Help me whip it back into shape

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OK, I'm just going to be straight-forward and to the point with this. Here is my list of problems:

1. Extremely slow Safari, the scrolling jerks horribly, nothing is smooth like new. But when I go to Sunrise or Firefox the problem follows after about 10 minutes of use.

2. Expose, Dashboard, and the Desktop thing are all slow and jerky, Dashboard takes foooreeeeeevvvvvvvveeeeeerrrr to load, I see blank widgets for about a minute before anything happens.

3. I have to restart every day for it to stay tolerable.

4. It does a huuuuuge amount of "thinking" before anything happens, the Finder is the only fast thing to open.

5. The fan comes on ALLL the time, when I only go to forums, IM people, and listen to iTunes.

6. Sometimes it just gets thinking spells, it will think for about 10 minutes when I have done nothing to provoke it.

7. I see a LOT more of the pinwheel than I used to, and there are hardly any aftermarket apps on here, a little music, some documents, and about 60-70 Kodak pictures.

Please help me like the Mac again, and dump some tricks on me too to make things easier. Thanks all!
 
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My recollection from the previous thread was that you installed new RAM and problems started to follow after that. Is this correct? If so, first try removing the "new" RAM and going back to square one.
 

dtravis7


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I agree with Todd, you did say it went a lot slower with the new RAM. Try it without that and see what happens. I would also try a reinstall and see if that helps. Something really sounds wrong. I am not saying my ibook runs like a new Core 2 Duo laptop, but it's far from slow and jerky. My fan rarely comes on and it's a very quiet machine doing Safari, Mail, iChat, Adium, Colloquy IRC and itunes. I only had 512GB RAM up to a day ago. It feels just as fast overall as my Compaq AMD 64 Laptop with XP SP2 which sort of shocked me.
 
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Another thing you might try, take a screen shot of Activity Monitor so folks can see what processes you've got running, etc.
 
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Honestly UserOf,
I would 1st recommend doing what ToddG said regarding checking the RAM... Then, especially if you don't have much 3rd party stuff on it, I would do a clean install and start fresh. It really should be a joy to use. Let us know if this tips help.

EDIT: I'm too s l o w .
 
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I have the Activity Monitor thing open, but everything is always changing, what the heck am I supposed to do with it? It is showing that iTunes is using the most of the CPU.
 
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I have the Activity Monitor thing open, but everything is always changing, what the heck am I supposed to do with it? It is showing that iTunes is using the most of the CPU.

Drag the bottom corner of the Activity Monitor Window to let it show quite a bit of info....

Then press... Apple+Shift+4 your cursor will turn to crosshairs... now press the Spacebar.. the crosshairs turn into a camera.. move the camera over the Activity Monitor window and press Enter...

Upload the picture that is left on your desk top for us to see... it should be named "picture 1.jpg"


EDIT: Oooh I'm getting faster :D
 
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whoa, man. iTunes? How big is your iTunes library?

Even an Archive and Install could help. You should do that. How much HDD space do you have left?


I don't think any computer, Mac or PC, if well maintained, should be like that


EDIT: Darn. I should of read your original post. A little music.
 
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OK, it changes ALL the time, so I'll tell you. When I do nothing but leave iTunes on, it stays around 3 blocks. When I move the cursor, about 5 turn green, reloading a page in Safari takes nearly all of them, I closed Mail and reopened it just to see, and it held all of them for a while. As I type this, it goes from 3-6, if I type fast it takes more of them blocks. When I turned on the screensaver with the hot corner, it went all the way. Scrolling with two fingers takes all but 2. Just selecting iTunes in the Dock to bring it to the front takes almost all of it. I dunno what any of this means, but I just thought I'd throw it out there.
 
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RIDE ... I use Apple-Shift-4 all the time but didn't know about the Spacebar/camera/window trick, thanks! Tried to give you rep but the system says I've been too generous over the past 24 hours, sorry. :)
 
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I have (minus the original sounds) about 45-60 songs. That's it.
Here is what the Disk Utility says:
Capacity : 55.8 GB (59,877,387,264 Bytes)
Available : 37.3 GB (40,008,101,888 Bytes)
Used : 18.5 GB (19,869,282,304 Bytes)
Number of Files : 370,073
 
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Your HDD has plenty of space. We need to see memory and processor usage.
 

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OK, it changes ALL the time, so I'll tell you. When I do nothing but leave iTunes on, it stays around 3 blocks. When I move the cursor, about 5 turn green, reloading a page in Safari takes nearly all of them, I closed Mail and reopened it just to see, and it held all of them for a while. As I type this, it goes from 3-6, if I type fast it takes more of them blocks. When I turned on the screensaver with the hot corner, it went all the way. Scrolling with two fingers takes all but 2. Just selecting iTunes in the Dock to bring it to the front takes almost all of it. I dunno what any of this means, but I just thought I'd throw it out there.

Still. Take a couple of screen shots of it in CPU and Memory. We need to see what is running and might spot something wrong. It will help us help you.
 
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Picture16-2.png
 
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The strange thing is, I don't even have Kodak running. Or most of that stuff. I have triangles under Finder, Dashboard, Safari, iTunes, and Mail. Well, the Activity monitor too.
 
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When was the last time you emptied Safari's cache? I've had Safari open all day, lots of windows, and its only using 250MB of Real Memory.
 
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Don't worry too much about the kodak.. it's taking up a minor amount of space (if you'd like.. click/highlight kodak and then Force Quit).... Safari on the other hand is taking up 1/2 GB (500mb)of Space by itself... Clear it's Cache, then force quit and open it again... See what that does for you.
 
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I empty the cache about 3 times a day. I rarely have over one window open, but have multiple tabs open in the one I do. I clear the history, empty the cache every day, a few times, and Reset Safari about once a week.
 
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I would definitely do a reinstall then. Something is seriously corrupted.
 
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Then something is clearly messed up with your Safari. I don't know if anyone has suggested this yet but you might want to consider a clean install. :ninja:
 

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