Mac running slow after upgrade

So I upgraded my OS from Pather to Leopard and my computer seems to be running slow. Is there anything I should have deleted in this process or should I check something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Upgrades always are complicated. Either clean install or Archive and Install the way to go.

For starters download the OS X.5.6 combo updater, install, and then run Repair Permissions. Leopard has a lot of work to do during boot and always take more time completing that process. How much memory have you installed in whatever model mac you are using?

Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update

Yeah, need to know the system specs. CPU type/speed and memory.

1. It may be due to the first run of the Spotlight indexer. Spotlight will take some time to crawl through and index all the files on your disk.

2. Part of it, though, is that Leopard is just a more complicated and demanding OS than Panther. On any machine that originally shipped with an older version of OS X, a Leopard upgrade will make things somewhat slower. That's why many people don't recommend a Leopard upgrade for certain older machines.

OK - here are my computer specs:

Machine Model - Power Mac G4
CPU Type - PowerPC G4 (2.1)
CPU Speed - 933 MHz
L2 Cache - 256 KB
L3 Cache - 2 MB
Memory - 1.25 GB
Bus Speed - 133 MHz

Hmm.. The specifications are pretty old for a speedy Leopard system.

Like others, I would recommend a complete re-install. Then try out repairing permissions and some sort of slimming down. After time passes, you might want to carry out somesort of defragmentation.

So how would I just wipe the entire hard drive and reinstall leopard? Also how do you defragment a Mac. I know how to do it to my windows laptop.

So I noticed that when I went under System Preferences and clicked on Startup Disk Mac OS 10.5.6 is there but so is Mac OS 9.2.2

Can this be part of the problem?

What are the steps to wipe the entire hard drive and start from new? TY

Any ideas?

How do you repair permissions? What should I get rid of to slim down?

I didn't think you could still have Mac Classic with Leopard, but I could be wrong. If your HDD is supporting two partitions, that was definitely slow things down, especially on your older hardware.

First of all, back everything up to an external drive - Your home folder and any applications you downloaded. Make sure you have everything safe. Then, as others have said, start the install process again with archive and install (this will double your backup protection) - or you could just wipe and install. But you really need to repartition your drive to a single partition, so OS 9 is not on there. I am sure this will be holding you back. If you don't use OS 9 at all anymore, and don't need any files, just remove it, otherwise if you do, you need to boot to it and put those things safe.

How do I set my comp to a single partition? How do I delete os 9?

Zoolook said:

First of all, back everything up to an external drive - Your home folder and any applications you downloaded.

Click to expand...

While I agree about the home folder, I would advise against backing up the applications. Simply moving applications from your current setup to an external and then back to the Mac afterwards may not work for some programs. Some programs will install files outside of /Applications so simply copying the .app package back and forth won't ensure that the application will work. I would advise reinstalling the applications once you have reinstalled OS X. Now, if you were talking about moving the dmgs/installers, I agree.

During the install process, you will have the opportunity to use Disk Utility to format your HD and delete all partitions currently set.

The problem isn't that you are running OS 9, the problem is you are running 10.5 on a pretty underpowered machine. You have three choices:

1) Go back to 10.4

2) Buy a new machine.

3) Live with it.

My 1Ghz iBook G4 runs ok on 10.5 but not as good as it did on 10.4. For what I do with it (Mail and web surf) it's acceptable. for anything serious though, it would be worthless.

As vansmith suggests format the hard disk drive getting rid of everything and if you wish zeroing the drive, then do a clean install of Leopard and update using the combo link.

Leopard does not co-exist with Classic period and your specs are really low end for Leopard so do not expect too much.

Zoolook said:

I didn't think you could still have Mac Classic with Leopard, but I could be wrong. If your HDD is supporting two partitions, that was definitely slow things down, especially on your older hardware

Click to expand...

harryb2448 said:

Leopard does not co-exist with Classic period.

Click to expand...

It can if the drive is partitioned and the machine is capable of booting into OS 9. 10.5 can't run classic but the machine can still run OS 9 itself. That isn't the OPs problem though since his drive is partitioned. If he has 2 partitions and isn't using the OS9 one actively, the worst that will happen is spotlight will slow it down a bit as previously mentioned.

PhillyEagles5 said:

How do I set my comp to a single partition? How do I delete os 9?

Click to expand...

He refers to s single partition and Leopard will not co-exist with Classic on the single partition period.

OK - So I wiped the hard drive (and also deleted OS 9) and my computer seems to be running much better now. I still have to do the 10.5.6 update but so far so good.
I am using Safari instead of Firefix which seems to be a much smoother browser.

Great work. TO update download the combo updater for OS X.5.6 and download only, disconnect any USB peripherals and disable antivirus, if any, run Repair Permissions, double click and install.

Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update

When finished and rebooted the usual two to three time and up and running , run Repair Permissions again then hook everything back up. MainMenu will help keep everything nice and fast by running maintenance scripts, cleaning caches etc.

Santa Software | MainMenu

1.25GB is not enough RAM to run the memory hog that is Leopard well. I'm running nothing more than Firefox, an IM client, a lightweight PDF viewer, Calendar and a Terminal window with no active processes in it, and Leopard is using 1.3GB just for that.

Ok. Did the 10.5.6 update and running very smooth. For what I use the computer for,mostly email,surfing the web, and music, this is running so much better than before. One quick ? - how do you repair permissions and what is the reason on why you need to repair permissions? Ty