Slow iMac G5

[pammyspyce]

My iMac is running incredibly slow lately. It's much slower than my PB in fact. I'm not sure what I should do to fix it. I've repaired permissions and ran MacJanitor. I have 105 GB free on my HD and I'm up to date with all system updates. I'm considering doing an erase and install of Tiger but I'd have to back up my home folder first, which is 27 GB so I'm not looking forward to burning all those DVDs. Oy. Actually a fresh install would be a huge pain all away around, but if it's what needs to be done then I'll do it. Any tips or advice? Please? It's painful to use at this point.

edit - the iMac has 1 GB RAM as well...

 

[FF_productions]

though u've already done it, check out versiontracker.com for some system optimizers. If those don't work...re-install everything...yeah it hurts...lots of time...it will be fine.

 

[LGRW3919]

though u've already done it, check out versiontracker.com for some system optimizers. If those don't work...re-install everything...yeah it hurts...lots of time...it will be fine.

i second that. although its last resort it has worked every time for me.

 

[mad jew]

What does Activity Monitor say? Is there a particular process using up more than its fair share of CPU or RAM?

 

[yenko]

My iMac is running incredibly slow lately. It's much slower than my PB in fact. I'm not sure what I should do to fix it. I've repaired permissions and ran MacJanitor. I have 105 GB free on my HD and I'm up to date with all system updates. I'm considering doing an erase and install of Tiger but I'd have to back up my home folder first, which is 27 GB so I'm not looking forward to burning all those DVDs. Oy. Actually a fresh install would be a huge pain all away around, but if it's what needs to be done then I'll do it. Any tips or advice? Please? It's painful to use at this point.

edit - the iMac has 1 GB RAM as well...

1. Repair Permissions

2. Restart

3. Restart is Single User Mode (Command-s)

4. Type fsck -f then hit Return

5. If it repairs the disk; do it again...the fsck part, else type reboot and hit return

6. If that doesn't solve the problem repair permissions one more time and restsrt.

7. Get Disk Warrior if the above don't fix it.

8. This works for me...your results may vary...and depending on a plethora of variables I'm not in a position to discuss here.

 

[mad jew]

yenko, you should make that your signature.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Have you moved the Performance from to "Highest" to "Automatic"? Forget which pref pane it's on, maybe Energy Saver, but the Automatic setting is too aggressive in slowing down the processing.

 

[TheMonarch]

Have you moved the Performance from to "Highest" to "Automatic"? Forget which pref pane it's on, maybe Energy Saver, but the Automatic setting is too aggressive in slowing down the processing.

I never understood why they have the reduced choice in plugged in Macs, portables I get because of the battery, but why would you set a G5 computer on reduced? Or why is that option there in the first place?

 

[yenko]

yenko, you should make that your signature.

Jeez.........you're right!

Hey ......... are you spying on me?

 

[mad jew]

Hey ......... are you spying on me?

Maybe...

But seriously, you could make your current signature a link to a spot on Apple's site that outlines how to run fsck processes. That'd be cool.

 

[Sun Baked]

1. Try making a new user to see if that helps.

2. Try booting in safe mode to see if that helps.

3. Forget the above two and disable the All-in-one printer driver, and/or anything that has the name Norton first.

 

[Macky-Mac]

...I'm considering doing an erase and install of Tiger but I'd have to back up my home folder first, which is 27 GB so I'm not looking forward to burning all those DVDs....

ummm....you have 27GB of data that isn't backed up????

I hope this doesn't turn into one of those "Help! I have 27GB of data and my computer just died...HELP?!?!?" threads.......you need to do some serious backing up right away

 

[pammyspyce]

ummm....you have 27GB of data that isn't backed up????

I hope this doesn't turn into one of those "Help! I have 27GB of data and my computer just died...HELP?!?!?" threads.......you need to do some serious backing up right away

Well, some of it is backed up. I have my entire library of music on my PB as well as my iMac. And 13 GB of my photos are on my iPod and also burned to DVDs. My iPhoto library is 24 GB, though! Yeah, I need to back up ASAP. I haven't backed up since May.

