Diagnosing slowness in old G4 - tune it up?

[karavite]

Hi All,

While our Macbook Pro and PC zoom along in everything, our old G4 DP 1 GHZ running 10.14.11 on the same connection is really sluggish and has gotten worse with time. I know this machine, I have had it running since 2001! For the web, I am using Firefox most of the time. Though I clear all cache and history each time I quit Firefox, today I cleared out my security certificates and either I am on drugs or it made a difference in page loading.

Still, the old girl seems a little slow all around, not just on the web. It is almost as if it were a PC that has gotten bogged down with adware, but we know that can't be true - right? Not since the bad old days of 7, 8 and 9 have I ever had to reinstall a system and I doubt that is called for here.

So, where is the best place to find any and all tips to clean up and speed up an old Mac that has a lot of life and usefulness left?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. 40 GB free on a 120 GB drive, 756 MB of RAM, new power supply and X Menu as the only third party app on start up.

 

[Hughvane]

First and foremost, I'd suggest a good workover with Onyx. It will clean up a lot of clutter that is not immediately evident. It will also repair permissions and run maintenance scripts. See if Onyx makes a difference.