Seriously, what causes slow downs in performance?

Greg_Reez

Greg_Reez

Registered
And how can I fix it?

I'm getting the spinning lollipop of death more often while the system catches up with my actions, and in general, it's just taking longer for my OS to do normal tasks that were once lightning quick.

In theory, if you keep your software up-to-date, run routine maintenance every now and then, and don't try to overload your machine, shouldn't it remain efficient through time :confused: ? I've only had this machine for a year.

Mac OS 10.5.6
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
 
Are you running the latest safari with any SIMBL plug-ins liek PithHelmet/Keywurl etc? That caused me issues. Also try having Activity monitor running and looking at processes using lots of CPU/RAM/VRAM - i had issues with a weird print process for a while.

Sounds like you do the standard permission repair etc, do you have 15% free HD on the boot drive? That can cause slowdowns.

Finally, for a machine so speedy and given RAM prices, pushing the machine to 4gb would give you a fairly inexpensive speed boost for many tasks.
 
Don't use safari, in fact I installed Firefox the day I got the machine.

But anyway, I've been glancing at my CPU usage all day today and it's been floating around 90%...

:o
 
Hmmm. Photoshop is at the top, and the next item I recognize down the list is Firefox. but that's about 10th down. The items in between seem to be something that has to do with boinc_project (user), whatever that is.

The Process Names are minirosetta_1.54 for 5 of the 9 boinc items, and the rest are einstein_s5r5_5.

What's boinc? I remember my coworker showing me something at somepoint that had to do with boinc. Did he install something on my machine?
 
Probably. BOINC is a program to process data, normally for scientific projects, in the background on your computer. You need to look for a BOINC uninstaller (maybe just spotlight search for boinc). You seem to be running einstein@home (looks for gravity waves I think) and rosetta@home (protein folding).

That should seriously reduce your processor usage, 90% average is waaaaay high.

Seems there should be an included uninstaller.
 
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Okay.

I found this info on Boinc - in terms I can understand:

"In essence BOINC is software that can use the unused CPU cycles on a computer to do scientific computing—what you don't use of your computer, it uses.

BOINC consists of a server system and client software that communicate with each other to distribute, process, and return workunits."

Well, turns out that this is exactly what it was doing in the background of my system, and slowing everything down. It took a moment but I found all projects using my system, disabled them, deleted them, then uninstalled Boinc.

I found that uninstalling Boinc doesn't disable the projects from running. They were still there, so I reinstalled Boinc, opened it, and disabled the projects.

I went back into Activity Monitor and all of those Boinc processes were gone :D I then went into Terminal and my CPU usage is hovering between 1% to 7%. SWEET!

I had already purchased more memory late yesterday :mad: Oh well, I'll need it sooner or later.
 
Hi, My Mac has been progressively grinding to a halt too. Activity monitor shows Finder using from 1% to 68% of the CPU. I have 11GB free and 60GB used.

Any advice?
 
Check the free space on your hard drive. The MacOS X virtual memory system requires at least 10%--some say 15%--of your hard drive capacity available as free space so that it can operate properly.
 
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