Mac running slow - rainbow pinwheel

D

Doug T.

Registered
Mac OS V10.4.11
2.15 GHz Core 2 Duo
1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
HD - 162 GB
Available: 117.9 GB
Used: 44.1 GB

Firefox 3.5.3 and Adobe CS3 apps. running very slow. Especially CS3 InDesign.

Rainbow pinwheel occurs frequently especially on closing apps.

Diagnostics passes on start up.

Seems to have begun concurrent with downloading Firefox 3.5.3. about two weeks ago, but really bad today.
 
I had similar problems with Firefox 3.5. I reverted to 3.0x on one of my machines. But as of 3.5.3 I'm not currently having problems. Midijeep's idea that Flash is causing it is an interesting one. Maybe Flash was conflicting with 3.5.

In any case, make sure your Firefox is 3.5.3 and you have the latest version of Adobe Flash. You can google "adobe flash" and click (probably) the first link. Make sure the address is www.adobe.com/

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I also start seeing a lot of pinwheel rainbow today and I noticed the following message in the system.log:
* Sep 28 12:41:48 kernel[0]: PM notification cancel (pid 741, firefox-bin)
* Sep 28 12:41:49 kernel[0]: IOPMrootDomain: idle cancel
* Sep 28 12:41:49 kernel[0]: PM notification cancel (pid 741, firefox-bin)
* Sep 28 12:41:49 kernel[0]: IOPMrootDomain: idle cancel
Everytime I had this message I had a pinwheel rainbow in the screen and even the music on iTunes stopped... I really thought MacOSX was a multi-threat OS.
* Firefox v. 3.5.3
* iTunes v. 9.0.1 (9)
* Mac OS X 10.5.8
I clean Firefox (caches, cookies, etc.) and closed it... currently only using Safari.
 
For the simple fact that a single application (or a thread of an application) affecting 3-4 other applications... Firefox affecting iTunes, Mail, Finder and Safari.

Thats the reason why? Am I wrong on my understanding?
 
"Multi-threaded" does not mean "my system should remain responsive no matter what happens with any given thread."

Mac OS X is indeed multi-threaded. That does not mean that it will never slow to the point of being unusable due to a misbehaving thread.

What is does mean is that you can kill any thread without that thread affecting other threads that are not dependent upon it. That's why when Firefox goes nuts and starts slowing your system, you can kill any Firefox threads, and iTunes, iPhoto, and any other applications that do not have threads that are dependent upon the killed threads will be unaffected.
 
Check Activity monitor for processor ad RAM usage while its running. Set activity monitor on the dock and let it go. Sounds to me like the thing is starved for RAM. Or else check disk utility and verify you HD, because those symptoms also could be your HD going south.
 
So far, since I stopped using the Firefox, the issue has not been replicable anymore. Something with the Firefox when in idle. The Safari in idle doesn't behave the same way.
Strange, very strange as I am a BIG Firefox fan. I will disable some add-ons from Firefox and check its behavior again. I will let you all know my findings.
Activity Monitor|Console I have been checking since day 1 when it start happening the issues.
 
For me, Firefox 3.5.x has been TERRIBLY unresponsive, just awful. On my older machine, I've reverted to 3.0.x. It's frustrating because I use Firefox almost exclusively at this point.

BTW, using multiple threads allows applications to take advantage of multiple processors and/or multiple processor cores, to spread the task across available resources.

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