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Roy Levien Author

Level 1

27 points

Open and Save Dialogs Slow to Open and Populate

In all of my apps, the Open and Save dialogs have become very slow to open and populate since installing Snow Leopard, when the machine is connected to a Windows server. Disconnecting from the server solves the problem; reconnecting causes it to reappear.

This only happens on some of my machines, and not others

Any thoughts on what this could be. The delay is significant (about 10 seconds in all).

iMac 24" 3.06GHz 4GB 1TB ● MacBook Pro 15" 2.33GHz 3GB 160MB ● iPhone 3G |, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 16, 2009 3:01 PM

93 replies

Feb 9, 2010 4:16 PM in response to Roy Levien

Same thing here.
"open file" and "save as" sometimes take up to 20 seconds until the window appears.
reboot fixes this problem... no drobo, no windows server, idisk unchecked. i have no idea...

Feb 9, 2010 5:01 PM in response to Dragonguard

I actually figured it out. Notice how this only happens mostly to people with multiple harddrives (Mac Pro) with Bootcamp ? Try ejecting your Bootcamp disk or partition, you don't even have to reboot. This fixed it for me on both Mac Pro machines here. Now I'm annoyed that I lived 5 months with this bug...

Roy Levien Author

Level 1

27 points

Feb 21, 2010 8:09 AM in response to Dragonguard

Dragonguard wrote:
I actually figured it out. Notice how this only happens mostly to people with multiple harddrives (Mac Pro) with Bootcamp ? Try ejecting your Bootcamp disk or partition, you don't even have to reboot. This fixed it for me on both Mac Pro machines here. Now I'm annoyed that I lived 5 months with this bug...

No. Completely false. Not true on any of the several machines where I have this problem. Read the thread. This has nothing to do with drobos, and nothing to do with networking, and nothing to do with external drives. Machines can behave this way right out of of the box (with Snow Leopard, at least).

Feb 21, 2010 8:43 AM in response to Roy Levien

Yeah, Dragonguard didn't read the thread. This problem occurs with or without additional drives.

Feb 21, 2010 9:05 AM in response to Roy Levien

Well, not completely false. It is possible that there are two problems: the one you have evidently has nothing to do with other drives or "foreign" file systems. But for other people "Open and Save Dialogs Slow to Open and Populate" is true and can be solved by not having those drives mounted, or ejecting them after you have used them: the open and save dialog boxes go back to normal. On my multi-drive Mac Pro that is indeed the case. With my Windows 7 partition unmounted, without my external drive plugged in, and without the iDisk mounted, open and save dialogs open and populate as they always have. But if I have mounted an external drive, or my iDisk, and don't unmount after I finish, or forget to unmount the Win7 partition after startup, I notice the slow down in the dialogs. Unmounting solves the problem. I believe this version of the problem is not quite as severe--the delay is long enough to be REALLY annoying, but not crippling, and is solved by unmounting the drives.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

Roy Levien Author

Level 1

27 points

Feb 21, 2010 10:50 AM in response to Francine Schwieder

Francine Schwieder wrote:
Well, not completely false. It is possible that there are two problems: the one you have evidently has nothing to do with other drives or "foreign" file systems. But for other people "Open and Save Dialogs Slow to Open and Populate" is true and can be solved by not having those drives mounted...

Yes, I should have been more precise in my title and said "Open and Save Dialogs Slow to Open and Populate Even in Cases Where the Obvious and Well Known Solution of Unmounting External Drives (or other Foreign File Systems) Has Been Attempted". That's the point (and the frustration). Most of the people posting here are trying to solve that problem, and did all the obvious things (unmounting, disconnecting from networks, disconnecting drives, rebooting, rebooting in safe mode, etc.) before posting anything here. Now they've been joined by a bunch of people who've just discovered that external drives slow things down, and that's not helping.

Feb 23, 2010 12:23 PM in response to Roy Levien

I started having this problem the minute I installed a new drive.
I use all the seats of the MacPro hard disks.
I used them all before the slowness happened so I really don't think it has to do with all the seats being taken rather than with the actual size of the drive?
The new drive I installed is a 750GB wester digital drive. The fast one.
Before putting that drive I had a 250GB drive in there.

No external drives, no windows section, no network drives.

Roy Levien Author

Level 1

27 points

Feb 23, 2010 9:03 PM in response to Roy Levien

This (i.e. slow file system operations regardless of the presence of foreign file systems) is a "known bug" (7133253) that is "under investigation at this time".

E-mail devbugs@apple.com for status updates.

Feb 23, 2010 9:31 PM in response to Roy Levien

What baffles me though is that I didn't have this issue a day ago when I had a different drive in there...
The speed difference was so big that I wondered if I poorly installed the drive and I was ready to take it out...

Leifur

Level 1

0 points

Feb 25, 2010 9:25 AM in response to Roy Levien

My MacBook pro is only about four weeks old and during that entire time the lethargic open and save dialogs have been getting on my nerves, especially when I need to work fast. It seems to be the case in all apps but Office 2008 is definitely the worst.

Leifur

Level 1

0 points

Feb 25, 2010 9:27 AM in response to Leifur

I might add that I have no external drives plugged in.

Eyedoc77

Level 1

4 points

Mar 1, 2010 9:13 PM in response to Roy Levien

This has NOTHING to do with too many drives. I have a video business with all four bays used (4.5 TB total) and 4 external drives (2.5 TB total). I've had these drives for over a year and NEVER had any issues until 10.6 install. I even reinstalled it 3 weeks ago hoping there were just system issues. Takes anywhere from "normal" to 20 seconds to open various finder windows. Usually 10-15 seconds. I haven't changed anything except Snow Leopard and beyond frustrated! I really 10.6.2 was the culprit. I had 10.6.1 for about 6 weeks and never remember it happening. Since update (and even the reinstall from the original install disk) it's relentless. Please help Apple !!

Roy Levien Author

Level 1

27 points

Mar 1, 2010 10:02 PM in response to Eyedoc77

Eyedoc77 wrote:
This has NOTHING to do with too many drives. ... 10.6.2 was the culprit.

Agreed. That's how it looks here too.

Mar 3, 2010 2:26 PM in response to Roy Levien

I have a work around for this problem. Reboot in 64-bit kernel mode, and the problem is gone. Of course, some programs don't work when the kernel is in 64-bit mode, like Limewire.

Mac Fuse, and ntfs-3g are disabled in 64-bit kernel mode, and I am wondering if that has anything to do with the problem.

Here's a link to a kernel mode boot selector program ( free ).

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Mac-OS-X-10-6-32-64-bit-Kernel-Startup-M ode-Selector-1-2-1-120399.shtml

Roy Levien Author

Level 1

27 points

Mar 3, 2010 2:46 PM in response to bigjay@austin

bigjay@austin wrote:
...some programs don't work when the kernel is in 64-bit mode...

Like Pages, iTunes, and Firefox.

Open and Save Dialogs Slow to Open and Populate