Why is my Quad so slow?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
When I go to save a file, or open one for that matter, it takes about 30 seconds for the little directory contents preview to appear.



The hard drive isn't sleeping, and according to the Activity Monitor the processors aren't doing anything.



At this rate, this Quad is the 'slowest' machine I've had in years!



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 20
    What apps are you using, and does it happen to all the applications?
  • Reply 2 of 20
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Messiah

    When I go to save a file, or open one for that matter, it takes about 30 seconds for the little directory contents preview to appear.



    The hard drive isn't sleeping, and according to the Activity Monitor the processors aren't doing anything.



    At this rate, this Quad is the 'slowest' machine I've had in years!



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    Turn off iDisk synching in the dot-mac preference pane.
  • Reply 3 of 20
    My 2x800MHz G4 is probably faster than your Quad...you wanna switch?
  • Reply 4 of 20
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by lundy

    Turn off iDisk synching in the dot-mac preference pane.



    I concur. I have auto syncing on for my iDisk on my home system and I get similar delays occasionally. Note sure if manual sync fixes it or if you have to turn it off all the way.
  • Reply 5 of 20
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Thanks for the tip with disk syncing ? but unfortunately it didn't make any difference on this occassion.



    I've always had disk syncing switched on, and I've never had this problem before. Normally the dialog just snaps open.



    I mainly use Adobe apps. InDesign File > Open takes about thiry seconds for the dialog to appear. Bizarrely, cancelling it and reperforming the request doesn't speed up the process... so it's not as though it's a drive spin-up issue.



    Moderators: Can you move this thread to Genius Bar (sorry I should probably have started it there in hindsight!)
  • Reply 6 of 20
    chris vchris v Posts: 460member
    Maybe clear the recent servers cache? (I forget exactly how, but I've had it fix finder slowdowns in the past) It could be looking for a network drive that's not there any more, or something like that.



    Perhaps the last time you saved somethng, you saved it to an iDisk folder, and now it's trying to bring that up as the location to save to? Unmount your iDisk entirely, too, and see if that helps. iDisk speeds have been abominable lately.
  • Reply 7 of 20
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    I've been checking Disk Utility daily, and yesterday it started reporting:



    Illegal Name

    Illegal Name



    and then informed me that the 'underlying task failed' and that the drive needed repaired (but didn't give me the option to repair it).



    I presume that an illegal name mean that a file name contains prohibited characters ':' etc?



    I've been meaning to install two 250GB drives and configure them as RAID 1 for some time now, so I'm going to stick them in and do a clean install. I'll then move all my data over and keep checking to make sure that an illegal name doesn't sneak in again.



    I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks for all the help!
  • Reply 8 of 20
    Try running Adobe's recent patches for its crappy software. This may fix the problem, as it has been known that CS 2 corrupts files on your harddrive.



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  • Reply 9 of 20
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SCARECROW

    Try running Adobe's recent patches for its crappy software. This may fix the problem, as it has been known that CS 2 corrupts files on your harddrive.



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    Yeah, just reformatted the drive, installed 10.4.2 and then the 10.4.4 updater. The drive was clean until I installed CS2, whereupon Disk Utility started reporting 'Illegal Name' again.



    Nice work Adobe.
  • Reply 10 of 20
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SCARECROW

    Try running Adobe's recent patches for its crappy software. This may fix the problem, as it has been known that CS 2 corrupts files on your harddrive.



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    WHAT!?? What files does it corrupt?
  • Reply 11 of 20
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by the cool gut

    WHAT!?? What files does it corrupt?



    It corrupted all four partitions of my boot drive, and somehow also hosed a file that QuicKeys uses. Disk Utility was able to repair all four partitions. That was the "Demo" version - it "Demoed" to me that I definitely don't want it.
  • Reply 12 of 20
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SCARECROW

    Try running Adobe's recent patches for its crappy software. This may fix the problem, as it has been known that CS 2 corrupts files on your harddrive.





    Yikes, glad I'm still using CS1.
  • Reply 13 of 20
    Quote:

    Originally posted by the cool gut

    WHAT!?? What files does it corrupt?



    It corrupted 2x200GB Maxtor drives I had running full of NEF files.



