Macbook running slow

[ventrj]

I have a macbook pro with a 2.2ghz and 4gs of ram and it's been running slow i keep getting that spinning wheel whenever i click on links or open applications, what should i do about this?

[acosmichippo]

how full is your hard drive?

and i would also check your activity monitor to see if there are any applications hogging your system's resources.

another thing you could do is create a new user account, and see how the OS performs in that. If it's better, then you'll know there's some app running that's causing you problems.

if none of that turns up anything, you can use your OS discs to run hardware diagnostics... your hard drive or RAM could be bad.

[smknSRT8]

cosmic, I know that you know a lot about computers but I thought that it doesnt matter how full the HD is when talking about the computers performance? Correct me if I am wrong.
Cosmic, in the activity monitor, any things that cause a decrease in perotrmance in a regular basis? I know with my pc there were a ton of processes that I had no clue what they were. My question I guess is, anything I should look out for?

[ventrj]

I have 30gs left. I also just noticed that my computer is running hot very hot i dont know what applications should not be their. How do i run the the disk to check the hardware.

[aknightstale41]

A really good program you might consider buying is 'TUT" the ultimate troubleshooter, its the best 20 bucks ive spent on a computer program. It will tell you exactly what every sevice running is for and how much memory it hogging, and if you should disable it or not,.. many services are useless fluff you dont need running that just slow down your machine, i have the pc version, im not sure but their might be a mac one too.

[acosmichippo]

cosmic, I know that you know a lot about computers but I thought that it doesnt matter how full the HD is when talking about the computers performance?

Theoretically, it shouldn't matter, but as hard drives get filled closer to their capacity, it is more difficult for the OS to defragment files. So if one goes a long time with a full hard drive, you probably will see a degradation of performance. Anyway, that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Cosmic, in the activity monitor, any things that cause a decrease in perotrmance in a regular basis? I know with my pc there were a ton of processes that I had no clue what they were. My question I guess is, anything I should look out for?

I don't know of anything off hand, but what i would do is fully quit any applications you have open (don't just hide them in the dock), then open activity monitor. Under the CPU tab, sort the processes by CPU usage. I had to have skitch and firefox open at the time, so they're at the top.

http://img.skitch.com/20080908-mygg2aqxnwkucnybg1n77fwdjm.jpg

If anything else is taking more than a few percent, i would google the process name to see what it is there for. Often applications will install little programs that run in the background (even when the main app is closed) to help the main app run (these are called "daemons" btw). It's possible that these daemons could collectively tie up your system.

Anyway, i'll have to check on how to do the hardware diags on the OS discs... haven't had to do that yet.

[smknSRT8]

Theoretically, it shouldn't matter, but as hard drives get filled closer to their capacity, it is more difficult for the OS to defragment files. So if one goes a long time with a full hard drive, you probably will see a degradation of performance. Anyway, that doesn't seem to be the case here.



I don't know of anything off hand, but what i would do is fully quit any applications you have open (don't just hide them in the dock), then open activity monitor. Under the CPU tab, sort the processes by CPU usage. I had to have skitch and firefox open at the time, so they're at the top.

http://img.skitch.com/20080908-mygg2aqxnwkucnybg1n77fwdjm.jpg

If anything else is taking more than a few percent, i would google the process name to see what it is there for. Often applications will install little programs that run in the background (even when the main app is closed) to help the main app run (these are called "daemons" btw). It's possible that these daemons could collectively tie up your system.

Anyway, i'll have to check on how to do the hardware diags on the OS discs... haven't had to do that yet.

So i just looked at my activity monitor and was surprised how much Firefox took up. I am running Pandora, so this means it is taking up 1/2 my CPU? leaving me a gig left (2gb total)?
http://i480.photobucket.com/albums/rr167/smknSRT8/Picture1-3.png
These "daemons", should they be running even while the application that it is for is not running?

[acosmichippo]

So i just looked at my activity monitor and was surprised how much Firefox took up. I am running Pandora, so this means it is taking up 1/2 my CPU? leaving me a gig left (2gb total)?

I think you're confusing CPU (processor) with RAM (physical memory). You can check how much physical memory a process is using by highlighting it in activity monitor, clicking on "inspect" at the top, and then on the "memory" tab in the window thsat pops up.

Anyway, just about any processor will seriously hog your CPU if it's running a flash-heavy page (like pandora or youtube).

These "daemons", should they be running even while the application that it is for is not running?

Yep, that's exactly what a daemon is. It runs even while the main app does not. They're usually there to help launch the main app if a partcular event happens. iTunes Helper is a good example of this.

[ventrj]

so i looked at my activity monitor and found that {syslogd} was running any where from 10 to 77 cpu usage. Not sure what this is does anyone know what is process is ?

[acosmichippo]

if you use time machine you might want to try this fix (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071030233438149).

it may also be related to "back to my mac" as noted here (http://tips4mac.blogspot.com/2008/05/syslogd-maxing-your-processor-at-100.html).

either way, it seems to be a bug in leopard, so i would also make sure you have all of the latest updates in Software Update.