Some Things are Really Slow. Help?

kamera · Apr 21, 2008

Hi, I'm a new user here and I hate to start off with a question right away but this is driving me nuts.

For a couple of weeks now, I've been noticing really annoying slow-downs. I'm on a 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro w/1GB of RAM. I'm used to my system being snappy, really snappy.

It used to take 30 seconds from power-up to Google. Now it takes about a minute from start-up up to the menubar load.

What's going on???

I run a pretty light software system, with two heavyweights: Logic Studio and CS3. I try out a bunch of crap every now and then. But then I always use AppDelete to send the offending app and all its demon spawn into the trash.

The main areas of slow-down are:

1. Start-up

2. Anything to do with Wireless: connecting, re-connecting, scanning

3. Dock: I have magnification turned on (because I like a certain amount of gratuitous animation), and sometimes it'll take 3 seconds from the moment I pull the mouse down to the dock to the moment the icon "grows." This, needless to say, used to be instant.

4. Stacks: Click. Wait. Wait. There it is.

5. Opening a file in Logic. But I think that's a bug since I'm not the only one with that.

6. File previews in Finder, in the Open dialog, in CoverFlow. Click on the file. Wait. Wait. Wait. There's the preview.

I reset the PRAM and ran the cron scripts yesterday. I didn't repair permissions since a lot of respectable people on a respectable Audio Engineer forum seemed to mostly agree that it can cause more damage.

Now, lately I've been tracking to my internal HD since the external one is full. Could I have damaged the drive by forcing the head to skip between operating Logic and recording audio? Could that be the cause of it all?

Normally I'd fume and then back everything up and just do a clean re-install, but all my backup HDs are full. And I can't get another one this week for multiple reasons.

Any ideas?

Zoolook · Apr 21, 2008

A reinstall won't help.

CS3 and Logic ARE very heavywieght programs especially for a machine with a gig of RAM. It's likely your machine is desperately caching as much as possible immediately after boot-up and quickly running out of memory.

You can check a few things though. After a clean bootup, open up a terminal session (go to Spotlight and type it in or find it in applications/utilities).

Type 'top' (without the quotes) in the terminal and press enter. Post the result here.

In the meantime, you can try kicking off the housekeeping to see if this makes any difference. Type:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

into the terminal.

kamera · Apr 21, 2008

Zoolook said:
CS3 and Logic ARE very heavywieght programs especially for a machine with a gig of RAM. It's likely your machine is desperately caching as much as possible immediately after boot-up and quickly running out of memory.

Agreed, except there is a difference between how it used to run and how it runs now. It used to be snappy even with both those behemoths on it.

Zoolook said:
Type 'top' (without the quotes) in the terminal and press enter. Post the result here.

Code:

 PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
  143 top          3.7%  0:03.45   1    18     29 1140K   188K  1732K    18M
  134 bash         0.0%  0:00.01   1    14     19  268K   184K   916K    18M
  133 login        0.0%  0:00.02   1    17     55  284K   188K  1072K    19M
  132 Terminal    30.6%  0:06.03   3   102-   206 2768K    13M    11M   350M
  126 mdworker     0.0%  0:00.44   4    55     39 1376K  3700K  3176K    32M
  125 MIDIServer   0.0%  0:00.09   4    79     73  480K   228K  2032K    21M
  124 mdworker     0.0%  0:00.24   4    71     34  700K  3300K  2544K    32M
  121 usbmuxd      0.0%  0:00.00   2    21     26  200K   184K   696K    19M
  119 GearBox He   0.0%  0:00.47   2    71    152 2324K  3780K  4800K   311M
  118 MicrosoftM   0.0%  0:00.18   1    57     46  640K  5004K  2552K   299M
  116 iTunesHelp   0.0%  0:00.05   2    52     46  528K  2020K  2340K   281M
  111 Finder       0.0%  0:08.54   7   173    369   17M    34M    35M   416M
  110 SystemUISe   0.0%  0:00.82   8   261    366 3684K    10M  9392K   344M
  109 ATSServer    0.0%  0:00.46   2    82    159  892K  2296K  3276K    47M
  108 Dock         0.0%  0:01.67   3   108    373 3608K    28M    19M   342M 
  107 pboard       0.0%  0:00.00   1    15     23  172K   184K   584K    19M
  105 UserEventA   0.0%  0:00.24   2   444     99  708K  2672K  2356K   278M
  104 Spotlight    0.0%  0:00.44   2    78     80 1156K  5144K  5076K   293M
  100 AirPort Ba   0.0%  0:00.18   3    87    169 1144K  7840K  3968K   328M
   96 launchd      0.0%  0:00.17   3   140     24  172K   292K   508K    18M
   93 qmasterd     0.0%  0:00.05   2    24     53  744K  2768K  3924K    23M
   88 qmasterd     0.0%  0:00.06   1    16     51  656K  2764K  3692K    23M
   84 Mbox2CS      0.0%  0:00.00   1    18     23  180K   184K   856K    19M
   79 coreaudiod   0.0%  0:00.12   2   405     58  920K  2660K  2800K    22M
   72 httpd        0.0%  0:00.00   1    10    294  164K  7704K   660K    28M
   63 ocspd        0.0%  0:00.02   1    18     21  408K   192K  1068K    18M
   58 blued        0.0%  0:00.24   1    50     34  684K  1960K  2168K    28M
   54 WindowServ   7.7%  0:04.97   5   171    901   10M    26M    31M-  350M 
   48 coreservic   0.0%  0:00.57   2   119     75 1684K    17M    18M    39M
   45 distnoted    0.0%  0:00.17   1    44     18  232K   184K   708K    18M
   42 Digidesign   0.0%  0:00.65   1    26     28  232K   184K  1180K    19M
   40 socketfilt   0.0%  0:00.16   3    35     25  600K   224K  1564K    18M
   39 autofsd      0.0%  0:00.07   1    21     18  144K   184K   664K    18M
   36 configd      0.0%  0:01.12   3   184     73  644K   348K  1968K    19M
   34 DirectoryS   0.0%  0:00.56   5    64     37 1464K   188K  3156K    21M
   33 diskarbitr   0.0%  0:00.16   1   103     18  332K   184K   976K    18M
   30 dynamic_pa   0.0%  0:00.08   1    17     20  160K   184K   708K    18M
   28 fseventsd    0.0%  0:00.03  10    61     46  384K   184K   908K    22M
   27 hidd         0.0%  0:00.00   2    28     20  120K   192K   600K    18M
   25 KernelEven   0.0%  0:00.00   2    20     19  156K   184K   644K    18M
   24 loginwindo   0.0%  0:00.35   3   228    128 1256K  8260K  5160K   298M
   23 mDNSRespon   0.0%  0:00.06   2    52     26  312K   220K  1184K    19M
   22 mds          0.0%  0:01.29  16   241    145   18M  1504K  8244K   134M
   20 securityd    0.0%  0:00.14   7   102     51  736K   224K  1848K    22M
   17 SystemStar   0.0%  0:00.01   1    20     18  152K   184K   676K    18M
   16 update       0.0%  0:00.08   1    13     17   76K   184K   288K    17M
   15 httpd        0.0%  0:00.63   1    17    294   56K  7704K  6352K    28M
   14 ntpd         0.0%  0:00.02   1    15     19  188K   184K   824K    18M
   12 syslogd      0.0%  0:00.08   4    37     28  188K   188K   476K    19M
   11 notifyd      0.0%  0:00.03   2   109     20  204K   188K   448K    18M

Zoolook said:
In the meantime, you can try kicking off the housekeeping to see if this makes any difference.

Code:

sudo: periodical: command not found

Zoolook · Apr 21, 2008

kamera said:
Agreed, except there is a difference between how it used to run and how it runs now. It used to be snappy even with both those behemoths on it.

Code:

sudo: periodical: command not found

Sorry -

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

As for the machine getting progressively slower, this can be down to lots of issues - but often it's missing file links, too many fonts that you never use, bits and peices of old apps you thought you'd deleted (type plist into spotlight to get an idea).

I think the 1 gig is limiting, but to be honest having 2 gigs will make no difference to the startup time, but may help the responsiveness in finder and the dock.

You missed all the top summary stuff from the terminal, but it doesn't look as though your machine is doing anything stressful.

Some Things are Really Slow. Help?

kamera

Zoolook

kamera

Zoolook

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