Toribash
Original Post
A couple mac problems
I just got my pc back in order, so now I'm trying to get my mac back up to speed. After trying various maintenance utilities, I've settled on Onyx, which seems to be pretty good.

The problem is that my macbook pro runs significantly slower than when I got it a year and a half ago. I get the beachball-pinwheel thingy constantly, even when just browsing websites. I'm switching from safari to firefox to see if that helps the slow browsing issue, but I also notice other programs are very slow. I can't really play half-life 2 anymore due to low framerate (it used to work flawlessly), and toribash takes longer to load up.

So I was running the repair permissions part of onyx and it said that ardagent has been modified and cannot be repaired. So I read that I should just delete it and that os x would create a new, unproblematic version of it. So I tried it, and now the computer cannot complete the repair permissions task. It still runs a bit slow too. Are these related? any tips?

Thanks!

Edit: I booted up from the startup disc and was able to repair permissions successfully. However the computer is still running slow and firefox is no better than safari. I've tried everything I can think of in terms of maintenance, except open up the laptop and see if it's dusty in there. Any suggestions?
Last edited by Logic; May 2, 2011 at 05:01 AM.
First, look through your laptop and delete any useless crap you don't want or need anymore.
Second, update everything you have if you have not allready done that. It may take quite some time if you don't update regularly. And then try to repair all your files and applications.
Safari or even Google Chrome are both better options then Firefox for browsing. If you are doing work and you need multiple windows open then use Firefox.
Hopefully that should stop the spinning wheel of death. If that all fails you will most likely have to take it in to Apple and it should still be under warranty if you got it.
What he said ^

But, I would add that if your computer is still under warranty, Buy an extended warranty just in case it (or the charger) has any problems again.
Try CCleaner, it optimize ur PC.

-Erase junk you couldn't never find.
-Set wat startup programs you want to run at the beggining.
-Fix the majority of errors.
-Boost ur PC,and alot more
⋐⋑
<ishi> 2MEGPOID4ME
Originally Posted by p0w View Post
Try CCleaner, it optimize ur PC.

-Erase junk you couldn't never find.
-Set wat startup programs you want to run at the beggining.
-Fix the majority of errors.
-Boost ur PC,and alot more

It's nice that you didn't even READ THE TITLE OF THE GOD DAMN THREAD.
Mac fool, not windows. (Alternatively you didn't know CCleaner was windows only which means you didn't bother to check, either way it pisses me off.)



Opera would be a recommended browser if you need a light fast browser, Tom's hardware found it to be the fastest browser.

Deleting junk (as was mentioned) is a very good idea, I don't know much about disk de-fragmentation on mac's but that's also going to help with performance, and you could probably find out anything you need to know about that here:
OS 9 or lower: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1634
OSX: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375?viewlocale=en_US

I'd also take a look at lists like these: http://lowendmac.com/eubanks/07/0312.html
Specifically removing programmes from running on start-up is a good idea.
Ok thanks for the tips guys. I just realized my hard disk is almost full, so I'll go through and delete games and stuff I don't use.

Recently I ran the system resource utility and it showed Toribash as taking up 133% of the CPU. I'm not a math whiz but this doesn't sound right. Also sometimes when I run safari while playing toribash, the framerate drops to below 20.

I think by default applecare only lasts a year, so I doubt I have that kind of warranty. Anyway I'll clean up the hd and see if that helps.

Edit: Vox I checked out that link - and actually one of the 11 points really stands out. I notice that the fan seems to be working really hard sometimes, so it may be running too hot. I notice this when I'm playing toribash - and when gaming I have my left hand resting on the surface of the laptop so I can control camera movement with the keys. Could having my palm resting on the computer be causing it to overheat?

Edit2: Apparently macs use free disk space as virtual memory. It's a 160 gig hd and I have 30 gigs free. Could this have significance?
Last edited by Logic; May 9, 2011 at 05:46 AM.
Originally Posted by Logic View Post
I just got my pc back in order, so now I'm trying to get my mac back up to speed. After trying various maintenance utilities, I've settled on Onyx, which seems to be pretty good.

The problem is that my macbook pro runs significantly slower than when I got it a year and a half ago. I get the beachball-pinwheel thingy constantly, even when just browsing websites. I'm switching from safari to firefox to see if that helps the slow browsing issue, but I also notice other programs are very slow. I can't really play half-life 2 anymore due to low framerate (it used to work flawlessly), and toribash takes longer to load up.

So I was running the repair permissions part of onyx and it said that ardagent has been modified and cannot be repaired. So I read that I should just delete it and that os x would create a new, unproblematic version of it. So I tried it, and now the computer cannot complete the repair permissions task. It still runs a bit slow too. Are these related? any tips?

Thanks!

Edit: I booted up from the startup disc and was able to repair permissions successfully. However the computer is still running slow and firefox is no better than safari. I've tried everything I can think of in terms of maintenance, except open up the laptop and see if it's dusty in there. Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by Logic View Post
Ok thanks for the tips guys. I just realized my hard disk is almost full, so I'll go through and delete games and stuff I don't use.

Recently I ran the system resource utility and it showed Toribash as taking up 133% of the CPU. I'm not a math whiz but this doesn't sound right. Also sometimes when I run safari while playing toribash, the framerate drops to below 20.

I think by default applecare only lasts a year, so I doubt I have that kind of warranty. Anyway I'll clean up the hd and see if that helps.

Edit: Vox I checked out that link - and actually one of the 11 points really stands out. I notice that the fan seems to be working really hard sometimes, so it may be running too hot. I notice this when I'm playing toribash - and when gaming I have my left hand resting on the surface of the laptop so I can control camera movement with the keys. Could having my palm resting on the computer be causing it to overheat?

Edit2: Apparently macs use free disk space as virtual memory. It's a 160 gig hd and I have 30 gigs free. Could this have significance?

It definitely sounds like your hard drive is fragmented severely, though that might not be the exact cause of the detrimental speed decrease.
Macs do use the free disk space as Virtual Memory (Windows also does). It would slow down your computer a bit, but not to the severe level that you're describing.

Try resetting the PRAM. It's like an Android Phone's Dalvik Cache, and it stores some data for future boot-ups. The data that's currently stored might be lagging your computer overall by booting up processes behind the scene.
Turn off your computer, and then press the power button. Immediately after pressing that button, hold down Command + Option + P + R until you hear the gong for the second time.

If not, it sounds like your operating system might have accumulated some significant errors over the span of it's life. Running the machine for a while without clearing things out on a regular basis will lead to bugs in the framework. It's not enough to take down your Mac, but enough to slow it down. Do a time machine backup (If you don't have an external hard drive, well..... yeah. Based on the amount of space you're currently using and the amount of space your hard drive can hold, you can't use a secondary partition as a backup drive). Reinstall the entire operating system after wiping out your main partition. If it runs at a decent speed, restore your documents and applications, but don't restore the entire backup. If you do, the fragmented data will also be restored in the process.

^ That's the fastest solution in your case.
Proud Member of
[C3][Anime United]
OK I'm trying to reset the pram and it's not working. I've done it before on an older computer, so I know how to do it, but I've never done it on this computer. I discovered that having a firmware password prevents resetting the pram (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352), and this may be the problem. I can't figure out how to disable it though.

Regarding the second tip, I do have an external hd but it works like 10% of the time...so I'm going to try the pram thing first. Do you know how to disable the firmware password?