applications running slow on Mac OS X

gallantman

Hi,

I have a PowerBook G4 for the last couple of years and recently the applications have started to run slow. Usually running Firefox,Mail InDesign, Photoshop and Word. Sometimes use Virtual PC. All have been installed since the start expect Firefox which I installed a few months back.

The spec is O S x 10.3.9. 256 MB Memory. HD is 55.9 GB. 4.1 GB Free. 240, 323 files.Was going to run Verify Disk or Repair Disk but these options are greyed out.

When I went to run Virtual PC today it said I might not have enough memory and sure enough it won't start.

Is there anything I can do to improve memory or free up memory ?

In the Activity Monitor under System Memory it lists the following. Inactive 70MB, Used 250MB. Free 5MB, VM Size 4.73 GB, Pages In/Out 40003/34220.

Any help would be appreciated.
-gallantman

Sad Professor

You need more RAM. 256MB isn't enough for OSX, even on a PPC Mac, especially if you're running big intensive apps like Photoshop, Virtual PC, etc. You're Powerbook has been relying on virtual memory which is considerably slower. In the short term you can delete files from your hd to free up more space for virtual memory usage but you should get more RAM pronto.

Sad Professor

Which G4 is it btw? Should say in "About Mac" under processor. 500MHz? 1GHz?

pvik00

Today's software definitely requires more RAM than that.
I wonder what model of PowerBook you possess, if you share that information we might be able to recommend more specific ways of speeding up your system.

At first I'd say you should max out the RAM on your PB, and then you should go through the usual maintenance procedures, too. Memory is not a huge expense these days, I recommend http://www.crucial.com/eu/
Very reliable, sells great products and ships to Ireland swiftly.

Freeing up a considerable amount of space on your Hard Drive will also help, especially in your case where the system is required to access the pagefile so often.

If you PB is not too old you might also consider installing a more recent version of OS X, experience shows that they tend to be faster with each release if your machine is fit enough to handle it. My 1.42GHz iBook happily runs with Leopard, lots of RAM of course.
Do this after you packed more RAM into your system, obviously.

gallantman

Its a PowerBook G4 1 Ghz

Most of the apps have been installed since the start so I though I might be able to "recover" some memory. Only gone slow recently.

I'll try to clear up some space to see if that helps.

What are the usual maintenance procedures ? Only one I know is Disk Utility. And the Verify and Repair options are not available - anyone know why this is ?


Thanks,
-gallant

gallantman

How much RAM should I get ?

I only added RAM to a PC before. Is it a case of adding it to a spare slot and the Mac will recognise the new memory when you re-boot ?

-gallantman

pvik00

Regarding maintenance stuff, read through this thread:
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055388813

If something is unclear, feel free to ask.

Do buy some RAM upgrade, as that will be the solution for you on the long term. Make sure that the RAM you buy will work in your PB.

Your machine should be well capable running a more recent version of OS X if you want to. (Cleanly) Reinstalling the OS after such long time will definitely help a lot anyway, mostly for the fact you never seemed to do any maintenance.

If most of the apps are installed from the start then you probably have tons of things you never use, not too mention the usual suspect to take up huge chunks of space behind the scenes such as unnecessary localizations, fonts, printer drivers, etc...

I'm sure after cleaning up properly and running the maintenance tasks your PB G4 will be considerably faster.
Don't be mislead, you still should be upgrading the RAM!

pvik00

gallantman wrote: »

How much RAM should I get ?

I only added RAM to a PC before. Is it a case of adding it to a spare slot and the Mac will recognise the new memory when you re-boot ?

-gallantman

Adding more RAM is easy, here's how to do it (just locate your exact model, then click on RAM on the page that comes up after):
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/

Your Mac will identify it upon the next reboot if you follow the instructions carefully. I say it's best if you max out your RAM.
If you order it from the company I recommended a few posts above they'll have a tool on their website that helps you to order the right one for your Mac.

kevteljeur

Disk-defragging helps a lot with OS X - it's very disk-intensive and much more so with smaller amounts of RAM. In the OP's case, it will be literally swapping in just the apps currently in use and keeping as much as possible on the drive, where I'd say in this case you'll need 6-10 Gb free, and with a fragmented drive this will take much more time for the OS to do. A good idea would be to get a cheap external drive, install Mac OS onto it, buy Diskwarrior and iDefrag, and run both of them from the drive. Between them they'll sort out any file system problems you have, and definitely speed up your performance for at least a month or two after which it'll slowly degrade again.

There was a lot of debate a while back about the level of disk optimisation going on in 10.4 and 10.5; they don't defrag the drive, but they are a bit smarter about where they write files to on the drive...

As the other posters have said, best option is more RAM (2Gb is pretty cheap these days) and maybe an upgrade to 10.5; if you do a clean install and migrate your files across, you'll likely be shocked at the speed difference. Even a clean re-install of the same OS will give you a big performance jump, depending on how much of the previous junk you migrate back to your installation.

gallantman

Just to let you know I purchased 1GB of memory and when I went to install I had no free slot i.e. I had 2 x 256mb. So one must have gone bad and would explain why the sudden poor performance.

Identified the problem one (on the sedond attempt !) and now up to 1.25 GB and motoring nicely.

thanks for all your help.
-gallantman

pvik00

Great stuff!
I still recommend on carrying out the rest of the maintenance task if you haven't done so already.

dory

Same happened to me actually. Mine came with 2 x 512 and now it's saying I only have 512. Any idea why this might happen? I'm afraid the port might be broken, then I'm in trouble. Could it be the RAM itself that's gone?

asdasd

Could it be the RAM itself that's gone?

most likely, and hopefully. So it is fixable.

Sad Professor

dory wrote: »

Same happened to me actually. Mine came with 2 x 512 and now it's saying I only have 512. Any idea why this might happen? I'm afraid the port might be broken, then I'm in trouble. Could it be the RAM itself that's gone?

Chip might have just become loose. Sometimes happens. Remove both chips and reinsert securely.

gallantman

I'm back down to 256 mb !!!

I had installed the new 1 GB of memory into the slot where the "bad" memory was and now that seems to be gone as well......

So, I'll probably order 2 gb and install it in the "good" slot and leave the other one blank.

I presuming its a fault with the slot that is destroying the memory.

- gallantman

gallantman

back already !!

I re-read Sad Professor's last post and as a result swapped my 1 GB into the "good" port - and it worked. Now have 1 GB of memory.

The 256 memory is in the "bad" slot and that is exactly what it is - a bad slot rather than bad memory. I might try re-installing the 256 later in case its a loose slot but for the moment I'm happy with the 1 gb.

Thanks
- gallantman

ZENER

I had a similar experience with a 17" Powerbook. I too thought I had a "bad port". The machine came with a 512MB module installed, I bought another 1GB module and inserted it in the empty slot but it wasn't seen. So I put the 1GB module where the 512 had been and I had 1GB working. Again the 512 wasn't seen in the empty slot.

A few months ago I read similar stories from other Powerbook users and all had successfully cured the problem by resetting the PRAM while both slots were occupied. This worked for my machine too and I can now see both the 1GB and the 512MB modules giving a total of 1.5GB. Runs Leopard very nicely too !

Can't hurt to try it ?!

ZEN