Safari Sluggish, Inconsistent

N

Numbers1820

IXOYS
About 2 days ago, Safari turned from my favorite web browser to absolutely unusable. I have no idea why.

Here are my current symptoms:
* Safari will not open any of my bookmarks correctly. It just hangs...and hangs.
* Overall performance sluggish. For example, this URL, http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con_temp.html, should open instantaneously (it does w/Firefox) but it either takes forever or won't open at all with Safari as it is right now for me.

I first noticed problems a couple of days ago when I opened up Safari, went over to the Bookmarks menu, and selected open up bookmarks in tabs. I then went over to Entourage to check my email for a moment while Safari went to work. A minute later, I got a pop up message on my screen that Safari had unexpectedly quit. Odd, I thought, but I just re-opened Safari and repeated the procedure, with the same results.

Solutions I have tried:
* Repeatedly opened/quit Safari
* Rebooted the machine itself
* The solutions suggested here, http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48000&highlight=safari

Thanks in advance for any of your suggestions.
 
Get Onyx and use it to clean Browser, Download Cache, History, Bookmark Icons, User and System Cache, Internet and Cache History.

Also use it to Repair Permissions and delete the safari.plist preference file again.

See how it runs after that.

A large History can slow down Safari. I keep mine empty.
 
Thanks for all your quick replies!

I downloaded Onyx and tried all the fixes you suggested, Bob. Restarted, same symptoms.

Deleted all the same things via Onyx again; restarted; same symptoms.

(For example, test web pages took at least 2x as long to load on Safari as compared to Firefox, or failed to load at all after several minutes.)

Um, by "prebinding" are you talking about turning on journaling or something?

Also - a note to any other readers: Onyx 1.4.9, which I was originally referred to, only works on Panther and above. I downloaded 1.3.1, which works on Jaguar (my OS).

Any other ideas??
 
Sometimes, if the names of your bookmarks are long, that can cause slow downs. Try renaming some of your bookmarks to have a shorter name and see if that helps any.

I don't think that'll speed up the page loading any, though.
 
Safari became much faster and more responsive after I went to 10.3 and up.
 
Try using Safari under a different user account on the machine and see if the problems happen there.
 
Thanks for enagaging me again.

I tried using Safari under a different user account and got similar results: pages take forever to load (in fact, the "gearhead" never stops spinning); graphics are often missing; Safari often "unexpectedly" quits, etc. But Firefox was working fine.

What is puzzling to me is that this was not a GRADUAL decrease in performance for Safari, but happened literally overnight, from one day to the next. One day: great, zippy performance. The next day: Pfffft!

Upgrading to 10.3 sounds like a great option, but I'm being kind of a cheapie and holding out for 10.4. I would hate to upgrade now for only one program.

The tip on shortening bookmark names doesn't seem to make much sense, sorry for my skepticism. I try www.cnn.com as my standard test page, for the results that you have seen me report in this thread. For the most part, the results have not reflected using bookmarks.

(BTW, I stumbled on a way to eliminate a key frustration I've had with Firefox. I really like to watch the progress of a download via the download manager on whatever browser I'm using - Safari, Firefox, whatever. I was really upset, however, that whenever I'd download something with Firefox, it would "hang" (spinning beachball of death) for some time - 30 seconds or more. Since I do many small downloads in my typical usage, this was simply unacceptable. But I accidentally discovered that if I don't bother to open up Firefox' download manager, there is no hang, no beachball, just nice, zippy downloading. I can live with that tradeoff - no nice visual feedback on download progress in exchange for nice performance. I still think that's a bug with Firefox, or at least poorly optimized code or something. But the upshot is that Firefox has become much more usable and a real alternative to Safari for me, even though before this trouble I preferred the overall Safari experience.)
 
Well, if it's the same under a different user than it's probably not a Bookmark related issue, most likely something went haywire with the program itself. Are you running any third party plugins or programs that mess with Safari? (PitHelmet, SAFT, Safari Enhancer, etc.)

Last thing you can probably do is copy your bookmarks (Users/username/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist to a safe location then trash Safari and reinstall. Remove the app, the Library folder (Users/username/Library/Safari/), the Caches folder (Users/username/Library/Caches/Safari/), and your Preferences file (Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist). Do that for every user on the computer, then empty your trash. Download a fresh copy of Safari from Apple's site and install.
 
I was afraid someone was going to suggest reinstalling Safari.

And, I hate saying this, but I followed your directions to the letter, and the result is the same. Most web pages either take forever to load, or don't load at all. Safari still quits unexpectedly, like when I have two tabs open and loading two different web pages simultaneously.

Again, these are all symptoms that appeared spontaneously, overnight. No other of the programs I commonly use (e.g., MS Word) seem to be affected. Firefox sure works ok. Is there something in my system that Safari uniquely relies on that has become corrupted?

Thanks again for your suggestions.
 
Well, if reinstalling Safari made you afraid...I won't necessarily say what the last suggestion is, other than 'think bigger'. <G>

Have you tried creating a new user account and testing it under there? Might be worth a try having done the reinstall.
 
Have you tried Repairing the Disk from the OS CD, or using "fsck"?
Have you turned off Autofill?
Do you have FileVault turned on?
Deleting the icons folders? located in your user/Library/Safari folder?
Turn the javascript option off in the safari preferences?
 
Dear Numbers, I UNDERSTAND. While I appreciate all the replies here they don't seem to really explain what happened. I have the SAME PROBLEM. Read my post in this forum called disturbing behavior. I'm using Safari RIGHT NOW. No problem. However, if I visit Apple.com the whole machine will tank. I can no longer use Safari until i restart. I noticed the kernel_task goes up to 90% busy after hitting apple.com I posted screenshots too. This happened all of a sudden. The only thing different is that I added Norton Internet Security - And while the Mac folks seem to always blast this software, it seems like good stuff. The Antivirus has always worked well. Anyway, I turned all that off. Still an issue. It's as if the machine has a virus or there is something on apple's site hanging safari. If I visit with firefox - no problem. What gives????
 
Open the Activity Monitor and see if anything Norton related is running. If so, quit it, restart and see what Safari does.
 
I too am having trouble with Safari. I have been using it on my iMac (OS 10.3.8) with no problem, in fact I love Safari, but lately it refuses to peacefully coexist with Yahoo. I cannot access my Yahoo address book, and must open Internet Explorer to do so.

I tried going to Yahoo through my husband's account on the same computer and it works fine.

Yahoo was unable to find a problem at their end.

Any ideas, anybody?
 
Chocklit, try Emptying the Cache under your account first. If that doesn't help, try the 'Reset Safari' option. If that don't work, find your preferences file and trash it ( /HD Name/Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ). Empty your trash and restart Safari to see if Yahoo! works again.
 
Bobw, mdnky, others - thank you for your ongoing suggestions. I have some IRL responsibilities that I must attend to for the time being, and it will probably be afew days until I can get back to trying to fix Safari. But I wanted to acknowledge your hanging with me in the meantime - thank you!
 
Add me to the list of "Safari is suddenly slow" members, tried all the suggestions, still haven't figured it out but it was a quick change, meaning it worked fine one day, then slow as heck the next.
 
Disabling Java, Javascript, and plugins seems to speed things up quite a bit. Tradeoff is that some sites no longer work ..
 
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