My Mac is starting up so s-l-o-w-l-y

October 22, 2007 10:25 PM

My Mac PB takes about 10 minutes to start up and then another 5 to load mac mail or safari. Am I about to crash?

Here's the scoop...I'm not a techie so I'll do the best I can. I have an Intel PB about 2 years old. OS 10.4.10. About a month ago I realized that my HD was almost full and began to get rid of stuff to free up space. I've emptied my trash. I now have 13 GB free; 97 GB used. When I start up my mac it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r (10-15 minutes?) to load up and get me to the desktop. And then it takes about 5 minutes more to load any program. Once it's up and going it seems to be fine with the exception of loading any web pages which seem to take about 30-45 seconds for Safari to even recognize the web address and then it's slow to load the pages. I'm pretty sure the two things (slow start up and slow loading web pages) are connected as they both started happening around the same time. I've run disk utilities, I've run Onyx, I've zapped my pram, I've backed up, I've removed most files and projects from my desktop....nothing seems to help. To my best recolection all of this trouble seemed to start when I started throwing stuff in the trash to free up space. Before that it was fine. Does this make any sense? Is my Mac about to die a painful death? Should I re install the OS? Or is it something else? Any help is very much appreciated....

posted by pman78 to computers & internet (16 comments total)

You say you've emptied your trash, but that's really what it looks like to me - try that again (I know, I know, but sometimes weird things happen).

The other thing I would look at would be the programs you have running at startup - go to System Preferences, then Accounts, then Login Items. Is there anything you can remove from there?
posted by spaceman_spiff at 10:56 PM on October 22, 2007

If you take it to an apple store and agree to buy a newer larger HD they'll move all your stuff for you. Especially if you can manage to sound like a grateful non-techie which should be easy. Then you won't have the space crunch or the slow startup or the worry that the drive is about to die.

Just to be clear: You're not getting any errors, it's just slow?
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 10:59 PM on October 22, 2007

You mention you've backed up. If you have backups, you may want to simply wipe the disk, reinstall the OS (perhaps Leopard after Fri) and see how it runs then. If it's good, start putting things back from your backups. If not, well, then you know it's hardware... and you would have had to replace the drive contents anyway.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 11:13 PM on October 22, 2007

With your data backed up, standard practice is:

Run Onyx or variant
Reinstall OS (either replace or total wipe)
Replace hard drive

After that, you are looking at either a bad motherboard or bad memory.

Right now I'm on a Macbook and getting obnoxious Safari lag and force-quits. But then again, I spilled a Coke on it, and this being the second laptop I've spilled carbonated beverages on, I'm holding on for dear life. Truth be told though, I started noticing these symptoms once the hard drive filled up, and as I freed up space, the symptoms did not go away. Does Tiger still use chunks of hard drive as virtual memory? If so, I could understand how data might get corrupted at the point where the HD gets maxed out. invasive utilities, i should note, like the Norton line of bullshit, can also corrupt your directories. Bad widgets, fucked up permissions, you know the drill.

In any case, continuing the theoretical here, "removing" things from your hard drive (which isn't really removing anyway) wouldn't really address the problem of data corruption once its happened, which itself is indicated by the fact that you are dealing with isolated incidents of slowness. I'd say, prepare for the fact that you will be reinstalling your apps, go with a wipe/reinstall (no need to zero out data) and if that doesnt work, buy a new hard drive.
posted by phaedon at 12:04 AM on October 23, 2007

Standard practice before reinstalling is to create a new user and login with it to see if you are experiencing the same issues.

From there you should be able to determine if the problem is with your user account or with the whole system.
posted by mphuie at 12:16 AM on October 23, 2007

Check activity monitor (disk activity) and see if you have a lot of disk activity. It could be a case of not enough ram.

Also check and remove any unnecessary startup items. (Preferences->Accounts->Login Items).
posted by mphuie at 12:19 AM on October 23, 2007

Seconding running Onyx... it's free, you can grab it here.

Also, your mac is a 1st gen Macbook Pro. I suspect you only have 512mb of RAM in there. I'd definitely take it to a shop and max it out to 2gb, or get a techie buddy to do it for you.

But start with Onyx.
posted by ReiToei at 5:03 AM on October 23, 2007

To quote the question:

...I've run Onyx...
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 6:37 AM on October 23, 2007

Set it to boot in verbose mode and see if anything weird is happening during boot. I once had something similar happen when the system was looking for a missing desktop wallpaper

ihttp://www.fif3.com/howto/archives/001983.html
posted by craniac at 7:10 AM on October 23, 2007

Run Disk Utility and check the drive status. You might have to boot from the OS installation disc -- all you do is wait until it gets to the point where you have a menu bar, and then run Disk Utility and point it at your hard drive. If the SMART status is failing, back up data quickly.
posted by mikeh at 7:18 AM on October 23, 2007

Thanks all so far. Good ideas all around. Yes, I have run Onyx RelToei and I have 2GB RAM. And mphule I have checked activity monitor and elimintated start up items. Nothing there.

Sounds like I need to reinstall my OS as a start. I was going to upgrade anyway so maybe I'll wait till friday and take it from there.

Any other thoughts/ideas are appreciated.
posted by pman78 at 10:52 AM on October 23, 2007

DiskWarrior is the step I'd take before OS reinstall. It's often helped my machines resolve slowdown issues. I'm guessing that when the hard drive hits capacity, some things get corrupted because they couldn't be properly flushed to disk.

In theory, using your OS disks to do an 'archive and install' should tidy things up without little hassle. But in practice, I'll found that if you've done anything at the cli those settings/installs are either wiped out or need fixing afterward. Not terrible, but budget an afternoon or so for getting yourself back to productivity.

If you take it to an apple store and agree to buy a newer larger HD they'll move all your stuff for you. Especially if you can manage to sound like a grateful non-techie which should be easy.

It'd be surprised if you need to trick them into helping. I've gone to the Genius Bar with an extremely similar problem. The guy whipped out a copy of DiskWarrior and set it running right there. No questions asked, and no purchases required.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 12:15 PM on October 23, 2007

I was going to upgrade anyway so maybe I'll wait till friday and take it from there.

Uh, might want to check with a Genius before you do that. AFAIK, installing a new OS over a malfunctioning one is highly likely to compound your misery.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 12:18 PM on October 23, 2007

i had this exact problem a year ago (drive got full, computer bogged down, i deleted stuff, still slow). i tried onyx, disk warrior, etc etc, all to no avail.

finally i just gave up and backed up my files, wiped the drive and reinstalled. after that, all was golden! it sounds like you're having the same issue, which is to say, not a hardware problem.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 3:14 PM on October 23, 2007

Instead of Onyx, I recommend installing AppleJack, booting while holding Command-S, and then typing "applejack AUTO reboot" and letting it do its thing.
posted by pmbuko at 1:15 PM on October 24, 2007

Okay.
I backed everything up, took the chance and did a clean install of the new os Leopard and it seems like everything is fine now. Speed is back up and nothing hangs like it used to.
many thanks for all the advice.
posted by pman78 at 4:35 AM on October 28, 2007