extreme slowness...

wnowak1

Registered
When I leave my mac on for a few hours and resume work again, I am unable to use the computer for about 2 minutes because it is doing something very disk intensive. After that, the mac runs fine. I am unable to pin point the problem.. Any suggestions?
 
When I leave my (unknown model) mac on (running some unknown version of System / MacOS X) for a few hours (in an unknown state - either with / without a screen saver or in 'sleep' mode) and resume work again, I am unable to use the computer for about 2 minutes because it is doing something very disk intensive. After that, the mac runs fine. I am unable to pin point the problem.. Any suggestions?'

Suggestions:
Tell us the Mac model.
Tell us the System / MacOS X version.
Tell us what applications you have launched.
Tell us if the Mac - just sits there, executes a screen saver, or 'goes to sleep' - when you 'leave (your) mac on for a few hours (and before) you resume work again'.
Tell us if you are connected to a network (such as - you are at work and connected to a server).

Making some assumptions - that MacOS X 10.2, 10.3, or 10.4 is the unknown Mac model's operating system.
Launch 'Progress Viewer' (10.2) or 'Activity Monitor' (10.3 or 10.4) and determine (via the 'User Processes' (10.2) 'My Processes' (10.3 and 10.4) popup menu selection) what applications and additional processes are running. You may also want to view the processes via the 'All Processes' popup menu selection.
Click on the '%CPU' column heading to place the highest %CPU processes first (and in decending order). Now, the next time the '2 minute' delay occurs - view and note the top most process(es).
 
Dual 2.0 G5 running 10.4.2 2GB Ram
The computer only goes into screen saver after 15 minutes. Never into sleep mode. The application running at the time the computer is left for extended period of time ( ~3+ hours ) vary. Sometimes no applications, sometimes photoshop, terminal, icq, mail. I've noticed the problem is the same whether I have no applications running, or multiple applications running.

Sorry about not posting system info, I used to have it in my signature and didn't realize it was gone.
 
What screen saver is selected?

Via 'System Preferences' 'Accounts' 'Login Items' tab's panel, what applications (processes) are listed?
You can select all the processes, do a copy, paste such into 'TextEdit', edit out the names, and paste them into any reply.

The came copy, paste, edit steps can be applied to the 'Activity Monitor's 'My Processes' and 'All Processes' list of applications.

Just in case - you may have to click twice on the '%CPU' column heading (in 'Activity Monitor') to have the highest % processes listed first (in decending order).
 
By any chance in System Preferences > Energy Saver, do you have "Put hard drive to sleep when possible" checked? Sometimes the delay waiting for the drives to spin up seem interminable.
 
I have the Flurry screen saver picked. I've also had the Beach before.

The "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is not checked in energy saver.

I have no Login Items selected either.

top -o cpu

224 slpd 0.0% 0:00.12 6 31 33 220K 768K 2.37M 30.2M
Processes: 84 total, 2 running, 82 sleeping... 313 threads 14:46:42
Load Avg: 0.49, 0.50, 0.41 CPU usage: 10.8% user, 11.2% sys, 78.0% idle
SharedLibs: num = 192, resident = 39.0M code, 4.27M data, 13.7M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 15353, resident = 1.47G + 75.9M private, 113M shared
PhysMem: 157M wired, 1.21G active, 629M inactive, 1.97G used, 26.4M free
VM: 10.6G + 114M 43223(0) pageins, 44146(0) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
631 top 19.5% 0:02.14 1 18 22 1.03M 412K 1.48M 26.9M
319 DashboardC 8.2% 5:53.38 4 107 4012 1.27G+ 9.10M 1.02G- 1.49G+
279 Terminal 6.7% 0:11.15 5 98 176 2.46M 12.2M 10.6M 172M
68 WindowServ 6.6% 4:13.12 3 373 644 6.14M+ 42.4M- 46.4M 242M
0 kernel_tas 2.3% 2:03.99 44 2 2619 22.6M 0K 128M 1.25G
272 ICQ 3.4 0.6% 1:48.40 8 162 221 4.52M 13.9M 14.3M 181M
273 Yahoo! Mes 0.3% 0:55.42 8 163 213 4.62M 12.2M 12.3M 212M
262 System Eve 0.3% 0:21.90 1 63 105 1.23M 3.29M 14.5M 151M
271 Safari 0.2% 3:19.93:19.96 22 485 887 67.9M 36.6M 67.7M 475M
184 VersionCue 0.2% 0:26.96 26 468 338 34.9M 11.6M 35.5M 364M
35 configd 0.2% 0:17.23 3 205 60 520K 1.27M 3.79M 29.1M
208 mysqld 0.1% 0:06.15 9 42 52 7.95M 1.90M 9.88M 58.8M
252 SystemUISe% 0:05.96 21.70 4 206 193 2.76M 8.75M 24.1M 170M
261 MicrosoftM 0.0% 0:09.78 1 59 87 656K 1.73M 8.93M 140M
237 mysqld 0.0% 0:05.97 11 47 61 8.20M 2.96M 11.0M 80.2M
264 InkServer 0.0% 0:11.35 1 67 111 2.44M 5.32M 13.8M 156M
204 mds 0.0% 0:02.94 8 98 67 2.60M 1.88M 10.2M 42.8M
1 launchd 0.0% 0:04.66 3 380 21 216K 396K 452K 27.7M
277 nmbd 0.0% 0:00.33 1 14 23 240K 868K 3.16M 27.8M
188 AppleFileS 0.0% 0:00.69 2 57 43 3.08M 1.43M 9.10M 33.8M
88 ntpd 0.0% 0:01.03 1 11 19 124K 516K 804K 26.9M
210 httpd 0.0% 0:00.51 1 13 78 36K 1.29M 2.11M 28.1M
604 bash 0.0% 0:00.02 1 14 16 224K 828K 880K 27.1M
603 login 0.0% 0:00.01 1 16 36 144K 428K 580K 26.9M
584 SecurityAg 0.0% 0:00.87 2 91 154 2.40M 7.14M 7.14M 149M
560 mdimport 0.0% 0:00.15 3 61 44 836K 2.35M 2.88M 39.0M
542 mdimport 0.0% 0:00.37 4 66 58 1.21M 2.73M 4.79M 40.0M
360 TextEdit 0.0% 0:00.56 1 72 147 2.27M 5.99M 21.1M 163M
328 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.46 3 94 142 2.86M 5.88M 21.3M 164M
327 DashboardC 0.0% 0:04.61 4 103 160 7.17M 6.57M 26.4M 169M
326 DashboardC 0.0% 0:04.34 4 108 181 5.23M 7.58M 26.6M 169M
325 DashboardC 0.0% 0:04.41 4 104 161 5.81M 6.73M 25.1M 168M
324 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.49 3 94 134 2.64M 5.05M 21.0M 159M
323 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.51 3 94 139 3.20M 10.0M 21.8M 159M
322 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.71 3 94 153 3.49M 4.42M 21.9M 159M
321 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.60 3 95 157 3.62M 6.59M 22.3M 166M
320 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.74 3 94 162 5.54M 7.08M 24.5M 170M
318 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.43 3 94 125 2.80M 4.24M 20.1M 157M
317 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.76 3 96 162 4.91M 7.18M 24.6M 169M
316 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.63 3 94 159 3.87M 6.95M 22.8M 167M
315 DashboardC 0.0% 0:04.60 4 92 191 6.96M 5.39M 27.5M 164M
314 DashboardC 0.0% 0:00.51 3 99 163 2.70M 5.02M 23.1M 160M
313 Calculator 0.0% 0:00.90 1 72 173 3.13M 9.05M 22.7M 167M
278 AppleSpell 0.0% 0:00.07 1 46 33 524K 1.56M 5.72M 37.3M
270 Mail 0.0% 0:07.99 6 161 281 8.98M 16.8M 21.6M 189M



