Spotlight Problem

Hi,

Would appreciate any help with the following problem.

I have a G5 running 10.4.7. Everyday at around 9.15am the computer hard drive seems to go into catalogue overdrive and the process slows the computer speed down by as much as 80%. The hard dive seems to be working overtime and someone suggested it might be Spotlight doing a daily catalogue.

My question then is, can Spotlight be turned off. I have already gone into Spotlight preferences and removed the tick from all boxes and also listed all folders on all drives under privacy.

The problem still continues.

Thanks for any help.

Have you already checked which processes eats up so much of your memory? If not, in Terminal (Utilities > Terminal), type top and press enter. This should show you all the processes currently running, and also their memory usage. Alternatively, you can also double click on Activity Monitor (Utilities > Activity Monitor) to find out the same info. Once you know what those processes are, perhaps we can help further.

Spotlight Problme

Thank You For Your Help.

I Will Try That When The Computer Starts The Catalogue Process In The Morning.

Using Your Suggestions The System States That At The Moment, It Has 83.1% Cpu Free / Idle.

Thanks.

how much free hard drive space do you have??

i always thought that spotlight monitored your HD constantly all day long and not as one big process at the end of the day
-chris

Spotlight indexes files instantly on any touch, so there shouldn't be one large indexing session.

It sounds like some process is out of control. When the computer starts doing this, try to open Activity Monitor and see what's taking up most of the CPU.

You can also leave Activity Monitor running in the Dock before the time it usually happens, that way you can easily pop it open and see what process is eating up your resources