Hi James & Ronnie, Thanks for all this info.
I rebooted in Safe Mode. My USB thumb drives then refused to show up at all, nor did the ext drives. But I think the computer was marginally faster. The two Google sites took roughly the same time but I had to move the cursor to make the site open fully otherwise it just sat half through. Took about 4 seconds. No problems with that. In Activity Monitor both disk and CPU show almost no activity. With a normal boot the visualiser works fast enough as does a file transfer and there seems to be nothing hogging the RAM. The problem seems to be with ext disks and USB drives only. I was given a 16Gig USB SanDisk Cruiser drive. It appeared on the desk-top after about 2.5 minutes as well as a CD icon which had .exe files and others. I reformatted it to get rid of all the exe files etc. But now when I insert it two strange things happen; the CD still appears with the .exe files, and my ext Time Machine back-up disk disappears. I don't know whether these things are connected. The problems appear to be around ext drives. Lloyd > > Hi Lloyd, > > Your computer is unwell. It should never be that slow, regardless of > OS. You have the option of starting up in Safe Mode which is quite > limited but turns of any optional plug-ins. > <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455> > <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564> At the end of this e-mail, can I > suggest that you unplug as many USB accessories as possible, then boot > into Safe Mode? > > Just to be clear with the Activity Monitor: do the 'disk', 'cpu' and > 'network' summaries show relatively zero activity? Problems are > generally-speaking due to a bottleneck in disk (low disk space - not > in your case; or bad blocks), RAM (run-away programme consuming memory > and causing virtual memory to be used), network (uncontactable DNS > server; or remote attacker flooding the computer), wifi/bluetooth > (similar to network), CPU (rogue process), or due to corruption of > files, drivers or filesystem. > > What's critical is what's going on *while* the delay is occurring, not > what's happening You've mentioned that "everything" is slow, but your > only examples were starting up and opening disks for the first time. > Can you test these tasks before booting into Safe Mode, and then test > them again in Safe Mode (if it lets you): > > - Disk: Try copying a very large file (one that takes at least 10 > seconds). Does it start pretty quickly and proceed evenly toward the > end, or does it sit idle? > - CPU: Try running the 'visualiser' in iTunes. Do you get a reasonably > smooth frame rate, or does it take forever to load and then perform > jerkily? > - Network: If you visit <http://www.google.com.au> does it take a lot > longer than <http://66.102.11.99/>? > > James > > On 03/01/2010, Lloyd White <lloydwh...@iinet.net.au> wrote: >> >> Hi Ronnie, >> >> Thanks for your continued support. >> >> iMac >> HD 500 GB -388 available. >> 4 Gb memory (2+2) >> OS 10.6.2 >> I don't think Rosetta is installed - can't find it. No programs have asked >> for it. >> The Console shows hundreds of messages in the last few days. All sorts of >> errors and failures to do with Internet Clean-up menu, iTunes, Osacript, >> Software update check, system U1 Server and a host of others. Not sure what >> they mean but it does not look good ! >> >> Nothing in the System Startup items folder. >> >> Font book has reported some duplicates but nothing corrupted. >> >> I did a Snow Leopard upgrade. Perhaps I should bite the bullet and do a >> complete CLEAN install of Snow Leopard. I have the bootable backup on my >> ext hard disk, plus my Time Machine backup on another ext disk. >> >> Lloyd >> >> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au>