If this helps ...

g5mac:/Users/wnowak1 root# tail -25 /var/log/system.log
Sep 5 10:32:50 localhost lookupd[64]: lookupd (version 365) starting - Mon Sep 5 10:32:50 2005
Sep 5 10:32:51 localhost kernel[0]: UniNEnet::monitorLinkStatus - Link is up at 100 Mbps - Full Duplex
Sep 5 10:32:51 localhost configd[35]: AppleTalk startup
Sep 5 10:32:51 g5mac configd[35]: setting hostname to "g5mac.local"
Sep 5 10:32:53 g5mac kernel[0]: NVDA,Display-B: vram [98000000:08000000]
Sep 5 10:32:53 g5mac kernel[0]: NVDA,Display-A: vram [00000000:01000000]
Sep 5 10:32:54 g5mac mDNSResponder: Adding browse domain local.
Sep 5 10:32:56 g5mac configd[35]: executing /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/Contents/Resources/enable-network
Sep 5 10:32:56 g5mac configd[35]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Sep 5 10:32:56 g5mac lookupd[74]: lookupd (version 365) starting - Mon Sep 5 10:32:56 2005
Sep 5 10:32:56 g5mac ntpdate[86]: getnetnum: "time.apple.com" invalid host number, line ignored
Sep 5 10:32:56 g5mac ntpdate[86]: no servers can be used, exiting
Sep 5 10:32:57 g5mac configd[35]: AppleTalk startup complete
Sep 5 10:32:57 g5mac kernel[0]: in_delmulti - ignorning invalid inm (0x656e00c0)
Sep 5 10:32:57 g5mac configd[35]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Sep 5 10:32:57 g5mac lookupd[107]: lookupd (version 365) starting - Mon Sep 5 10:32:57 2005
Sep 5 10:33:00 g5mac VersionCueCS2Daemon[178]: warning: VersionCueCS2Daemon not started by mach_init process (parent pid: 1)
Sep 5 10:33:01 g5mac configd[35]: target=enable-network: disabled
Sep 5 10:33:05 g5mac /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow: Login Window Application Started
Sep 5 10:33:28 g5mac /usr/sbin/AppleFileServer: TIME-CHECK: NSLXStandardRegisterService took 1.788722 seconds!

Sep 5 10:33:29 g5mac loginwindow[72]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Sep 5 10:34:07 g5mac diskarbitrationd[37]: SystemUIServer [252]:28675 not responding.
Sep 5 10:34:07 g5mac diskarbitrationd[37]: disk1s6 hfs 5135496F-1A57-33A5-8BE2-9EDA831016BD LaCie Disk /Volumes/LaCie Disk
Sep 5 14:47:53 g5mac su: wnowak1 to root on /dev/ttyp1
g5mac:/Users/wnowak1 root#
 
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