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Harvey · Sep 27, 2008, 03:29 PM

Is it me (and a few of my friends) or is OS X getting slower with each new update. I recently updated to 10.5.5, as I am sure many of you have, and each and everyone of my bookmarks seems to labor to get there. I am getting what is a 4 to 5 second lag before anything starts to materialize. My iMac is a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM. It will be 1 yr old in October. Is there anything I can do to get some of that speed back? Does a program like Cocktail do any good?

jmiddel · Sep 27, 2008, 04:17 PM

Did you just update through software updater, or did you download and install the combo updater? If the former, do the latter, it often fixes a number weirdnesses.

64stang06 · Sep 27, 2008, 04:33 PM

I have a 2.0GHz C2D iMac (Aluminum) and I don't notice a slowdown. Going from 10.4.11-->10.5.x was actually a speed boost for me.

moonmonkey · Sep 28, 2008, 01:26 AM

No, its getting faster and faster.

Big Mac · Sep 28, 2008, 01:46 AM

There could be many causes related to your apparent slow-down (software corruption, bad application or driver, hard drive issue, insufficient RAM), but the answer to your general question is no.

simonm · Sep 28, 2008, 05:08 AM

My experience has been that OS X seems to benefit from occasional flushing of caches (once a month or so). There are a few utuilities out there but my fav is MainMenu.

Cold Warrior · Sep 28, 2008, 10:43 AM

I've used Onyx before and used its Maintenance and Cleaning options (most of them). Seemed to speed things up once certain caches regenerated, but it could've been placebo. No testing was done.

fisherKing · Sep 28, 2008, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

I've used Onyx before and used its Maintenance and Cleaning options (most of them). Seemed to speed things up once certain caches regenerated, but it could've been placebo. No testing was done.

i get (or think i get) the same thing, and have been using Onyx for years (without problem). 10.5.5 is as fast as 10.5.4 for me...

Harvey · Sep 28, 2008, 03:13 PM

Hello:
First let me thank everyone who has taken the time to respond to my question on speed. The problem usually manifest itself as a "stutter" as the url is being processed in the address bar . . . nothing visual but a 5 to 8 second hesitation before completing the page. It is also happening on my iBook. (Is worse there). Ver 10.5.5, 1.5 Memory, and 1.33 Power PC G4. I am running at about 35 GB used with 2 GB of available HD space. How important is this in page generation?
Tried MAin Menu with no noticeable change. I am thinking of re-initializing my HD to make room. Is this a viable option?

Harv

64stang06 · Sep 28, 2008, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by Harvey

Hello:
First let me thank everyone who has taken the time to respond to my question on speed. The problem usually manifest itself as a "stutter" as the url is being processed in the address bar . . . nothing visual but a 5 to 8 second hesitation before completing the page. It is also happening on my iBook. (Is worse there). Ver 10.5.5, 1.5 Memory, and 1.33 Power PC G4. I am running at about 35 GB used with 2 GB of available HD space. How important is this in page generation?
Tried MAin Menu with no noticeable change. I am thinking of re-initializing my HD to make room. Is this a viable option?

Harv

Get an external drive and free up that space. I would never run a computer with less than 15%-20% free hard drive space.

Big Mac · Sep 28, 2008, 05:48 PM

Yeah, that's way too little Harvey if you really mean 2GB free. If that were true you would be getting constant disk full messages. OS X doesn't function well with so little free space. If you really have only 2GB free then your drive is probably highly fragmented, too.

Harvey · Sep 28, 2008, 09:38 PM

It actually has 1.8 GB free. I have known how to defrag PCs but don't believe I've even done it on my mac since the Norton days. Are there programs that can do that for me?

Thanks

Chuckit · Sep 28, 2008, 09:48 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Yeah, that's way too little Harvey if you really mean 2GB free. If that were true you would be getting constant disk full messages. OS X doesn't function well with so little free space. If you really have only 2GB free then your drive is probably highly fragmented, too.

2 GB free shouldn't normally be giving you warning messages. Those usually start below 1 GB on every system I've seen. I wouldn't like to go much below 2 GB, though, because that can slow your system down something fierce. So that might explain the speed thing.

