Macbook Pro 15"

Hi there

I'm a proud owner of a 2006 Macbook Pro 15". Of late, I have been noticing that the desktop slideshow has been slightly choppy. Previously, the pictures' transition used to be very smooth but now it seems to be a bit laggy. Can someone explain to me the reason behind this? I'm running OS 10.6.5

Appreciate your kind help

Amit

When's the last time you:

rebooted the machine?

did any maintenance - such as running Onyx?


How much free space do you have left on the system drive/partition?

Hi..

Let me answer the questions as follows:

rebooted the machine?

Daily, I switch off the machine every night and turn it on at the start of the day

did any maintenance - such as running Onyx?

I run Onyx every 2-3 days.

How much free space do you have left on the system drive/partition?
36.06 GB

Please let me know if I have missed out any other info..

Amit

What size drive is that along with the free space - if you've got a 250GB drive or larger and that 36GB represents less than 20% of your drive size, I'll be surprised if that's the only thing you're seeing slow down.

The last thing I would suggest - if that is the only thing you're noticing slow downs with - is that the files (I'm assuming added at various times during the last 4 years) of the pictures you're trying to use in the slide show are spread out from one end of the drive to the other.

Hi

The total disk size is 119.09GB so we are looking at a free cap of around 30%.

Next, the photos used in the slideshow are ones in the system (that are placed under the Apple folder). I'm not using any other photo album.

Please advice.

That much free space on a drive that size should be plenty.

The other thing that's going to affect it are any processes you have running while using the slideshow.

Hi

Hmmm...I don't know what could be running in the background. I generally have 2-3 programs running at given moment. These are usually Microsoft excel, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Safari. I don't think these eat up a lot of RAM either...

Please let me know...

Amit

Wouldn't think those would affect a slideshow screensaver.

You'll need to open up Activity Monitor and check it to see what else is running when you experience the issue. This is the one monitoring tool I keep running in the dock, so that when I do experience any issues, Ive got it open with a little bit of history sitting there I can look at.

Hi

Thanks for the support so far. I have the activity monitor running. Is there anything that I should be looking for? Any hints??

Amit

Hi...

I'm not sure if this is relevant but I happened to notice that the dock seems to get laggy when the desktop changes background. Could there be a bug?? Has anyone else experienced this?

Let me know

Amit

You're looking for anything that is eating up CPU cycles on the machine.

And how often do you have it set to change the background picture - I'd suggest increasing that time frame.

Hi there

I'm back. I have been monitoring the system for running processes but find that none of the opened programs really cause an impact on the processor cycles except for an odd increase in the cycles caused by a random program.

I also tried increasing the time frame of the slideshow; in fact I checked it out at different time frames - 5 secs upto 15 mins. Either way, the lag still persists. Further, I found another thing - when the desktop changes background almost everything becomes laggy - genie effect, dock magnification and they become smooth as soon as the background changes. I have a hunch that the latest update in the OS from 10.6.4 to 10.6.5 has led to this lag? Could it be so??

Please let me know. Also, is there any way I can revert to 10.6.4?

Ideas appreciated.

Amit