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Performance is worse than ever! Unbelievably horrible.

C

charlesHindigo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 21, 2013
8
0
I recently moved my 2009ish 2x2.8gHz 18gig ram Mac Pro home from work. it was working quite well there. Now at home I have encountered unbearable performance issues. Here are some symptoms:

There is a 50% chance that my monitors won't come on at all. I will turn on the computer, hear the apple "bong" chime then nothing. I am able to engage capslock on my keyboard so I know something is functioning.

If my monitors do come on...the typical boot time is roughly 7-10 minutes. I will see nothing until the grey/white screen comes on...then it is another couple minutes till I see the desktop. And each time I try to do a proper restart, I will never get the monitors to come back upon reboot. I will have to force off the machine then keep trying till they work again.

EVERYTHING runs incredibly slow. The smallest function requires a long wait and a spinning pinwheel. Opening Safari will take about 3 minutes. System Preferences is about the same. And I tried to open Logic Studio but it is going on 20 minutes now and I don't think it's going to pull through.

Here are some things I've tried to fix the problems:
- Other monitors, graphic card, monitor power supplies, vga cables, vga to dvi adapters.
- Resetting P/VRAM.
- Running ONYX for cache, temp, etc files.
- Manually deleting cache from library folder.
- Disk Utility Verify and Repair Disk Permissions.
- Disabling Spotlight by not allowing it to search any HD.
- Removing all items from starting at login.
- Selecting Start Up/Boot Drive HD in System Preferences.

I can't remember too much of anything else I've tried so far.

Nothing really goes over 5% on my activity monitor as I just perform simple tasks or at idle. It really wasn't doing this until a couple days ago when I installed new software for a piece of musical hardware. I noticed when it got down to "about one minute remaining" on the install...it was taking an unusually long amount of time. Well over several minutes.

My specs are:
Mac Pro 2x2.8 gHz.
Lion 10.7.6
18 gigs of ram.
4 internal HD's.
GEforce GTX 580.
Dual Monitors (VGA to DVI connectors)

Any help at all would be much appreciated!
 
This sounds like one of two issues:

1) It's hardware related, and something got jogged loose on the way home. You should try reseating the RAM, the CPU riser card, all your hard drives and the GPU card.

2) It's software related, in which case it kinda sounds like OS X might be trying to contact a server or something that was there at work but isn't at home. Unfortunately I can't offer much assistance in this regard because that all depends on how your work network was setup (might be trying to contact an Open Directory domain, might be trying to resolve DNS names through a name server that no longer exists, might be trying to mount NFS shares or AFP shares, etc).

The fact that your monitors don't work half the time makes me think that the GPU card is loose or something else wiggled out in transit, but then again you could be experiencing issues caused by both of these scenarios.

-SC
 
Well, this is tough......

if it is a hardware related issue, caused for the move, you have to check throughfully all the hardware connected to the computer. And the internal components also.....

Short from a format of the hard drive and a full reinstall of the OS, nothing more comes to my mind. Ponder your options with care. And I hope you have a good and working backup. Other options can be search the threads in the Forums or even Google searching related or similar issues.....

Good luck....

:):apple:
 
You could try and make a bootable usb, boot from there and see if the problem persists. If it is s/w related, taking a look at the console's logs (console.app) might prove enlightening.
 
Get a simple OpenGL app (such as OpenGL Extensions Viewer from the App Store) and make sure you are running with graphics acceleration. You can also check to see if there are errors from the NVIDIA drivers in /var/log/system.log.

Is your GTX 580 a flashed model, or just a standard PC card? What power supply are you using?
 
I am pretty uncertain about the graphics card. It came configured this way when I acquired it. How can I find out the answers to your questions?
 
Ya know...last time I opened up the case I think the 2 plugs from the GTX 580 where going straight to the board. I'm about 75% sure.

Oh. And i forget to mention that when I ran the Disk Repair Utility...the only warning i got that couldn't be repair was:

SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent"

I have no clue what that pertains to.

Oh, and the last time I got the monitors to turn on...the wallpapers were not saved. And the arrangement changed. (the right monitor became the primary monitor as opposed to the left monitor when i shut it down.)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
charlesHindigo said:
I am pretty uncertain about the graphics card. It came configured this way when I acquired it. How can I find out the answers to your questions?
Click to expand...

Pull the card from the machine, it might possibly be a GTX 680 Mac Edition, made by EVGA. If it is, I would suggest spending the $20 on mountain lion, and when you install it do a fresh install, after making sure all the hardware is seated correctly, and plugged in.
 
I wouldn't mind doing a fresh OS install although there is one thing I am nervous about...

...The computer came with the Adobe CS6 (i believe) collection. It is registered to a ex-coworker that I am no longer in contact with. I am afraid of losing these programs. Is there any work-around?
 
charlesHindigo said:
I wouldn't mind doing a fresh OS install although there is one thing I am nervous about...

...The computer came with the Adobe CS6 (i believe) collection. It is registered to a ex-coworker that I am no longer in contact with. I am afraid of losing these programs. Is there any work-around?
Click to expand...

TimeMachine has came though for me before when I did a system restore, replaced all my applications, settings ect...
 
Unfortunately, Time Machine wasn't enabled at work and has not been able to successfully back anything up since having it at home. Each time I tried to run Time Machine...it gets to about 25% done and just freezes.
 
charlesHindigo said:
Unfortunately, Time Machine wasn't enabled at work and has not been able to successfully back anything up since having it at home. Each time I tried to run Time Machine...it gets to about 25% done and just freezes.
Click to expand...

Run memtest. That's short for "memory test", as in testing your RAM.
 
Since you have 4 internal hard drives, would it be possible to do a clean install of Mountain Lion on one of the other drives that do not currently have an OS on it?

If yes, you can use Migration Assistant to move everything over from your current boot drive.
 
A lose cable or card inside can cause symptoms you'd swear was software related.

Any time you move a desktop there's a very good chance of loosening some things internally. This happened to me, I was brilliant so I knew to go in and check everything - yup, everything is perfectly seated in the PCI slots etc… then I spent a ton of time trying to figure things out… then I went back inside and found the graphics card wasn't quite in all the way. Don't know how I missed it the first time, but I did. :p

You might even want to take everything out.. disassemble the thing. Clean it out thoroughly, then put it back together again.
 
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