    Luckily I was able to bring them back. Now I'm religiously making DVD backups of my pictures.
  • Reply 14 of 20
    trtamtrtam Posts: 111member
    When I was testing out software on the Quads in the Apple Store, I found them to be as responsive as the duals. The app I was using was Adobe Illustrator CS2 and I was using the Live Trace feature. Anyway, even opening Safari took quite a while.
  • Reply 15 of 20
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    messiah, i know you said the hard drive isn't sleeping, but i'm still willing to bet that, especially if you have any external drives, they have spun down because they were not being used, and then must "wake up" whenever you activate a save dialog box, in case the user wants to save there. your main drive and scratch disks don't spin down because you're constantly using them. but even if you have a second disk for file storage, it has to spin up and load the directory info. i have also found the same problem occurs with any connected network drives if they aren't very optimized (which describes just about every windows-network i have ever had to be connected to...)



    try this: go to the energy saver system preference, and UNCHECK "put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible." also, isn't there a preference that is set to "automatic" instead of "highest performance" on G5's? i'm on my g4 at home, so i can't check that out. that may also be just a powerbook thing.



    anyway, the symptoms you described fit, so give that a try and see if things works a bit faster.



    hope that helps.
  • Reply 16 of 20
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Turns out the problem is caused by the CS2 installer. It screws up your hard drive.



    If you're reading this, and you have CS2 installed, launch Disk Utility and you'll get 'Illegal name' appearing twice before DU holds up its hands.



    If you ignore it long enough it'll start butchering the structure of your drive.
  • Reply 17 of 20
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Messiah

    Turns out the problem is caused by the CS2 installer. It screws up your hard drive.



    If you're reading this, and you have CS2 installed, launch Disk Utility and you'll get 'Illegal name' appearing twice before DU holds up its hands.



    If you ignore it long enough it'll start butchering the structure of your drive.




    Fortunately, I noticed this 5-10 minutes after installing CS2. Apple Motion started hanging up and I saw in the process that it couldn't access some vnode so I ran disk utility and discovered the error. I didn't have the boot disk handy so I booted with cmd-s and ran fsck -f. Everything was good and I made sure to fix the other machines at work.



    Does it really damage the drive structure if you leave it? I think there is still a machine I need to fix at work but I haven't gotten round to it.



    I also thought the G5 Quad I use was slow. At certain tasks, it doesn't seem to be using hardly any CPU. However, you really notice when using apps that do take advantage of all the CPUs. Shake maxes all 4 out when rendering.
  • Reply 18 of 20
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Marvin

    Does it really damage the drive structure if you leave it? I think there is still a machine I need to fix at work but I haven't gotten round to it.



    Well, I posted various concerns about a problem that I encountered, a few months ago. Basically, Spotlight would keep re-indexing my drives (as though it was the first time that it had seen the drives in question).



    The crux of the problem was that it appeared as though "something" had "downsized" the drives and the displaced data either vanished or became corrupted.



    My understanding is that if the volume header becomes corrupted to the point where the reported size of the drive starts changing, Spotlight might indeed believe that it is seeing a new drive for the first time an then proceed to re-index said drive.



    This problem was unfortunately repeatable (I decomissioned a G5 that I believed was "jinxed" as after several nuke & pave installs on different hard disk mechansims the problem kept reoccuring, only to replace the G5 with another machine which suffered the same problem).



    The more I learn about this CS2 problem, and the effects it has on the volume header, the more convinced I become that CS2 is the "something" that caused all the problems.



    If I were you, I wouldn't wait to see just how bad it can get!



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  • Reply 19 of 20
    fahlmanfahlman Posts: 740member
    I have CS2 on a dual 1.25 GHz G4 that had the Illegal Name problem one time many months ago but has never reappeared. My Dual 2.0 GHz G5, which also has CS2, has never exhibited this problem. I wonder what the difference is? Has anyone checked out Adobe's forums for discussions of this problem?
  • Reply 20 of 20
    fahlmanfahlman Posts: 740member
    A quick Google search resulted in this support document at Adobe's website.



    Adobe calims it's a problem with Mac OS X, not CS2.

    Quote:

    Mac OS X causes illegal file names to be reported when it reads some of the font data used in the Vietnamese End User License Agreements, which are installed in the Legal or Legal.localized folders. This problem causes severe file system and hard disk corruption if the files are not deleted or if the file system is not repaired.



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