Sudden slowdown

Mike Adams

Mike Adams

Registered
I have a 2.7Ghz G5 with 1GB RAM and running 10.4.3. About two days ago i started to have a problem. Almost every operation, starting a program, opening a window etc. causes the spinning wheel to appear. This will be there for up to a minute and then the operation will proceed. Activity monitor shows no unusual activity during this time-out, though occasionally the Finder turns red briefly. No new software was added prior to this behavior starting.
Does anyone have an idea what is going on?
Thanks
 
Have you checked the Console for information? And when was the last time you restarted?

(Not that you should have to restart, but just curious.)
 
Aha! I am getting a string of mdimporter crashes that coincide with the slowdowns. Now if I just knew what that means and how to fix it......
 
Hmm. mdimport gets metadata about files and returns it to something that wants it (e.g., Spotlight). You could have a Spotlight-related process hanging or crashing here.

Which mdimporter is it? Do you see it attached to an app, e.g., "/System/Library/Spotlight/iPhoto.mdimporter"?
 
The console shows this happening about once every minute

Jan 7 10:14:06 Mike-Adams crashdump[1017]: mdimportserver crashed
Jan 7 10:14:06 Mike-Adams crashdump[1017]: crash report written to: /Users/adams/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mdimportserver.crash.log
 
Open a Terminal window, try "mdimport -L" to list all of the mdimporters on your system, and see if there are any third-party (non-Apple) mdimporters there. You could have an unhappy mdimporter causing the crash.
 
Wow, there are a lot. One problem is that many seem to be imbedded within programs (i.e. OmniGraffle) so the only way to remove them is to remove the program
"/Applications/OmniGraffle.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OmniGraffle3.mdimporter",
 
You could try rebuilding the entire Spotlight database. There are good hints on macosxhints.com.

You could also see if there are particular types of user action that cause the crash. I.e., opening a mail message, opening a particular kind of file, etc. See any patterns?

Also peruse ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mdimportserver.crash.log for information. Let us know what you find!
 
Almost any action seems to trigger it. It is not program-specific.

II have looked at the log but the only reference to a crash is this:

Thread 2 crashed with PPC Thread State 64:
srr0: 0x000000000101870c srr1: 0x100000004200f030 vrsave: 0x0000000000000000
cr: 0x42004424 xer: 0x0000000020000000 lr: 0x000000000101a460 ctr: 0x00000000010b87b8
r0: 0x00000000ffffffff r1: 0x00000000f0100350 r2: 0x00000000f01005d8 r3: 0x00000000f01004e0
r4: 0x00000000ffffffff r5: 0x00000000000003e8 r6: 0xffffffffffffffff r7: 0x0000000000000001
r8: 0x0000000000000000 r9: 0x00000000f01005d8 r10: 0x0000000000000001 r11: 0x000000000110e51c
r12: 0x00000000010b87b8 r13: 0x0000000000000000 r14: 0x0000000000000000 r15: 0x0000000000000000
r16: 0x0000000000000000 r17: 0x0000000000000000 r18: 0x000000000035a240 r19: 0x0000000000000000
r20: 0x000000000035bea0 r21: 0x0000000000000001 r22: 0x0000000000000001 r23: 0x000000000035c000
r24: 0x000000000000f064 r25: 0x000000000000f05c r26: 0x000000000000f05d r27: 0x000000000000f061
r28: 0x000000000000f060 r29: 0x0000000000000009 r30: 0x00000000f0100350 r31: 0x000000000101a29c

I will try to resolve this next week. Thanks for the time
 
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