Safari very slow as of late.

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Safari very slow as of late.

Hello all. I have been having problems with safari lately and today was it's slowest day ever. I am used to watching HD Youtube videos on my Mac while using photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq and haven't had any speed issues until very recently. I am not entirely sure what changed.

I have tried reseting Safari. Repairing permissions. Disabling plug-ins. etc. and nothing seemed to have helped all that much. Page loading got a bit faster but video play did not and after a few minutes page loading slowed down again as well.

I am rather new to the world of Mac having made the conversion from PCs last year due to viruses etc. My wife has been harassing me as of late because I went with the more expensive Mac rather than a cheaper PC.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

iMac 21", Mac OS X (10.6.6), 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted on Jan 23, 2011 12:21 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 23, 2011 12:33 AM in response to Cliff Roth

Hi and welcome...

Log into another user account on your Mac. Launch Safari and see if it's slow there also.

And check the startup disk for free space. Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. *Make sure you always have a minimum of 15% free disk space.*

Carolyn 🙂

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Answer 2

Jan 23, 2011 1:46 AM in response to Cliff Roth

Mine too, I think it is since the 10.6.6 update. That's what I came on here about.
It seems to grind to a halt after hours and hours of use, becomes very laggy and then rainbow balls for up to 5-10 minutes and then frees up.

I have tried repairing permissions and resetting Safari, a new user account would not be useful at this stage due to the length of time it takes to show symptoms.

Quitting and relaunching doesn't do much, but rebooting does.

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Answer 3

Cliff Roth Author

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Jan 23, 2011 11:27 AM in response to Cliff Roth

I am not sure where to find the MacHD Icon. I did check my Activity Monitor and am using very little of my available memory something like less than 30% and not even a 5th of my hard drive space.

I am not sure how to create another account on the computer in order to log out and log in under another account.

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Answer 4

Krag

Level 2

262 points

Jan 23, 2011 11:45 AM in response to Cliff Roth

I also tried Safari with a test login, no different, still hangs (spinning ball)... either clicking on a link esp on yahoo mail or on any site (even apple.com) I'd have 3-4 pages open, but when I went to close one of them or click to a different page the ball would start and not stop. I would Force quit (Cmd-Opt-Esc) would show "Safari not responding."

I ran a test on the start-up drive, no problem there... so I guess (this) Safari is just buggy. Firefox and Camino don't have this behavior.

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Answer 5

Krag

Level 2

262 points

Jan 23, 2011 11:50 AM in response to Cliff Roth

I am not sure where to find the MacHD Icon. I did check my Activity Monitor and am using very little of my available memory something like less than 30% and not even a 5th of my hard drive space.
----
memory/HD space not relevant

----- --- --- ----
I am not sure how to create another account on the computer in order to log out and log in under another account.
----

System Preferences/Accounts
Click lock to make changes (if use password)
Click on + (below login options)
Standard
name
password
Create Account

Close System Preferences
under Apple "Log Out"

Log in with new account

Test Safari with new account (will have separate bookmarks, history, preferences, plugins, etc than your main account).

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Answer 6

Cliff Roth Author

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Jan 23, 2011 12:33 PM in response to Cliff Roth

Thank you, Krag. I tried logging in on a new account and that had no effect. Safari still slow.

I am thinking of getting either FF or Chrome to try those out. I have been reading about a lot of people having problems with Safari 5. I know it slowed down after the update in the summer but only got real slow in the last couple of days.

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Answer 7

Cliff Roth Author

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Jan 23, 2011 1:32 PM in response to Cliff Roth

Decided to try Chrome....what a disappointment it is making Safari look fast. Perhaps it is because it isn't 64 bit.

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Answer 8

solaser

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Jan 23, 2011 7:17 PM in response to Cliff Roth

Safari on my macbook is terribly slow all the time. It's really annoying. Eventually a page will stop trying to load and it says it can't find it. I hit refresh, and then it loads. It's incredibly annoying.

WHY.

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Answer 9

Cliff Roth Author

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Jan 24, 2011 5:24 AM in response to Cliff Roth

OK after Chrome failed to be an improvement I decided to test my internet speed. Sure enough it didn't do that well at all. Dl .25mbs Ul .37mbs ping 51ms. I then tried a ping test and it have varying results from F to C. So in my case at least it might not be a Safari issue itself. Now I have to figure out why my internet speed is so slow.

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Answer 10

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Jan 24, 2011 9:34 AM in response to Cliff Roth

I would call your internet provider.
I once spent days trying to troubleshoot the same thing on my Mac,
and it turned out that my outside cable was frayed.

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Answer 11

realmtl

Level 1

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Jan 24, 2011 10:35 AM in response to Cliff Roth

Something very bizarre. I was having the same problem. I also tried Webkit and after a couple of hours I got the same result.

This morning I disabled EXTENSIONS. Safari -> Preferences -> Extensions -> OFF

I have none installed; however my performance improved dramatically.

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Answer 12

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Jan 24, 2011 10:41 AM in response to realmtl

Wow!

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Answer 13

Jan 24, 2011 4:08 PM in response to Cliff Roth

It seems there is a problem with the flash player.plugin
I just reinstall os x 10.6.6 in my intel mac mini & before that I format my drive 0 level.
and as soon I go to websites like yahoo mail or youtube (pages that contains flash) my safari will get very slow and get the spinning ball.
I try reseting the Pram & no fix yet.
The only way that I was able to make it work like normal is pulling the "flash player.plugin" out of the folder but I have to put it back because I need flash.
:-S
I hope someone knows the real fix for the SAFARI & FLASH PLAYER.PLUGIN"

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Answer 14

chalam

Level 1

4 points

Jan 25, 2011 4:40 AM in response to Cliff Roth

Safari on my MacBook Pro has been impossibly slow for me for the last week or so. I have tried the tips mentioned on this site, but to no avail. Chrome, however, is working great so I have given up on Safari.

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Answer 15

Jan 26, 2011 11:29 PM in response to Cliff Roth

I reinstall the os and updated up to 10.6.5 and safari is working fine.
I try reinstalling & updating to 10.6.6 and thats when I get the problem.
This SHUCKS....
We need some type of fix asap.
This is really buggy

PS: THE ISSUE GOES ALONG WITH THE OTHER WEB BROWSERS TOO. (FIREFOX & CHROME)

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