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Help! Beachball every time I change apps for 5 seconds

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dr_lha

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 8, 2003
1,633
177
Today I've been having a weird problem with my PowerMac G5. Every time I click on a different app, the app doesn't become active until about 5 seconds after I click it.

For example if I'm using Safari and someone IMs me using Adium, I click on the Adium window and start typing and the text doesn't come up for 5-10 seconds after I start typing. The same happens for Terminal.app, Mail, Safari, etc...

I've tried the following:

Repaired permissions
Ran a disk check
Removed all my extensions (mainly Growl stuff)
Rebooted about 10 times
Installed the latest patches (i.e. the Security update that happened today).
Ran as a different user (same results)

Anyone ever encountered any issue like this before? My Mac is decidedly un-snappy, and its very frustrating.

CPU usage is low BTW, there are no rogue processes taking up the CPU time, and disk usage and memory are all normal.
 
...and also: How much free HD space do you have...?

Edit: Also, can you try doing this with Activity Monitor visible, and see is any processes takes up a lot of resources in those seconds it takes to change app? (Like the WindowServer process, in which case removing the /Library/Preferences/apple.com.windowserver.plist and restart might help... :))
 
As I mentioned above, disk usage and memory are normal. I have 1Gb of RAM and this issue affects me as soon as I reboot the machine - its not a memory issue.

I have about 40Gb free on my HD.

I'll try the windowserver.plist thing though, thanks!

EDIT: I'll note that the Activity Monitor seems to show the app I'm switching to as taking up most of the CPU.
 
dr_lha said:
I'll try the windowserver.plist thing though, thanks!

EDIT: I'll note that the Activity Monitor seems to show the app I'm switching to as taking up most of the CPU.
Click to expand...
Next suspects might be /Library/Preferences/com.apple.dockfixit.plist or any other of the plists in /Library/Preferences (probably not in ~/Library/Preferences since you said other accounts also was affected).

Maybe you could be a good time to try the Verify Preferences function in MainMenu. :)
 
2nyRiggz said:
When was the last time u restarted?
Click to expand...
As I mentioned in the first post, I've rebooted about 10 times to try to fix this!
 
mad jew said:
Also, do you have any theme changing apps installed? :)
Click to expand...
I had UNO, but I removed it and the issue still remains after several reboots.
 
dr_lha, let me ask you this: Are you using an admin account or a non-admin account? If non-admin, try switching to an admin account and see if you encounter the same issue.
 
dejo said:
dr_lha, let me ask you this: Are you using an admin account or a non-admin account? If non-admin, try switching to an admin account and see if you encounter the same issue.
Click to expand...
Yeah, tried that. The other account I logged into was the admin account. Same deal.

This is really annoying.
 
2nyRiggz said:
have u checked your ram?? checked to see if all of your ram is coming up.
Click to expand...
The RAM is fine. I checked after a reboot and I was getting the problem when Activity Monitor was reporting around 400Mb of free RAM. Hmm....

If this doesn't go away I'm going to do the thing I haven't had to do since Windows. Reinstall the OS. :(
 
Thanks for everyone's help in this thread. I have a few things to try now. I hadn't had a chance over the evening because the G5 is my work computer. Fingers crossed I can fix this weird bug.
 
Just to close this out. I tried everything everyone suggested and nothing worked. I tried a few more things, didn't work.

Finally, I did an archive and install, and now everything is working fine. Hmm....
 
Glad it worked... in the end... even if noone could give you a better solution than A&I... :)

I feared you might have bad RAM/HD there for a while...

I think that UNO(?) might be the culprit... those theme changing hacks are rarely any good for your system... ;)
 
You said that you switched to the admin account to test that?

Is that an admin account that you set up after the recent security scares? And used the sudo chown command in terminal to switch the ownerships?

If so, then there's 3 of us been 'got' by some weird part of creating the account. Me (restored from a backup), mkrishnan (did an A&I) and you.

Glad it's working again - it's frustrating!
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
Glad it worked... in the end... even if noone could give you a better solution than A&I... :)

I feared you might have bad RAM/HD there for a while...

I think that UNO(?) might be the culprit... those theme changing hacks are rarely any good for your system... ;)
Click to expand...
Yeah, its not going back on. Not risking it, as much as I loved the look of all those unified versions of Mac apps.
 
Applespider said:
You said that you switched to the admin account to test that?

Is that an admin account that you set up after the recent security scares? And used the sudo chown command in terminal to switch the ownerships?

If so, then there's 3 of us been 'got' by some weird part of creating the account. Me (restored from a backup), mkrishnan (did an A&I) and you.

Glad it's working again - it's frustrating!
Click to expand...
Actually no, I set the computer up with an Admin account when I first got it, but my main user gets its user/password from a LDAP server and home directory from NFS.

I guess the LDAP/NFS combo may have been the problem, but the computer had be operating flawlessly under this setup for about a year. I really can't figure out what changed to make this happen.

PERHAPS IT WAS A VIRUS!!!!1111one
 
Great that it's all working for you. :cool:


Mitthrawnuruodo said:
I think that UNO(?) might be the culprit... those theme changing hacks are rarely any good for your system... ;)
Click to expand...


I have UNO running on about five completely different systems and it's fine. I don't think UNO is all that bad to be honest. I'm with you though, in that theme changers are generally pretty hazardous. :(
 
mad jew said:
I have UNO running on about five completely different systems and it's fine. I don't think UNO is all that bad to be honest. I'm with you though, in that theme changers are generally pretty hazardous. :(
Click to expand...
Maybe it was innocent here... but I'm still sceptical to those hacks... they may run great for a while, but then (coincidentely often when you upgrade the system ;)) they crash and take the system down with them, and in 9 out of 10 cases when those hacs are running they are (at least in part) causing the porblems... trying to remove the <bleep>, at this point, often just makes everything worse... :(

ClearDock, which is very graceful, ThinkerTool, which basically just accesses hidden preferences, and changing the odd icon manually is as far as I go when it comes to customizing my OS... ;)
 
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