Hal Itosis · Sep 28, 2008, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Harvey

I am running at about 35 GB used with 2 GB of available HD space. How important is this in page generation?

Originally Posted by Big Mac

If you really have only 2GB free then your drive is probably highly fragmented, too.

Originally Posted by Chuckit

2 GB free shouldn't normally be giving you warning messages. Those usually start below 1 GB on every system I've seen. I wouldn't like to go much below 2 GB, though, because that can slow your system down something fierce. So that might explain the speed thing.

Also... don't imagine for a second that there are 2 GB of *contiguous* free space.
I'd be impressed if the largest *contiguous* free-space fragment was over 100 MB.

Can OSX generate a 128 MB swapfile when the largest contiguous block on disk is 100 MB?
I've heard some say yes, but i have no idea. It doesn't sound like a healthy way to operate.

At the very least, I would delete unnecessary junk (foreign language project folders and
printer drivers for printers i'll never use, etc.)

Simon · Sep 29, 2008, 04:11 AM

Originally Posted by Harvey

The problem usually manifest itself as a "stutter" as the url is being processed in the address bar . . . nothing visual but a 5 to 8 second hesitation before completing the page. It is also happening on my iBook. (Is worse there). Ver 10.5.5, 1.5 Memory, and 1.33 Power PC G4. I am running at about 35 GB used with 2 GB of available HD space. How important is this in page generation?
Tried MAin Menu with no noticeable change. I am thinking of re-initializing my HD to make room. Is this a viable option?

Two things you should look into.

- Clean up. You need more free space. As a rule of thumb you should leave at least 10% of your HD free. OS X will cope with a lot less, but in terms of performance you should free up some space. Use WhatSize (it used to be free, check that page's comment section for where to find an older free copy) to find out what's wasting most space.

- With 10.5 Apple changed some DNS stuff. It appears some Leopard Macs are having trouble with certain DNS servers (especially those running some kind of MS internet server suite). These Macs show long load times for simple web pages even though the network is running well otherwise. It's easy to find out if this is the issue. Instead of using the DNS servers automatically supplied by the DHCP server, try using Open DNS' servers (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220).

Ted L. Nancy · Sep 29, 2008, 09:20 AM

Originally Posted by jmiddel

Did you just update through software updater, or did you download and install the combo updater? If the former, do the latter, it often fixes a number weirdnesses.

I've heard this before. Question: Is anyone able to explain why?

lenox · Sep 29, 2008, 11:20 AM

The combo updater updates many more files than the delta one does. This is because it doesn't assume anything about your setup, such as security patches or intermediary updates you may have installed that Software Update knows about.

For instance, usually a combo updater will say it will update a variety of os x versions (Updates 10.5.1-10.5.4 to 10.5.5, for instance) whereas a delta update will only update one version (10.5.4 to 10.5.5).

pcarrington · Sep 29, 2008, 11:49 AM

Hi
Try to reset Safari: "FILE" > "RESET SAFARI"
Also, DNSChanger Tool: "http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33696"
will help in some cases.
Plus, empty cache(s) w/ Leopard or Tiger Cache Cleaner or MainMenu.
Plus, consider 'XSlimmer' to get rid of unneeded foreign languages and localizations to free up hard drive space as well as consider defrag w/ iDefrag from Coriolis.
Some of these are free and some aren't... usually, one can find the 'free' versions that may do the same but maybe not as well? Who knows.
Hope this helps but my systems get faster and faster.
One more thing: "Applications" > "Utilities" > "Activity Monitor" to see if there are any programs hanging up or hogging excess usage / activity. Force quit and restart.
Patrick / MacOvation

Harvey · Sep 29, 2008, 07:18 PM

Not to beat a dead horse > > > >Well here is the latest. I reinstalled Leopard 10.5 in my iBook. This was a clean install. 24.9 GB of free space on a 40 GB drive. First link I go to from a totally fresh Safari (eBay.com) takes 22 seconds. Moving from there to Amazon .com takes about 20 seconds to a finished page. I am using Comcast at its fastest speed $52 a month will buy. Am I slow, average, or complaining about nothing? Should my next move be to upgrade to 10.5.5. I suspect the answer will be definitely. I'll wait for a response. Thank You all again for chiming in.

