IMac running slow
December 5, 2009 5:04 PM Subscribe
My Imac has started running slow past week. What is the best way to look into possible causes of this?
It would be helpful if people knew how old it was. Processor, RAM, OS, etc.
For example, OS 10.6 will run faster than 10.5. 10.5 takes more RAM than 10.3, etc.
Have you made any changes in the last week?
I'd run an fsck on the mac. Hold the command and S key as soon as you hear the start up chime.
type sbin/fsck -fy (exactly as it appear above the prompt> I think I have it, but do it the way you see it in single user mode).
If it finds and repairs errors, I always run it a second time (paranoia). Just up arrow, and hit return.
You can also run that umount command that you'll see there, but it won't do much (it can remove orphaned file links).
Type reboot when done.
Again at the start up chime hold the shift key. This time once you get up and running log into each account and empty the trash (this is safe booting the mac and some cache files get put in the trash).
Reboot again, do a P-RAM zap.
Download FontNuke and run it.
That's what I do. Half may be voodoo, but it makes me feel better.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:04 PM on December 5, 2009
For example, OS 10.6 will run faster than 10.5. 10.5 takes more RAM than 10.3, etc.
Have you made any changes in the last week?
I'd run an fsck on the mac. Hold the command and S key as soon as you hear the start up chime.
type sbin/fsck -fy (exactly as it appear above the prompt> I think I have it, but do it the way you see it in single user mode).
If it finds and repairs errors, I always run it a second time (paranoia). Just up arrow, and hit return.
You can also run that umount command that you'll see there, but it won't do much (it can remove orphaned file links).
Type reboot when done.
Again at the start up chime hold the shift key. This time once you get up and running log into each account and empty the trash (this is safe booting the mac and some cache files get put in the trash).
Reboot again, do a P-RAM zap.
Download FontNuke and run it.
That's what I do. Half may be voodoo, but it makes me feel better.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:04 PM on December 5, 2009
From personal experience -
If you use quicksilver- review the catalog entries and prune them. Maybe even go as far as nuking
the preferences folder and starting over. Consider whether you actually use them or not.
If you've had a crash or anything recently - the spotlight index maybe corrupt and it may be re-indexing the whole machine.
From a terminal - try the following:
top (shows you what is eating up resources) (ctrl-c to stop)
ps uagx (widen terminal first, then look at the %cpu column -see if anything is eating up cpu. If you don't recognize it, research it)
sudo fs_usage (shows filesystem usage - if you hear lots of disk grinding, this will quickly show you what is accessing it)
Disk nearly full - performance goes downhill really fast when you get close to full.
Other than that - check dmesg as well as just run console and check the various system logs looking for evidence of other hardware problems. A failing disk would definitely slow things down.
pram zap is okay, can't really hurt.
On the fsck hint - make sure you do this from sing-user mode and on a read-only filesystem, or you'll corrupt yourself to heck.
Other things - time machine trying to back up tons of data. Check if it's active, maybe exclude some stuff.
posted by TravellingDen at 8:43 PM on December 5, 2009
If you use quicksilver- review the catalog entries and prune them. Maybe even go as far as nuking
the preferences folder and starting over. Consider whether you actually use them or not.
If you've had a crash or anything recently - the spotlight index maybe corrupt and it may be re-indexing the whole machine.
From a terminal - try the following:
top (shows you what is eating up resources) (ctrl-c to stop)
ps uagx (widen terminal first, then look at the %cpu column -see if anything is eating up cpu. If you don't recognize it, research it)
sudo fs_usage (shows filesystem usage - if you hear lots of disk grinding, this will quickly show you what is accessing it)
Disk nearly full - performance goes downhill really fast when you get close to full.
Other than that - check dmesg as well as just run console and check the various system logs looking for evidence of other hardware problems. A failing disk would definitely slow things down.
pram zap is okay, can't really hurt.
On the fsck hint - make sure you do this from sing-user mode and on a read-only filesystem, or you'll corrupt yourself to heck.
Other things - time machine trying to back up tons of data. Check if it's active, maybe exclude some stuff.
posted by TravellingDen at 8:43 PM on December 5, 2009
Response by poster: looks like something is chewing up my harddrive: down to less than 12% free should be 50%
suspect it is the itunes settings for a shared folder
what program should i run to verify this?
posted by dougiedd at 9:46 PM on December 5, 2009
suspect it is the itunes settings for a shared folder
what program should i run to verify this?
posted by dougiedd at 9:46 PM on December 5, 2009
Response by poster: Somehow i am creating huge text files (logs?) 100GB
location is private/var/log/asl
any recommendations? Can i delete them?
posted by dougiedd at 10:34 PM on December 5, 2009
location is private/var/log/asl
any recommendations? Can i delete them?
posted by dougiedd at 10:34 PM on December 5, 2009
Stuff in /var/log is there for your own information; as far as I know, every Unix-family system treats /var/log as essentially write-only, and doesn't rely on its contents sticking around. So it should be safe to delete anything in /var/log that's meaningless to you.
posted by flabdablet at 2:33 AM on December 6, 2009
posted by flabdablet at 2:33 AM on December 6, 2009
asl = Apple System Log
Delete the older files and read through the recent ones to see where all the errors are coming from.
See this thread
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=641936
posted by Lanark at 3:54 AM on December 6, 2009
Delete the older files and read through the recent ones to see where all the errors are coming from.
See this thread
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=641936
posted by Lanark at 3:54 AM on December 6, 2009
« Older Is there software that will time my game play? | How can I salvage a friendship when I can't be... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by gyusan at 5:25 PM on December 5, 2009