slow to respond after being idle

Hi,

For the past week or so, my Mac has been slow to respond when I start using it after it has been idle for awhile. I first noticed this when I would use it first thing in the morning. At night, I dim the screen and lower the volume but leave it on 24/7. In the morning it would not respond to my hitting the F2 button (increase screen brightness - Powerbook G4...) so I thought it had frozen overnight so I hit the power key and restarted it.

In more recent days, it has responded but it is slow to first thing in the morning. Now, it is slow to respond after being idle for awhile during the day as well as when first used in the morning.

I have fixed permissions. I'm not sure what else to do. Everything else seems to be ok. I have 17.3 GB free on the HD.

Cheers,

John L

15" Powerbook/1.67 Ghz (DL/HR), Mac OS X (10.4.11), 1.5 gb RAM, Fantom 250 gb external firewire drive

Posted on Jul 12, 2009 5:42 PM

18 replies

lipwak Author

Level 1

127 points

Aug 7, 2009 10:10 AM in response to lipwak

And I should add: I am noticing that the clock, which I have in the menubar, is stopping while a) the screen brightens first thing in the morning, and b) the first time I use my widgets. If I have rebooted since the last time I used them (likely) they take awhile to come up and refresh themselves.

This is one good reason to display the seconds on the clock. Any time the OS is hanging, you'll see it in the clock.

I have also looked at the CPU use during both of these events (brightening the screen first thing in the morning and displaying the widgets for the first time that day.) It is hardly ever above say 35% for those two events. (I see it go to 100% doing things like editing video, loading Camino, etc.) I have the CPU use constantly on display in the menubar as well for the same reason I have the clock display seconds. Both are very good indicators of what is going on with the computer.

lipwak Author

Level 1

127 points

Aug 8, 2009 10:07 AM in response to lipwak

correction:

I wrote: "...the clock, which I have in the menubar, is stopping while a) the screen brightens first thing in the morning,..."

I mispoke. It isn't doing that. It is stopping when the widgets get invoked first thing in the day, regardless of whether they have been used since the last reboot or not.

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Aug 8, 2009 10:22 AM in response to lipwak

Dashboard & widgets are very resource hungry, but Video is the hungriest.

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slow to respond after being idle