Harv

fisherKing · Sep 29, 2008, 10:06 PM

are all your slowdown issues are related to surfing? try resetting your router. are you on ethernet or airport?
i'd explore those things if the web is the problem...

Cold Warrior · Sep 29, 2008, 10:09 PM

You can try flushing your dns cache. Open Terminal and type

dscacheutil -flushcache

Harvey · Sep 29, 2008, 10:42 PM

Cured . . . Simon (and Fisher King, Cold Warrior) got me to try changing my DNS Servers. Did this on my iMac, my iBook, my wife's PowerBook, and my friends Mac. It worked on all of them. Now who is to blame? Is it Comcast? Is what I did simply renew my DHCP? Where can I learn more about DNS servers . . . thanks all for you help.
Harv

PS: all of the above mac are screaming.....

Cold Warrior · Sep 29, 2008, 10:44 PM

Comcast is most likely to blame. OpenDNS has very quick DNS servers that work without problems. I plug them in to all my computers and my routers.

Simon · 03:47 AM

Originally Posted by Harvey

Cured . . . Simon (and Fisher King, Cold Warrior) got me to try changing my DNS Servers. Did this on my iMac, my iBook, my wife's PowerBook, and my friends Mac. It worked on all of them.

I certainly had that feeling. And yes, it's likely something that changed on Comcast's end.

In my experience 80% of the people that report something like "all of a sudden my Mac has started loading pages so slowly" are suffering from some kind of DNS problem. Since trying out OpenDNS' IP numbers is easy and done very quickly I think people should in general first try that before they do anything else.

Now what I'd like to know is what exactly Apple changed in Leopard that now so many more people have started noticing such DNS issues. It appears Tiger's DNS handling was more 'forgiving'.

Simon · Sep 30, 2008, 03:51 AM

One more thing. These DNS issues are also easy to diagnose w/o changing the DNS settings. A standard pattern is that you see slow page loads, but you still have fast file transfers on the same network. The reason is that when you load a page there are many domain names involved and they all need to be resolved. I you have DNS issues you'll notice them here. When you d/l a file however, there is only one name server query and after that it's as fast as your connection to the file server is.

Of course if you also happen to know an IP it's easy to tell the difference between calling by IP or by name. Without DNS issues both should take about the same amount of time to complete. I OTOH you're suffering from DNS issues you will see that calling by IP can be a lot faster.

JimHouston · Sep 30, 2008, 04:29 PM

When I upgraded to 10.5.5 I experienced the same slowdown described here. It turns out my first DNS server configured in my network settings was not responding (I had three configured total, and the second and third were working). Apparently Leopard prior to 10.5.5 could figured out that the first DNS provider wasn't working and either ignore it for multiple requests or timeout much quicker. It did take me a day to figure out the problem, and during that time I thought my ISP was having serious latency issues as browsing was painfully slow.

Catfish_Man · Oct 3, 2008, 01:50 PM

DNS is definitely tricky to do right. I too would be interested to know what they're changing that has made things more sensitive; theoretically isn't DirectoryService supposed to be caching DNS information?

rem · Oct 3, 2008, 06:11 PM

I notice more & more people praising opendns. When I traceroute to an opendns server, I see +10 hops whereas my ISPs DNS servers seem fast and are a few hops away (which is normally the case). How could opendns be an advantage (other than to avoid windows servers)? Also, isn't there some way to telnet the server and based on the response you can see whether its *nix or MS?

Catfish_Man · Oct 3, 2008, 06:15 PM

rem: your ISP has good DNS then. Many don't, sadly.

rem · Oct 3, 2008, 06:34 PM

Catfish_Man: dns seems ok; however, occasionally late at night while my adsl modem appears to be connected ok, the router shows an indicator that the internet connection is down.

I was reading about dnsmasq and wondering if there would be any advantages to running it on OS X, but its probably redundant with dscacheutil on OS X.