safari strangely sluggish

[hupalmer]

When I first got my macbook pro (2.16GHZ, 2GB Ram) it was lightning fast at everything, including opening pages on Safari.. but recently it was started dragging its feet, taking 20 to 30 seconds to open up the average page, even the Google home page for example. I have restarted, I have emptied the cache, no improvement, any further suggestions, or should I start looking for viruses (gulp)?
best
Hugh

 

[jsd]

There aren't any viruses that could affect Safari's performance. How does Firefox work? Could it be your 'net connection? Try deleting the Safari preferences (in your library->preferences folder, com.apple.safari or something like that). There's probably a weird setting somewhere that accidentally got turned on. Once I was having a problem where the Finder would suddenly get really slow and spin the beach ball all the time. Turned out it was caused by my iDisk disagreeing with my internet connection...it was fine on a cable modem but it didn't like the satellite modem at my other house. Once I turned off the iDisk everything went smoothly again.

Another thing to look for is to make sure you didn't get a browser plugin installed that's not MacBook friendly...I hate the way Acrobat keeps installing itself in my Safari. Drives me crazy. Look under Computer->Library->Internet Plugins

 

[HowEver]

You'll lose cookies, including automatic logins for sites like this one, but have you "Reset Safari" (and not just cleaned the cache)?

In addition to iDisk problems, do you have a gDisk set (virtual GMail site)?

Onyx and other software can help with this too.

 

[grubber]

Onyx and other software can help with this too.

I'll second that. I had a helluva time with Safari slowing down, tried all the font tricks, the clearing cache, everything I could find.

I am on a laptop, and the periodic maintenance scripts never get run becuase my laptop is not always on. I ran Onyx and went through all the scripts and my Safari snapiness returned instantly. Highly recommended.