powerbook 17 is VERY slow suddenly

quiksan

quiksan

awesomer...
any ideas on what might be slowing down my system? I've got a 1ghz/1gig ram powerbook 17", and in the past couple months, it's slowed down noticably. everything bogs down, from running more than 4 or 5 apps, to boot up, to user logon. it's gotten painfully slow - which is especially evident when I use my wife's new 12" pb, which only has 512mb ram, and it's blazing compared to mine.

any utilities out there that are good for system optimization? things I can try?

I've only got 2 small startup items for my account. I've cleared extra cache and log files. cleaned permissions.
I watch my cpu % and memory, and as soon as my desktop loads, I'm already down to 820mb, from 1024mb. maybe that's typical, but it seems like a lot from a fresh boot.
also, the cpu will occasionally just spike to like 100%, and i'm not doing anything on it...


so what am I missing? it's just gotten to the point where I know it shouldn't be like this, but it is.

thanks much for any help!
 
Since Zammy-Sam isn't here yet, I'll suggest creating a new user and testing it there. Also, find out what processes are causing the CPU spikes.

If those don't work, you might have to try reinstalling the OS.
 
the mem drop is quite normal if not even too less in your case. However, you might want to check your energy saving options in the System Preferences. Eventhough the Processor Performance under options doesn't change the system speed that much on my tibook, it might be different in your case. There was also a thread about testing your cpu speed by a terminal command string. You might want to search for it. However, I don't think it's a good idea to use third party system tools. Didn't here of any doing miracles but heard of many messing up a lot...
 
i'll look into the suggestions - thanks guys.

i'm not sure that a new user will make a difference for me - it even gives a second or two delay (sometimes the beachball) when I click on the user I want to login.
maybe I'll change it to auto log me in now that my wife has her own computer...

thanks again for the replies. I'll see what I can figure out.
 
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