[LM_NET] HIT : Tech : Mac running slow SOLVED!!!

[Barbara Fritz <bfritzlibrary@GMAIL.COM>]

Thank you so much for all the kind help from some very accomplished Mac users!

My original Target:

Hope someone can help me. I have one of the newer iMacs, duo Intel
processors, 512 mg in desktop memory, running the newest 10.4
(10.4.11) version available. My machine is running slower and slower.
I checked it in case it might have a virus, no it doesn't. Microsoft
Office is the slowest program to start up, but even the machine boots
more slowly than it did in August 2006 when I bought it. I run Main
Menu on it often to clean up permissions, etc. and that does not help.
I install all the updates to programs, etc. that Apples sends my way.

Do I need to purchase and run Spring Cleaning? Is there something I
should be doing for my Mac that I'm not? Any ideas?

SOLUTION : It seems that the memory issue is a side effect for some
computer when they update to OS 10.4.11 and that I am not alone in
having memory issues where none existed before. So to get everything
back to normal, turn off the Mac. Unplug. Hold in the start button and
plug computer back in. Let go of start button and press again to
restart. I had to do this twice as the first time the computer worked
great, but the cooling fan sounded like I was running a model airplane
around my house. Once I repeated the process all resettled nicely.
Bottom line my computer is running nice and fast again and has no more
memory issues. I still only have 512 in memory and everything is
loading nicely once again. (I do have another problem, but I think I
will post that one for help also. It is probably tied to the same
issues that occurred with the recent update to my computer.)

Additional suggestions :

1.      Have you tried disk utility on the hd?  That works for me a lot of
the time.  (tried, didn't help)

a. Have you run the Utilities -- Disk Utilities?  Try Repairing Disk
Permissions.  If it's still slow, try booting from the start up CD and
repairing the disk.



2.      Have you dumped the cache and cookies on your browsers on a regular
basis? (yes, but tried again anyway, didn't help)

3.      Do you leave it on overnight? OSX does it's reorganization (defrag)
at something like 2 am. Our techs told us to leave them on – shut down
on the weekends. (I rarely turn it off, didn't help)

4.  Check to see how much "stuff" you have saved on the computer.  You
can check how memory is being used.  You may have to delete or save to
CD to free up hard drive space.

      To see how much RAM is installed, choose About This Mac from the
Apple Menu. The Memory field specifies the amount of RAM installed in
the computer.

      Mac OS X does not display the memory allocation and usage levels
of individual applications in the About This Mac Window. Mac OS X
automatically manages memory allocation and usage. This is different
from earlier versions of Mac OS.

      Viewing memory usage      For Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 or later, open
Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/). For Mac OS X 10.2.8 or
earlier, open ProcessViewer (/Applications/Utilities/).  (tried, had
lots of disk space left, didn't help)

5. The main culprit: That's simply not enough memory. Here's a story
illustrating why. About a year and a half ago I bought a duo core
Intel Mac mini with 1GB of RAM memory thinking it would fly past my G4
[PowerPC processor] PowerBook that also had 1GB of RAM. Boy was i
wrong. I kept spent way more time watching the spinning rainbow ball
of boredom while on the Intel Mac Mini in comparison to the Powerbook
whilst performing the same tasks.

Then I found out why: According to the Mac Geniuses, the core duo
processors effectively split the RAM in half thus allocating 50% of
RAM per core. That explains the slower observed performance. Hence
what you really have is a pair of processors being chocked by 256MBs
of RAM. Not a good situation- but you knew that already. :-/

As far as getting your system back to how zippy it was originally,
there is no better utility than Applejack in my experience. Find it
here: http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

It literally works miracles... Honest!

For you, at this stage, do not use their auto mode. Best results are
gotten by manually going through steps 1-5 while purging your
individual user cache files. This will take some time in your
situation, I think. Allocate 15-20 minutes perhaps.

Spring Cleaning - It's not worth the money.

TechTool Pro - Is worth the money.

Disk Warrior - Is worth the money [but may not be the medicine you need].

(I have not tried AppleJack but it sound much like MainMenu which I do use often

6. I feel your pain. I'm a confirmed Mac user myself, but there's
always a fear that when something goes wrong with a Mac, it's going to
be catastrophic.

Anyway, I don't know how well-versed you are with "looking under the
hood" at the Unix system that provides the core of the Mac OS. But I'm
going to assume you haven't done this before. Forgive me if I'm wrong,
I'm not trying to condescend. But if you try this it could be helpful.

Open up the Terminal -- it's under Applications -> Utilities. When the
window opens, grab the corner and stretch it out wide. You're going to
run a process that will tell you everything that's happening behind the
scenes and it's going to be on a long, wide chart. This is kind of like
the Task Manager in Windows but it gives you a little more info.

You'll have a command prompt in the Terminal window. Type the following:

ps -aux

Then hit enter. Take a minute to look it over and make sense of it.
It's got the name of every process that's running, what user owns the
process, and how much memory and cpu time each process is using.
Probably one process is using an outsized amount of memory and that's
what's slowing you down. So you're going to kill that process and see
what happens (if it's an essential process, you won't be allowed to
kill it so don't worry).

Find out the PID (process ID number) of the memory pig. There's a
column for it on the chart. Then type this:

kill -9 [PID]

That is the PID number without the brackets.

I don't know why it keeps happening. Usually when processes run away and
start devouring working memory they stop doing it after you reboot. But,
worst case, you'll at least know what to tell the folks at the Apple
Store!

Hope that helps. Let me know if it makes any difference.
(It tried this and no program was hogging memory, didn't help but was
none the less interesting)

7. that is mysterious. 17% isn't outrageous for Ffx. Certainly it's
not enough to distort overall performance. If you were running Windows
I'd be suspicious of a rogue program that's hiding itself from the
system monitor, but that's just not an issue for Mac. It's conceivable,
but extremely unlikely.

Root in Unix is like "SYSTEM" in Windows, it's the administrative user
that "owns" the essential processes. "Nobody" is a dummy user for some
background processes. Both of those are totally normal.

I did a little research and I found a discussion that seems to speak
to a similar if not identical problem:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5391013

It seems to be related to some recent updates and their effect on the
core graphics functionality. I have had some trouble with the most
recent iTunes update, but nothing like what you describe. Still, if
you have an Apple Store nearby, it might be worth bringing your
machine in and talking to someone.

Apple is apparently aware of some problems, so there might be a patch
coming soon. You also might see the problem disappear when you upgrade
your memory.

7. Hmmmm...Sounds like it could be another consequence of the update.
There was a large package that went out last week. Obviously they test
these things to try to prevent this, but it's impossible to anticipate
every combination of hardware, software, and network that users are
going to encounter. Sometimes things conflict. And ripples of weird
problems that suddenly erupt suggest a common source. That would be my
guess. There were a number of problems with a major update back in
March. None of them affected me, but there was a lot of chatter in the
blogosphere.

I did a little reading in the Mac support discussion for OS X Tiger
and found this:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1250984&tstart=0

It includes a little trick that might work for you. It sounds like a
similar problem. Small comfort, but it seems you're not the only one
to have difficulties with 10.4.11.


-- 
"Librarian. Genetically predisposed to answer questions and correct
misconceptions - whether asked or not." 2 01 2007

Barbara Fritz
Elementary Librarian
Bloomsburg Area School District
Bloomsburg PA
bfritzlibrary@gmail.com
http://bloomsburgasd.schoolwires.com/62784211610220/site/default.asp

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