergy]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I've probably posted this before (along with others), but people who ritually repair their permissions are wasting time. Permissions have nothing to do with system speed. Permissions only govern access to files, folders and programs.

This is straight from Apple ...

"The installation of third party applications can result in incorrect permissions. This can result in odd hangs, slowdowns or other erratic behavior."

Re:Apple - Why Repair Permissions?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712


Some other info on permissions ...
Permission Repair: The Full Story
http://www.atomicbird.com/node/view/29

[grayware]

I had slooooow start-up times and I have to say, Font Finagler worked like a charm! Thanks for the good advice.

[ListerMint]

Thought I would contribute my penny's worth.

Have you tried updating the prebinding? Sometimes, for some (apparently) inexplicable reason, your computer slows down to a crawl after you have installed a big application.

In that case, you may want to "update the prebinding." This means forcing Mac OS X to go through all of the application files and make sure that they are correctly linked together. The Mac OS X default installer usually takes care of this by itself, but some third-party installers may be less cautious.

To do this, simply open your Terminal and type:
sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

Then, press return, type your password, and press return again.

Don't worry about the lines of text that will scroll on your Terminal. This simply means that the command is doing its work.

The whole process should only take a few minutes. However, it will considerably slow your computer down and for maximum efficiency, you should not use it at the same time.

Once the command has exited, immediately reboot your computer.

Users who still have Classic applications and a Mac OS 9 system folder on their computers do not need to worry: the command will simply ignore the files and won't damage them.

Second penny's worth. While I have read some things about how "evil" the Mac version of Norton is, I have used Norton AntiVirus 9.0.3 for about a year now with no serious problems at all (well, except for the problem I created). It has not noticeably slowed down anything.

Third penny's worth. I wholeheartedly agree with performing the periodic maintainance routines. My computers are never shut off, however, they are usually asleep during the cron maintainance schedule. So, every Saturday I opened the terminal and do the periodics. It seems to help.

'nuff said.