17" intel iMac sooo slow.

[Linus]

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Anyone else have this problem? i keep getting beach balls even when i just change tabs in safari!

i don't run windows, but i use this to download all of my movies/music. I'm not sure but i think it slows down after it's up more than 24hrs, but after letting it "rest" sometimes it slows down within hours again.

i've tried dumping all my data into my freeagent and freeing up HD space but it hasn't helped. does vuze drag down the system? Sysstats say i'm not usaing more than 30% even when it keeps beach balling.

[reivi400]

I don't think it's the up-time. Our iMac at home is running 24/7 and we don't experience any slowdowns. I haven't used Vuze but can you check using Activity Monitor (it's in Applications, Utilities folder) to see if it's eating up resources (memory, CPU, etc)? Also, how much free hard disk space do you have?

It is only on my iBook that I sometimes experience beach balls. But then it's because I have several apps running, I'm loading more than 3 YouTube videos in 3 separate tabs, etc.

[booblanco]

without knowing your hardware configuration, i'd say you either
a) get more memory
b) reboot more often
c) run activity monitor and see which process is hogging your system's resources
d) repair permissions
e) reinstall the latest OS X combo updater

outside of these, an archive and install may be in order.

[rafaelc378]

Vuze is notorious as a system hog. Install iStat Pro or iStat Menu to confirm what's hogging all your system's resources.

If I'm correct and Vuze is the culprit, try switching to Transmission or uTorrent for Mac as a replacement. They have much MUCH smaller system footprints than Vuze does.

[red]

This may also be the start of HW failure. Back-up everything. Check your RAM and HDD.

[rafaelc378]

@Linus: In Vuze, what setting do you have for the total number of allowable connections? If it's something outlandish like several to tens of thousands, you might want to consider reducing that number. I vaguely recall a post several months ago where someone using a torrent program had it set to 100,000 or similar. When he reduced that number, system performance improved.

[fcdiesta]

I had this problem before with my MacBook. I found out that it was caused by having ClamXav do a "Sentry" watch on the downloads folder. Mainly because I was downloading a big file that time...

[Linus]

thanks guys. will try and go through the suggestions so far. i was running the old azureus before vuze and it was the same thing with that.

[quietcynic]

What version of OS X are you on right now? Open up Activity Monitor. It should tell you which processes are hogging all the CPU. If you see syslogd or bzip2 taking more than 3% consistently, it could be a problem with Leopard that occurs when the log files get too big. Deleting them fixes the issue.

I'm not sure if the problem also occurs with Tiger.

[PatrickGaerlan]

@Linus, if you quit all apps except Safari, do you still get those beachballs? Does it happen for any site you visit?