Sluggish Computer Response

[DixieViking]

We have an older white plastic MacBook 10.6.8, lgb memory and everything has slowed down. From starting to opening up programs, everything takes so much more time now than it did before. We are talking about stuff that is resident on the computer, not involving Internet connections and the like. What do you suggest that I start looking at? Thanks. Chris

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

First thing I would suggest is to open disk utility and repair permissions.
Question :
How much free space does your drive have?

Possibly something to consider is upping the RAM to 2GB if possible, but this would depend on my question.

 

[DixieViking]

I have 42GB available on a 80GB disk.

 

[DixieViking]

I did repair permissions.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

I did repair permissions.

Has this improved the slowness any?

 

[DixieViking]

No, it did not. No material difference.

 

[Cory Cooper]

A couple of things to check:

-Do you have any antivirus software running?
-What are the Login Items for your user account?
-Have you tried creating a test account, to see if sluggishness is present when logged into that account?

C

 

[DixieViking]

A couple of things to check:

-Do you have any antivirus software running?
-What are the Login Items for your user account?
-Have you tried creating a test account, to see if sluggishness is present when logged into that account?

C

No antivirus running.
Login items are:
ITunesHelper
Airport Base Station AGent
SpeechSynthesisServer
Dropbox
Google Software Update (all users)
Test account runs a bit swifter, just a bit.

It takes the computer 44 seconds to start up. I have the 'feeling' that it slow, that I used to have a faster response time. Is it possible that DropBox should be eliminated? I have no current need for it.

 

[Cory Cooper]

It's always good to eliminate any Login Items that you aren't using. Try removing DropBox from Login Items. Also, are you using Speech at all on your system? If not, remove SpeechSynthesisServer. Google Software Update can slow things down as well...it is more involved to remove. A Google search can get you the steps.

C

 

[oldscribe]

Also check activity monitor to see if anything is resource hungry.

 

[Kaveman]

Google Software Update (all users)

can be a killer.
There are 3 main areas where Macs go slow.
1. Harddrive problems, getting files from and putting files on takes time.
2. CPU, so process is taking all the CPU cycles.
3. Network, the Mac is spending all its time looking for something out on the internet.

Activity Monitor will show you if any of these are the case.

 

[tompatrick]

I think little bit of hardware update is required specially RAM to 2GB.
You should also try Onyx tool to speed slow Mac.

 

[Kaveman]

You should also try Onyx tool to speed slow Mac.

You can also do great damage with this tool, so I advise caution. There have been a few threads here from people who have used it, and perhaps didn't understand what they were doing, and their computer no longer ran properly. It is also next to impossible to undo what Onyx does to your Mac, so if you go wrong then you be faced with a lot of work rebuilding from scratch.

 

[tompatrick]

What you are saying is justified but such utilities require caution from user side. They may remove a OS file which can cripple Mac but Onyx is a fair utility and plenty of experienced Mac user have recommended it. I also ran other speed up tools and they work similar. Caution is required in these utilities.