Finder slowdown on MacBook under Tiger?
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From: AES on 21 Apr 2010 13:14 For some days now I've been experiencing substantial but intermittent sluggishness in Finder response on a 2009-vintage MacBook running Tiger, and I'm wondering what to look for to eliminate it? Save commands, window openings, window re-sizings can sometimes give me a spinning beach ball for 30 seconds or longer -- though they always go to completion eventually. Doing a Save or Save As menu command from within an active app -- MT-NewsWatcher as a specific example, but other apps as well -- seems to be a frequent way to trigger this. The dialog box for choosing the folder to Save to comes up immediately, but can take a long time for the list of folders to fill in. If I start typing a file name into the relevant field before the window is complete,, that sometimes seem to trigger a really long delay. I have a pretty vanilla system; the only new utilities I've added recently are WakeOnLan and Macaroni. Only about 60 GB of my 120 GB internal HD are in use. Suggestions? (Thanks) -- "For the fact is that much of the financial industry has become a racket � a game in which a handful of people are lavishly paid to mislead and exploit consumers and investors. And if we don�t lower the boom on these practices, the racket will just go on." -- Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, 18 April 2010
From: dorayme on 21 Apr 2010 18:36 In article <vilain-B5C13D.12134321042010(a)news.individual.net>, Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > In article <siegman-AB1154.10141921042010(a)sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>, > AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote: > > > For some days now I've been experiencing substantial but intermittent > > sluggishness in Finder response on a 2009-vintage MacBook running Tiger, > > and I'm wondering what to look for to eliminate it? > > > > Save commands, window openings, window re-sizings can sometimes give me > > a spinning beach ball for 30 seconds or longer -- though they always go > > to completion eventually. > > > > Doing a Save or Save As menu command from within an active app -- > > MT-NewsWatcher as a specific example, but other apps as well -- seems to > > be a frequent way to trigger this. The dialog box for choosing the > > folder to Save to comes up immediately, but can take a long time for the > > list of folders to fill in. If I start typing a file name into the > > relevant field before the window is complete,, that sometimes seem to > > trigger a really long delay. > > > > I have a pretty vanilla system; the only new utilities I've added > > recently are WakeOnLan and Macaroni. Only about 60 GB of my 120 GB > > internal HD are in use. > > > > Suggestions? (Thanks) Tiger latest is a *very* stable system (unlike Snow Leopard) and you can manage this one: Do you check your disk with Disk Utility to see all is OK? Do you restart at least once a day? Have you got Disk Warrior to keep the file system up to a high standard? Do you restart whenever this particular thing happens (I do on the very rare occasions it happens and it clears it)? Do you let the system do its housekeeping at default or set default times (OYNX software utility can help this, there are three maintenance scripts, daily, weekly and monthly that can be easily manually activated at the end of the day before you shut down (or not). There are other facilities to clear out caches, built up logs, temporary and obsolete items and even previous iTunes Libraries. -- dorayme
From: David Empson on 21 Apr 2010 20:43 AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote: > For some days now I've been experiencing substantial but intermittent > sluggishness in Finder response on a 2009-vintage MacBook running Tiger, > and I'm wondering what to look for to eliminate it? Care to try that combination again? 2009-vintage MacBooks can't run Tiger. I assume you got either the year or OS name wrong. (The November 2007 MacBook was the first to be supplied with Leopard and it doesn't run Tiger.) > Save commands, window openings, window re-sizings can sometimes give me > a spinning beach ball for 30 seconds or longer -- though they always go > to completion eventually. Several possibilities occur to me. - Hard drive fault causing frequent retries. You may be able to hear evidence of this by listening for a slow clicking sound in the lower left corner of the computer during a pause. - Trouble spinning up the hard drive. This may produce a repeating sound similar to the previous one, or the hard drive may start spinning then stop again, repeatedly. - External hard drive connected? It may be a delay due to needing to spin up that drive. - Virtual memory swapping. How much memory do you have installed, and is Activity