 

[pammyspyce]

1. Repair Permissions

2. Restart

3. Restart is Single User Mode (Command-s)

4. Type fsck -f then hit Return

5. If it repairs the disk; do it again...the fsck part, else type reboot and hit return

6. If that doesn't solve the problem repair permissions one more time and restsrt.

7. Get Disk Warrior if the above don't fix it.

8. This works for me...your results may vary...and depending on a plethora of variables I'm not in a position to discuss here.

What exactly is this? I can't break something doing that right? I'm not a complete computer moron, but I'm not a computer genius by far!

 

[yenko]

What exactly is this? I can't break something doing that right? I'm not a complete computer moron, but I'm not a computer genius by far!

Tell me more about your setup: i.e. version of OS X, software you recently installed, hardware recently installed, etc...........you get the picture.

Did it slow down after:

upgrade

update

hardware mod/install

3rd party app install

addition of peripheral device(s)

 

[pammyspyce]

Tell me more about your setup: i.e. version of OS X, software you recently installed, hardware recently installed, etc...........you get the picture.

Did it slow down after:

upgrade

update

hardware mod/install

3rd party app install

addition of peripheral device(s)

It slowed down this past week. I updated to iTunes 5.0.1. I'm running 10.4.2.

I ran Activity Monitor and I noticed that my piddly 5 widgets were totally sucking up my resources so my dashboard is empty now and I restarted. But I have like 15 widgets on my PB without issue, so why do they suck on the iMac? Firefox was bad, too, so I quit that before I restarted and haven't reopened it.

Here are some things that I'm really unsure about on Activity Monitor: HP IO Classic Proxy, HP IO Classic Proxy 2, HP Communications, HP Event Handler, mdimport, pbs, ATSServer. I do have an HP printer that I recently moved into my bedroom and hooked it up to my AirPort base for wireless shared printing. Could that be it?

It's so bad that I have a several second lag when I mouse over an app on the dock before it magnifies. Safari just hangs and hangs. iPhoto is almost unusable.

Thanks so much for helping. I really appreciate it.

 

[yenko]

It slowed down this past week. I updated to iTunes 5.0.1. I'm running 10.4.2.

I ran Activity Monitor and I noticed that my piddly 5 widgets were totally sucking up my resources so my dashboard is empty now and I restarted. But I have like 15 widgets on my PB without issue, so why do they suck on the iMac? Firefox was bad, too, so I quit that before I restarted and haven't reopened it.

Here are some things that I'm really unsure about on Activity Monitor: HP IO Classic Proxy, HP IO Classic Proxy 2, HP Communications, HP Event Handler, mdimport, pbs, ATSServer. I do have an HP printer that I recently moved into my bedroom and hooked it up to my AirPort base for wireless shared printing. Could that be it?

It's so bad that I have a several second lag when I mouse over an app on the dock before it magnifies. Safari just hangs and hangs. iPhoto is almost unusable.

Thanks so much for helping. I really appreciate it.

Disconnect the HP Wireless Printing and see what happens.

The Widgets hog resources only when they all start up as, in my case, they need to get on line to retrieve info. Afterwards, things settle down.

 

[Sun Baked]

Disconnect the HP Wireless Printing and see what happens.

The Widgets hog resources only when they all start up as, in my case, they need to get on line to retrieve info. Afterwards, things settle down.

Between the old Norton and HP AIO problems, people are still having problems with the HP drivers.

 

[yenko]

Between the old Norton and HP AIO problems, people are still having problems with the HP drivers.

HP drivers are already installed. HP has a tendency to install more than just drivers. Unless you have a brand new just released HP printer, the drivers should already be in your machine. All you need to do is configure your printer.

As far as Norton is concerned, that crap should not be installed on any Mac. It's invasive and doesn't do what it should correctly anyway.

Get rid of it.

Just my Humble Opinion.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

I never understood why they have the reduced choice in plugged in Macs, portables I get because of the battery, but why would you set a G5 computer on reduced? Or why is that option there in the first place?

