Periodic maintainence

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I'm running OSX 10.5 and wanted to know what (if any) maintenance should be run on the Mac. I have the swirling colored beach ball when opening applications.

Thanks.
 

chscag

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Download and install the free maintenance cleanup utility OnyX. Make sure though that you download the version for Leopard. The latest on his website is for Lion. Look below the main heading and you'll see the older versions for download.
 
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Is there anything that I need to know about OnyX ? Anything to be sure I do or don't do ?
 
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Im not sure of Oynx as i use MainMenu Here is a free .v . . . but if it has list with Reindexing Spotlight and Remove .DS_Store files then there is no real need to run them. As reindexing could take hrs to do depending the size of your HD.
Someone else could pop in with Dont's as if you get it wrong with Oynx you can bugger the OS.
I like MM because of the ease of use and does what Oynx does.

Cheers
 
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I use Oynx and have never had a problem with it at all. It's a pretty simple program to use. You can do a search and get a lot of information about the program. It's actually the only program that I use to "Fix" things on my Mac. Most of the knowledge about this program came from this web site and thus far no problems.
 
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Thanks to all of you for your comments. I will download onyx this evening and run it.

Scott
 

pigoo3

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Thanks to all of you for your comments. I will download onyx this evening and run it.

Scott

I think that you will be fine with Onyx...as long as you don't "veer" from the default settings (preselected check boxes). I think that some of the "non-selected" check boxes (if selected) could cause issues if you don't fully understand what these features do.

Just stick to the default settings...and you'll be fine. Also regarding the "beach balls"...read the link in my signature.

Good luck,

- Nick
 
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I have the swirling colored beach ball when opening applications.

That means a process is still running. If it doesn't stop, you're "hung". This could be due to insufficient RAM.
 
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I think that you will be fine with Onyx...as long as you don't "veer" from the default settings (preselected check boxes). I think that some of the "non-selected" check boxes (if selected) could cause issues if you don't fully understand what these features do.

Just stick to the default settings...and you'll be fine. Also regarding the "beach balls"...read the link in my signature.

Good luck,

- Nick

Good advice, it's what I do and it works well. Truthfully if you don't load your computer up with a lot of garbage or untrustworthy software you will only use this program maybe once or twice per year. At least that has been my experience thus far.
 
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Also, how full is the hard drive?

Chas, the capacity is 74.2GB, with 43.08GB being available. I will be moving my music and photo files to the external HD to free up more room on the internal HD. This should help with the issue as well, correct?
 
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chas_m

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Not really. You have plenty of free space available given the size of that (incredibly tiny by today's standards) drive. I was just asking because spinning beachballs and laggy performance are often a sign that the hard drive is approaching full. In your case that's not the issue.
 
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May I ask on the topic of periodic maintenance?

I will likely be using OnyX as well but I had a question as to about how often that should be done? Are there any signs that could happen that could mean I should try to run maintenance? Thank you.
 
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chas_m

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There's no hard and fast rule about this. I run mine every three months or so, and I run my Mac all day, every day.
 

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