Monitor showing any "Page outs" on its System Memory tab? > Doing a Save or Save As menu command from within an active app -- > MT-NewsWatcher as a specific example, but other apps as well -- seems to > be a frequent way to trigger this. That's a common trigger for needing to spin up hard drives. > The dialog box for choosing the folder to Save to comes up immediately, > but can take a long time for the list of folders to fill in. If I start > typing a file name into the relevant field before the window is complete,, > that sometimes seem to trigger a really long delay. Same issue. If you don't have recent backups, make one now (NOT overwriting your only backup). The most likely suspect is a failing internal hard drive. Check in Disk Utility for the SMART status, but this is not a reliable indicator of failure (if it doesn't say "Verified" then there is almost certainly a fault, but "Verified" doesn't rule out issues that the self-test can't detect). You could try running various other disk test utilities, e.g. do a surface scan with TechTool Pro, or run something which can display detailed information for the SMART parameters and see whether anything looks unusual (probably need input from others on that). > I have a pretty vanilla system; the only new utilities I've added > recently are WakeOnLan and Macaroni. Only about 60 GB of my 120 GB > internal HD are in use. > > Suggestions? (Thanks) -- David Empson dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz
From: Paul Sture on 24 Apr 2010 12:55
In article <vilain-610C13.12125023042010(a)news.individual.net>, Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > In article <g.kreme-92A5B0.06094523042010(a)news.iad.newshosting.com>, > Lewis <g.kreme(a)gmail.com.dontemailme> wrote: > > > In article <vilain-B5C13D.12134321042010(a)news.individual.net>, > > Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > > > > > In article <siegman-AB1154.10141921042010(a)sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>, > > > AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote: > > > > > > > For some days now I've been experiencing substantial but intermittent > > > > sluggishness in Finder response on a 2009-vintage MacBook running > > > > Tiger, > > > > and I'm wondering what to look for to eliminate it? > > > > > > > > Save commands, window openings, window re-sizings can sometimes give me > > > > a spinning beach ball for 30 seconds or longer -- though they always go > > > > to completion eventually. > > > > > > > > Doing a Save or Save As menu command from within an active app -- > > > > MT-NewsWatcher as a specific example, but other apps as well -- seems > > > > to > > > > be a frequent way to trigger this. The dialog box for choosing the > > > > folder to Save to comes up immediately, but can take a long time for > > > > the > > > > list of folders to fill in. If I start typing a file name into the > > > > relevant field before the window is complete,, that sometimes seem to > > > > trigger a really long delay. > > > > > > > > I have a pretty vanilla system; the only new utilities I've added > > > > recently are WakeOnLan and Macaroni. Only about 60 GB of my 120 GB > > > > internal HD are in use. > > > > > > > > Suggestions? (Thanks) > > > > > > How much VM are you using? Check the contents of /var/vm in the > > > Terminal. If there are more than 5 swapfiles, you probably need to > > > reboot to clear them out. I've found that the virtual memory > > > utilization on MacOS X leave a lot to be desired. I recall busy Solaris > > > boxes that were shutdown and rebooted once a quarter to ensure they came > > > up OK without hardware failures. I reboot often to keep my swapfiles at > > > 5 or less (1G of swap). > > > > I normally have about 2-8GB of swap on my machine. > > > > Right now there is 4GB of swap, for example. > > > > My machine tends to stay on for weeks and months and is only rebooted > > for important system updates. > > > > Having a lot of swap just means you've run a lot of stuff. It is not an > > indication that anything is wrong. > > In the short time I've been running 10.5, I'd say that this should be > fine. I was surprised that my 1.5GB system (max for my G4) could run so > smoothly. On 10.4.11, it would be dog slow. Apparently some big fixes > with VM came with 10.5. > > Running 4GB of swap on 10.4 would make my system unusable. Don't know > what HW your running or even if the OS is the same (most likely not). > But I question your premise that it would be fine on AES' hardware. VM handing does get better with subsequent releases of OS X. When I was running 10.3 on a G3 iBook, it would crawl to a halt when the swap file grew above 1 GB, and the quickest workaround was to logout then in again. This ceased to be a problem with 10.4. 10.3 had been a significant improvement on 10.2. -- Paul Sture |