Cleaning Up.

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I've had my MacBook Pro for about 3 months now and love it. I've added several extra applications and have noticed that the boot up time is slightly slower than when I first got it., also I'm getting the spinning ball of death more than I used to. I'm sure that this is usual but having come from using Windows XP where I was constantly cleaning Spyware, running Registry Mechanic and other apps to keep my PC in tip top condition I feel I should be doing the same.

I've used Main Menu a few times, is there any thing else I should do?

Is the Disk Utility "Verify" the same as Defragging my PC hard drive, if not how do I do it?

Hope you can help.

GP
 
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You could check your list of log-in items in the Accounts system preferences to see whether the machine is loading a pile of heavy apps each time it starts. Other than that, and if you run all MainMenu's Cleaning and Other Tasks, along with the daily, weekly and monthly crons, you shouldn't be having a problem. Under MainMenu's Rebuild, run Redo Prebindings.

If you have never run Disk Utility, you could restart the computer while holding down the Command and "s" keys, and when the type stops flowing and at the cursor's location at the bottom, type in

fsck -fy

(include the space), hit return and see what happens. This is the same as running Disk Utility's verify and repair program from the DVD. No damage could result by running it.

If, when it finishes, it says the disk was modified but says it's OK now, run it as many times as it takes before "disk was modified" doesn't appear.

After it's finished, type

reboot

and hit return. The machine will start normally.

This thread is one of many that discusses defragging. The Mac does it on the fly, so you shouldn't have to bother, but that thread and the links within it to other threads should give you more information.
 
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15" MBP 2.0 GHz, Core Duo, 2 GB Ram
I've had my MacBook Pro for about 3 months now and love it. I've added several extra applications and have noticed that the boot up time is slightly slower than when I first got it., also I'm getting the spinning ball of death more than I used to. I'm sure that this is usual but having come from using Windows XP where I was constantly cleaning Spyware, running Registry Mechanic and other apps to keep my PC in tip top condition I feel I should be doing the same.

I've used Main Menu a few times, is there any thing else I should do?

Is the Disk Utility "Verify" the same as Defragging my PC hard drive, if not how do I do it?

Hope you can help.

GP

That's the great thing about a mac..when you just think it's sitting idle, it's defragging...it's automatic.

Also, it will slow slightly on boot up as you add apps, but no need to clean up very often. Watch for files that you create, and then don't use again, or files that have sat unused for a long time. Back them up to CD, DVD, external drive, and lose them from the internal drive.

Use disc utility occasionally to do a Permission Repair, and verify, good for it, makes things run smooth, I do it once every 3 months...maybe. If you have an external drive, it's not a bad idea to make a back up of your internal every couple of weeks, just in case you want to go back a step, or if for some ungodly reason the drive died.

Best, enjoy your MBP.

Brian
 
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ibook g4, imac 2ghz c2d, mbp 2.4ghz c2d - 10.5.1
gd tips from the others

but plz search !

welcome to the forums
 
M

MacHeadCase

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Oh and if you want to view the fragmentation of your hard drive, here's a utility called ShowVolumeFrag. Not sure if it works on Intel-based Macs though as I can't spot any info on requirements just now. Maybe just in the Read Me file....
 
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MHC, I downloaded a dmg file from that link, but the app inside then directed me to another link and debugging app. This, in turn, led to another web page, telling me that the debugging app had moved.

So I clicked on that link, and something else started downloading as I was trying to figure out the before-and-after graphics of a defragged drive, pictured right to left instead of left to right. I finally cancelled the whole thing and trashed everything, including the first dmg file, the second dmg file that had nothing to do with the first file, and a bunch of Read Me's with goofy graphics.

Did you have that much trouble downloading it? I'm wondering whether the redirect to the second file is new since you downloaded it, and why it would go to some debugging app.

All very confusing.
 

eric


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also, besides all the great suggestions so far, make sure you don't have lots of folders on your desktop. each will act as though it is an open finder window and can tax the system more than you want.

another thing to check... dashboard. make sure you don't load it up with stuff you rarely use, or make sure you have a quit button widget installed and actually quit dashboard rather than swap out of it.
 
OP
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Firstly thank you all for your time and advice.

I have done what you suggested and have noticed a marked difference in the boot up time. I did have a lot of folders on my desktop and I also had 1 app which I'd long unistalled still in the start up log.

But just a couple more questions:-

Brown Study, you said "Under MainMenu's Rebuild, run Redo Prebindings" What are prebindings? I've looked on the Mainmenu web site but there is no information.

bmcgonag you advised "Use disc utility occasionally to do a Permission Repair" What are Permissions?

Last but not least Eric so said "make sure you have a quit button widget installed " can you recommend one? I've looked on Google and there isn't an obvious one, I notice Mainmenu can disable Dashboard but it means starting it every time I need to disable/enable it.

Once again many thanks

GP
 
M

MacHeadCase

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MHC, I downloaded a dmg file from that link, but the app inside then directed me to another link and debugging app. This, in turn, led to another web page, telling me that the debugging app had moved.

So I clicked on that link, and something else started downloading as I was trying to figure out the before-and-after graphics of a defragged drive, pictured right to left instead of left to right. I finally cancelled the whole thing and trashed everything, including the first dmg file, the second dmg file that had nothing to do with the first file, and a bunch of Read Me's with goofy graphics.

Did you have that much trouble downloading it? I'm wondering whether the redirect to the second file is new since you downloaded it, and why it would go to some debugging app.

All very confusing.

You download the source I think. I downloaded two files: the ShowVolumeFrag thing which from what I understand is a GUI for Amit Singh's HFSDebug. Amit Signh is way cool...

ShowVolumeFrag.png
 

eric


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Ginger Pilot, i use this one: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/dashquit.html
(so far, i've found all my widgets through apple.com)

shows the ram dashboard is using too, so you can tell the impact of each widget as you add a new one also. if i know i'm going to be doing some processor/memory intensive stuff on my macbook, i will start and quit dashboard (quit by using this widget), just to make sure i've freed up those resources.
 

bobtomay

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Oh and if you want to view the fragmentation of your hard drive, here's a utility called ShowVolumeFrag. Not sure if it works on Intel-based Macs though as I can't spot any info on requirements just now. Maybe just in the Read Me file....

Nice app. Must say I'm pretty impressed with the way OS X (or hfs+) handles de-frag. 4 months on this machine - I've installed, uninstalled, copied DVD's, recorded TV, edited video, deleted tons of stuff. Fragmentation sits at 99.86% un-fragmented. My drive is half full right now. NTFS volume would have been over 10% and maybe 15% fragmented by now.
 
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Brown Study, you said "Under MainMenu's Rebuild, run Redo Prebindings" What are prebindings? I've looked on the Mainmenu web site but there is no information.
Prebinding is explained here. It's really no big deal (and even less so since Tiger came along), and it has only marginal benefits.

But because you said your Mac is running slower that it did and you also said you use MainMenu, I mentioned prebinding because MainMenu includes the prebinding optimization option.

Prebinding involves an app's dynamic libraries and helps speed the startup of applications from Apple, but only those on the boot drive. From the link above:
A dynamic library is just a big collection of functionality that the application can use to implement whatever features it needs. When an application dynamically loads a library, it has to find all of the chunks of functionality before it can use them. Each bit of functionality-- each function, class, constant, global variable, or whatever-- is represented by a symbol.

As the application loads, it looks up each symbol that it needs from all the dynamic libraries that it uses and binds that symbol into itself. Once a symbol is bound, the application can then use that symbol-- that function, class, constant, global, etc.. -- as a part of its implementation. . . . eliminating this manual binding process would improve application launch times.
 

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