SLOW AS MOLASSES, MacBook Pro 17"

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Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I am running Leopard on a 1st Gen MacBook Pro 17" glossy screen with 2GB memory. After installing the latest software updates from Apple online, everything is in SLOOOOOW motion. Windows open as if they were 1 frame a second animations. To complicate things, I recently installed the MS OFFICE 2008 but that did not seem to cause it.



Any ideas?

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  • Reply 1 of 9
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cubit View Post


    I am running Leopard on a 1st Gen MacBook Pro 17" glossy screen with 2GB memory. After installing the latest software updates from Apple online, everything is in SLOOOOOW motion. Windows open as if they were 1 frame a second animations. To complicate things, I recently installed the MS OFFICE 2008 but that did not seem to cause it.



    Any ideas?



    What does activity monitor say? Is there a process in the background that is eating up your cpu?
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  • Reply 2 of 9
    cubitcubit Posts: 846member
    thank you Backtomac. I'd not checked that. I will, but I need to know what I am really looking for. A quick examination of the 4MB memory shows. I've turned off all network activity-- i.e. not on line and (I;m doing this on another Mac) and have turned off all other external things. Even the Hard Drive is about 1/3 empty.
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  • Reply 3 of 9
    cubitcubit Posts: 846member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by backtomac View Post


    What does activity monitor say? Is there a process in the background that is eating up your cpu?



    thank you Backtomac. I'd not checked that. I will, but I need to know what I am really looking for. A quick examination of the 4MB memory shows. I've turned off all network activity-- i.e. not on line and (I;m doing this on another Mac) and have turned off all other external things. Even the Hard Drive is about 1/3 empty.
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  • Reply 4 of 9
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cubit View Post


    thank you Backtomac. I'd not checked that. I will, but I need to know what I am really looking for. A quick examination of the 4MB memory shows. I've turned off all network activity-- i.e. not on line and (I;m doing this on another Mac) and have turned off all other external things. Even the Hard Drive is about 1/3 empty.



    Make sure you look at all processes. There is a box in the upper right hand corner. Just see if ther is a process that is using up a larger percentage of your cpu cycles. That might explain the slow performance.



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  • Reply 5 of 9
    Was it slow before the updates?



    Sometimes, Spotlight will consume a lot of resources after an update as it indexes.
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  • Reply 6 of 9
    cubitcubit Posts: 846member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by k squared View Post


    Was it slow before the updates?



    Sometimes, Spotlight will consume a lot of resources after an update as it indexes.



    Thanks for asking. It was acting like a flash-- terrific. So fast, in fact, I was thinking of making passing iMac 24" desktop along to my wife who has never liked laptops instead of getting a new one.



    I had no problems at all for the three or four days I was running under OSX 10.5 until I made the the online update.
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  • Reply 7 of 9
    cubitcubit Posts: 846member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cubit View Post


    Thanks for asking. It was acting like a flash-- terrific. So fast, in fact, I was thinking of making passing iMac 24" desktop along to my wife who has never liked laptops instead of getting a new one.



    I had no problems at all for the three or four days I was running under OSX 10.5 until I made the the online update.



    Well I took it to the Genius bar at the new 14th Street Apple Store in NYC and it ran through the gamut of opinions, ideas, and basic tests. Interestingly, nobody had seen this particular problem before, which is probably a good thing... There were no hardware problems of any kind, so it was clearly software related.



    In the end, the decision was to do a reinstall of the OSX 10.5 system, though we did the save and archive option.. After several hours of installing and waiting (I did that at home, rather than sit at the "Bar"), it was with great trepidation that I finally rebooted my now slimmed down and simplified MBP 17. Low and behold, it is back to normal.



    Soo, somewhere in the latest online update there was something that knocked me off course, but whatever it was remains an unknown, but as a mac user I've got my computer back.



    Good enough, but thanks for suggestions and support in my efforts.
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  • Reply 8 of 9
    FWIW, I'm having the same problem, and it manifested right after the last update as well. See this thread (http://discussions.apple.com/thread....sageID=6897196).



    I checked for rogue processes using both Top and the OS X gui thing...process monitor? Nothing apparently wrong there, except that any time I resized a program window, that program would spike CPU cycles to 50% or so while redrawing. In my case the system clock, at least the displayed system clock, was losing time, too. If I rebooted it'd be correct, but would immediately start losing time again.



    I booted from install disks as much as I could, ran the system info utility which has a clock in it, and the problem seemed to not be manifesting itself so I'm assuming it isn't a hardware issue. Tomorrow I'll reinstall Leopard I suppose.
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  • Reply 9 of 9
    cubitcubit Posts: 846member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iampetesmith View Post


    FWIW, I'm having the same problem, and it manifested right after the last update as well. See this thread (http://discussions.apple.com/thread....sageID=6897196).



    I checked for rogue processes using both Top and the OS X gui thing...process monitor? Nothing apparently wrong there, except that any time I resized a program window, that program would spike CPU cycles to 50% or so while redrawing. In my case the system clock, at least the displayed system clock, was losing time, too. If I rebooted it'd be correct, but would immediately start losing time again.



    I booted from install disks as much as I could, ran the system info utility which has a clock in it, and the problem seemed to not be manifesting itself so I'm assuming it isn't a hardware issue. Tomorrow I'll reinstall Leopard I suppose.



    Sounds like the problem. Obviously, now that things are going great guns, I am loathe to attempt to go to any more online updates until I know what caused it.
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