Slow PDF downloads...

I've got an PPC iMac (20" iSight G5) and things work mostly well here but PDF downloads are really slow. Is there something possibly filled up or some reason why it takes so long?

I tried both Safari and Firefox and Firefox is much faster. Firefox shows that I'm opening with Preview, maybe I'm waiting for something else? I tried clearing the downloads in Safari but that didn't help.

Lately I don't even get the spinning "gear" I just get a gray screen forever...
I did see some Preview crashes, but not when trying to open via Safari...

MacBook/iMacG5, Mac OS X (10.6.4), MacBook Al, 3rd Gen nano 4G, iMac G5 iSight

Posted on Sep 30, 2010 3:52 AM

Reply
10 replies

Sep 30, 2010 3:58 AM in response to ZBurnett

Hi,

From your Safari menu bar click Safari / Empty Cache...

Relaunch Safari and see if that makes a difference.

If not, Open a Finder window select your Home Folder in the Sidebar on the left. Then open the Library folder, then the Caches folder, then the com.apple.Safari folder. Move the cache.db file from the Preferences folder to the Trash.

Relaunch Safari and try again.

I just get a gray screen forever...


That could indicate a problem with the hard disk. Follow the instructions at this link under: Try Disk Utility.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417





Carolyn 🙂

Oct 4, 2010 5:56 AM in response to ZBurnett

Nothing in the repairs to worry about. Permissions you can ignore on 10.5 and 10.6:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US

Using 'should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r--' as an example, you will see the that the permissions are not changed, but the | indicates a different location. This is because an update to Leopard changed the location of a number of system components.

As long as you see, "Permissions Repair Complete" when it's finished... you're done.

If Safari is getting very slow:

Adding Open DNS codes to your Network Preferences, should give good results in terms of speed-up as well as added security:

If you are using a single computer: Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu, and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' add the following two numbers:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

(You can also enter them if you click on Advanced and then DNS)

Sometimes reversing the order of the DNS numbers can be beneficial in cases where there is a long delay before web pages start to load, and then suddenly load at normal speed:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2296

If your computer is part of a network: please refer to this page: http://www.opendns.com/start/bestpractices/#yournetwork and follow the advice given.

You could also try these codes as well: 4.2.2.1 & 4.2.2.2

If you use a Router, make sure it has the latest firmware installed.

One reason for a slowness in page loading may be the 'DNS Pre-fetching' feature of Safari 5.x

This is described here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408?viewlocale=en_US

If Safari seems to hang for ages:

If you have a lot of tabs open and/or a lot of pages running Flash, Safari can sometimes 'hang', requiring a restart of Safari. This can often be inconvenient, and as it is rarely Safari itself that is hanging but merely one of its plug-ins, usually Flash, there is a way using Terminal to restart the plug-ins (without restarting Safari and losing your tabs) by quitting the WebPluginHost process:

Open the Terminal from the Utilities folder in /Applications and type

killall -9 WebKitPluginHost

Note that this command kills all Safari plug-ins, not just Flash. All plug-ins should start back up when you reload the page.

Then go back to Safari and refresh any pages that were using the Flash plug-in. This also fixes the Beachball of Death. Try this whenever Safari gets slow or freezes. The latest versions of Flash 10.1 appear to have improved the situation somewhat, but haven't completed eliminated it.

Sep 30, 2010 6:33 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

I did what you suggested in order... clearing the cache didn't help. Deleting that file and restarting Safari didn't either. When I did the repair disk it downloaded once quickly. After that it is still slow but I think a little better. I don't have a startup issue like that link mentions.

Firefox is the real workaround here...
This document is ~300k and Firefox is happily downloading it in seconds. In fact Firefox is even faster now because I told it to not ask me what to open it with.
This is Safari 5.0.2 vs. Firefox 3.6.10

Oct 4, 2010 5:35 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

I've got ~98G of free space - I don't think that's the issue.
Below is what Disk Utility found... Do you see anything that would relate to PDF's not loading?
What's a SUID file?
*****
Repairing permissions for “Drive Y”
Reading permissions database.
Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.

ACL found but not expected on "private/var/root/Library/Preferences".
ACL found but not expected on "private/var/root/Library".
ACL found but not expected on "private/var/root".
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/DVD.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/FRSettings.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/FRSources.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Movies.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Music.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Photos.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Podcasts.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/TV.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework/Versions/A/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources /DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Permissions differ on "Library/QuickLook/iWork.qlgenerator/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are lrw-rw-r-- .
Warning: SUID file "usr/sbin/pppd" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/sbin/vpnd" has been modified and will not be repaired.
ACL found but not expected on "Applications/Utilities".

Permissions repair complete

Oct 4, 2010 7:50 AM in response to ZBurnett

What's a SUID file?

SUID for an application means that running it, you temporarily gain the permissions of the file owner. So the app can do things not normally possible for say, an admin user, because the app is owned by the System and has the setuid attribute set.

anything that would relate to PDF's not loading?

Those errors are usually nothing to worry about, since it says 'repair complete' at the end.

Pdf's download slowly, you say - Is this the same if you temporarily disable Plug-Ins via Safari-Preferences-Security-Enable Plug-Ins ? (uncheck the box)

When they do download - what do they display in - a browser window?, they're saved to a folder & you open them ?, Some Adobe/acrobat software ?

Oct 5, 2010 6:33 PM in response to andyBall_uk

I tried turning off plug-in's and I got a very strange warning
Safari can’t open “” because Mac OS X doesn’t recognize Internet addresses starting with “http:”.
Java was off... I turned it on and it didn't help.

I think they try to open within a window in the browser.

I didn't do much with the network settings yet. This works great from the same site using Firefox.

Oct 5, 2010 7:13 PM in response to ZBurnett

Actually, I just figured out that the window it opens in - looks just like the Adobe Reader 8 screen except it's embedded into the Safari window. So after waiting for one pdf to open I went to the same site and opened another (that usually takes forever) that and others opened right up. So apparently I'm waiting for Adobe Acrobat Reader to start.

Meanwhile, Firefox uses Preview - and this is the default for PDF's on this machine. It opens up a little download box and then launches Preview separately and takes seconds

I guess I could take Adobe reader off the machine... do we think that would help?

Oct 6, 2010 5:30 AM in response to ZBurnett

I recall some Adobe Reader - repair installation feature curing slow starting of its plugin...

but you can certainly disable the plugin while retaining Reader for those pdf's that demand it.
Reader-Preferences-Internet- Uncheck the 'Display pdf in browser using...' box.

Or remove the plugin from HD/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/

If you do keep Reader, an update to 9 is likely a good bet - various security fixes.

Oct 6, 2010 7:25 PM in response to andyBall_uk

Wow... Adobe really didn't win points in my book for this one. So... I deleted Acrobat Reader 8 by dragging it into the Trash and emptying that. Then I tried Safari, just to see what it would do. It fairly quickly came back and asked what I wanted to open the PDF with. Then I downloaded Reader 9.4 and kicked off a PDF download and had to go somewhere. Two hours later it was still trying to load! I then used your Preferences/Internet/ uncheck the 'Display PDF' option in Reader.

Now Safari opens the same PDF from the same website in seconds... presumably with Preview. I'd have to say Acrobat Reader as a Plug-in for Safari is pretty unusable. Maybe there's something else going on... but my Safari 5.0.2 would NOT work well with Acrobat 8 or 9 as a plug-in.

Thanks to everyone for trying... andyBall_uk gets a star since this was the line of reasoning that actually fixed my problem.

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