Not sure about Power Macs but iMac G5 has some ridiculous temperatures if you leave it on highest. CPU 80C and HD 57C is never too healthy. And also, this means the fans will be even quieter

 

[mklos]

Not sure about Power Macs but iMac G5 has some ridiculous temperatures if you leave it on highest. CPU 80C and HD 57C is never too healthy. And also, this means the fans will be even quieter

Agreed! When I had my iMac G5, I would run it on reduced for almost everything, except playing games when I would put it on highest. After I was doing playing games, the CPU would get as high as 170 F and the fans would be spinning like hell. I would then put the CPU settings on Reduced and after about an hour the fans went back to normal and the CPU would go to around 120 to 130 F. So it is needed on iMac G5's IMO.

Thats why I got rid of my iMac G5. I was sick and tired of the heat and noise it created. The only two things I liked about it was the speed and the 20" screen. Other than that, the iMac G5 wasn't very impressive IMHO so I sold it and bought a 17" PowerBook. Which actually doesn't feel any slower and with somethings, it actually feels faster than my 1.8 GHz iMac G5.

 

[Scottyk9]

"It's so bad that I have a several second lag when I mouse over an app on the dock before it magnifies. Safari just hangs and hangs. iPhoto is almost unusable."

Something is seriously wrong, even with performance settings set to lowest. When you check activity monitor, open to system memory and sort by % CPU - anything using a high fraction of your CPU?

Agreed! When I had my iMac G5, I would run it on reduced for almost everything, except playing games when I would put it on highest. After I was doing playing games, the CPU would get as high as 170 F and the fans would be spinning like hell. I would then put the CPU settings on Reduced and after about an hour the fans went back to normal and the CPU would go to around 120 to 130 F. So it is needed on iMac G5's IMO.

Thats why I got rid of my iMac G5. I was sick and tired of the heat and noise it created. The only two things I liked about it was the speed and the 20" screen. Other than that, the iMac G5 wasn't very impressive IMHO so I sold it and bought a 17" PowerBook. Which actually doesn't feel any slower and with somethings, it actually feels faster than my 1.8 GHz iMac G5.

I just wanted to balance your experience with mine - I always have my Rev A 1.8 iMac set on highest performance, rarely get higher than 75 C, and the fans are very quiet. While there are reports of the problems you experienced, they are not uniformly present.

 

[adagioblue]

It slowed down this past week. I updated to iTunes 5.0.1. I'm running 10.4.2.

I ran Activity Monitor and I noticed that my piddly 5 widgets were totally sucking up my resources so my dashboard is empty now and I restarted. But I have like 15 widgets on my PB without issue, so why do they suck on the iMac? Firefox was bad, too, so I quit that before I restarted and haven't reopened it.

Here are some things that I'm really unsure about on Activity Monitor: HP IO Classic Proxy, HP IO Classic Proxy 2, HP Communications, HP Event Handler, mdimport, pbs, ATSServer. I do have an HP printer that I recently moved into my bedroom and hooked it up to my AirPort base for wireless shared printing. Could that be it?

It's so bad that I have a several second lag when I mouse over an app on the dock before it magnifies. Safari just hangs and hangs. iPhoto is almost unusable.

Thanks so much for helping. I really appreciate it.

You may have something there with the HP files. HP AIO installs a font file called "TIMES RO". It screws everything up really bad. Delete it ASAP and anytime you install new HP software, make sure that it wasn't put back in.

Meanwhile, I found your post while Googling for the HP Classic files you mention, to see if anyone else suspects them as being problems. HP installed them, but I have never had Classic (OS9) on this computer. I was having so many problems with my G4 Dulie that I changed boot drives - I have 2. Newly formatted, fresh install of OS 10.2.4. Somewhere along the way, while installing my other applications, the same problems started popping up. I never noticed these HP files on my old drive, and one of them opens at startup and parks itself in the toolbar, so if it had been on the other drive, I would have noticed it. I did install an HP update that wasn't on the old drive. I think I'm going to try removing them and see what happens.

Good Luck!