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Mac OSX browser/general slowdown issues

KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
I run a two year old basic 2Ghz Intel Macbook with 10.6.4 installed and I've been noticing a fair amount of browser lag over the last month or two.

By lag I mean quite often (at least once or twice every 10 minutes of use) the spinning ball comes up when I attempt to switch tabs in either Safari or Firefox (both are up to date). This lag can happen for 5-30 seconds. It also occurs quite often when switching programmes or trying to close programmes. I've tried to just run one programme at a time, but that hasn't seemed to make any difference as to the frequency or length of the lag. I have also noticed that it isn't just confined to loading pages that are heavy on photos or videos. Just tabbing between various forums seems to do the trick sometimes

I've had a look at the hard drive using the Disk Utility but everything seems to be running ok. I have about 25% of the hard drive space free.

Any suggestions as to what this might be or how I might resolve it?

Kalkino on
Freedom for the Northern Isles!

Posts

  • colawarscolawars Pittsburgh, PARegistered User regular
    I run into the same problem with a similar, older macbook. I'll have 6 or 7 tabs open in firefox, go to play a youtube clip, close a tab and the spinning beachball will lag me for up to a minute. When it starts beachballing, I think firefox is going wild with memory hogging. I'll quit firefox, and sometimes the dock won't indicate that firefox has stopped running for a good 3-4 minutes. When quitting, I have it save my open tabs, and I think it does that right away. If firefox is lingering in the dock, I'll force quit it and restart it with all my tabs from the previous session. I've gotten used to this fix, although it's a pain. I've never had firefox forget my tabs, for which I am grateful...

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  • ronzoronzo Registered User regular
    Yeah i've noticed this cropping up in the last few months too, and if it spins too long the browser also crashes. I figured it was just my machine getting old

  • KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
    Thanks for the responses guys. I'll go back to the mac sites to see if this is a known issue

    Freedom for the Northern Isles!
  • General_WinGeneral_Win Registered User
    Maybe you guys have a virus/spyware.

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  • DietarySupplementDietarySupplement Registered User regular
    Have you guys checked your permissions?

    Open up your disk utility, highlight your partition, and then click "Repair File Permissions." See if that helps any.

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  • RBachRBach Registered User regular
    Create a new user and see if the problem exists there, too.

    Delete the Caches folders (/Library/Caches, /System/Library/Caches/, and /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/)

    See what happens in Safe Mode (hold shift as you turn on the computer and keep holding it until the Apple logo appears on the screen).

    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • Cameron_TalleyCameron_Talley Registered User regular
    How often do you quit the browser? They need to be restarted every now and then, you know.

    Open Activity Monitor and see how much memory/CPU the offending browser is using.

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  • ronzoronzo Registered User regular
    How often do you quit the browser? They need to be restarted every now and then, you know.

    Open Activity Monitor and see how much memory/CPU the offending browser is using.

    safari is never using a ton right before a crash, and i do restart mine every once and awhile. Sometimes the CPU spikes when flash decides to crash safari, but safari crashes on its own sometimes without flash's help

    Maybe you guys have a virus/spyware.

    somehow i doubt this

  • KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
    I have started restarting the browsers on a daily basis.

    I'll try the other ideas suggested

    Thanks again

    Freedom for the Northern Isles!
  • DratatooDratatoo Registered User regular
    And maybe it is just flash. (Depending what site you are visiting). I would suggest to upgrade to the latest version, if possible. The latest version of flash should add some performance improvements as well. If you use noscript addon for Firefox or the Klicktoflash plugin for safari you can disable all flash content (until you click the element you want to view).

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  • Brodo FagginsBrodo Faggins Registered User regular
    A) Run software update, install any operating system updates.

    B) Download Onyx and run all the diagnostic and cleanup tools.

    C) Switch over to Chrome, the Mac version recently came out of beta and it's blinding fast.

    D) How much RAM do you have?

    E) Try out the Flash Player 10.1 pre-release and see if that boosts performance, it certainly did for me.

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  • KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
    Thanks for tips Brodo, Dratato.

    I'm going to try Chrome for a week and I've updated my Onyx version and run the tools. I'll consider updating Flash if the above doesn't show much improvement. I will say Chome is amazingly fast compared to Safari/FF - although 10 minutes use isn't really a lot to go on I guess

    Freedom for the Northern Isles!
  • Akilae729Akilae729 Registered User
    I've also noticed all these things but my MacBook is also revision A and 4 years old now.

    Flash literally kills this thing

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  • Brodo FagginsBrodo Faggins Registered User regular
    How much RAM do you guys have? I know a lot of the original Macbooks came with a criminally low 512 MB, that might be your issue right there.

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  • KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
    How much RAM do you guys have? I know a lot of the original Macbooks came with a criminally low 512 MB, that might be your issue right there.

    Sorry, forgot to answer this.

    I run 1gb of ram.

    My housemate who has a 9 month old top of the line MacBook Pro has had similar issues with Safari and Firefox

    Freedom for the Northern Isles!
  • Brodo FagginsBrodo Faggins Registered User regular
    I'm running a 2 month old core i5 MacBook Pro, and I've had none of those said issues. However, before this one, I had a 5 year old G4 PowerBook with 1 gig of RAM. While Flash wasn't exactly ideal under it, I never experienced the slowdown you guys are describing.

    Also, run disk utility, select your hard drive, and hit verify disk. It might turn up an error asking you to boot off your OS X installation disk, and from there, you can repair your hard drive.

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  • KalkinoKalkino Buttons Londres Registered User regular
    I've run the disk check utility and Onyx, no issues at all. The problem seems to have largely gone now that I've started Chrome

    Freedom for the Northern Isles!
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