Running slow, Not responding

Clone the system

get rid of mackeeper

I never put much faith in Disk utility to find and repair errors.

you need to do that booted from another drive anyway.

Mackeeper is junk

your system maintenance routine is lacking.

Apple just sells, they don't test or endorse.

you know how to, then read how to use Superduper or CCC.

Is it the drive? is it you don't repair your drives from another? you trust Apple too much.

Do you need Disk Warrior perhaps?

clone your system

zero a new drive

test and repair

Same issues here, I have no idea whats happening. Some apps don't open, like iTunes, or Disk Utility. Also .DMG files don't want to mount, it all just hangs until I force quit. If I reboot, everything works great for a short period of time, then all the problems come back. I even formatted my boot drive, deleted everything, and reinstalled Snow Leopard out of desperation, and... problems persist.

For me it started happening after I downloaded Security Update 2011-005 a few days ago. I don't know if it is to blame or not... though I don't see how it could be, because, like I said, problems persisted through a HD format.

Anyone else have these problems? So far I've tried repairing permissions, resetting P-Ram and NV-Ram, all that jazz... nothings done it so far.

Any help appreciated.

Mac Pro - Early 2008

2x 2.8GHz Quad Core

8GB Ram, 4 HD's + External Raid Unit

Recently replaced power supply.

I am having the same problem with same processor but 2 GB Ram, 1 HD, OS X 10.5.8. It usually happens when I am running heafty programs like PS CS5 or Adobe Bridge. When it happens to me, I actually hear the computer sound like it's going into overdrive and struggling first so I am wondering if it is a hardware problem. I should be able to run programs like that with 2GB. It definitely seems like it is an operating system problem because even though the PS is the one not responding, if I click between other programs' windows, the applications do not change. I don't know enough about hardware to tell what this noise means and how it may or may not be causing this. Sorry I couldn't help but maybe this is hardware?

One word: starved for memory

2GB is enough to boot, period.

CS5? you want 4GB for app, 4GB for data and cache, plus 2GB for system.

8 x 1GB should/could/ought to be minimum.

and no macs with 2GB run poorly and Mac Pro with dual processor needs 4GB and above for mild use.

use scratch drive, data and media, and separate drive for OS and apps

wow, thanks hatter. I updated from plain old CS and Adobe states that you only need 1 GB for CS5 (as minimum) so I figured I was all set. With the noise and all, I wanted to make sure I would be throwing the money in the right direction. Looks like ram and harddrives are my next purchases. Thanks again.

Your issue might be different than mine, but maybe also try shutting down your system, and unplugging your power cable for a few minutes. (Like, 2-5 minutes) Then plug it back in, give it a couple seconds, then power your computer back up.

Not sure what that process is supposed to do, but I remember someone saying it fixed their problem a while back, who talked about similar issues, with noisy hardware, and slow performance. If it doesn't work... well, at least it didn't cost you anything, haha.

You might want to actually figure out what and why something is used and what it does rather than "urban legend" to zap the pram to make coffee.

http://www.apple.com/support/macpro

an SMC reset has its use, for hardware.

For tips on CS5: www.macperformanceguide.com

"You might want to actually figure out what and why something is used and what it does rather than "urban legend" to zap the pram to make coffee."

Sounds great, but these P-Ram zappin' SMC resettin' preference repairin' permission verifyin' urban legends are about the only thing you'll find online in terms of how to correct your Mac issues. Even though I may not understand every detail of these otherwise menial tasks, if multiple people claim it works, then why not give it a shot?

Through the support sections search, I can find people having the exact same issues in spades, but never a resolution on how to repair it.

It's been going on for a while: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2138997?start=30&tstart=0

Appreciate the link though. Back to searching I go...

I actually solved the issue I was having, hopefully its the same as yours.

Did you by chance copy a large volume of files over to another drive, or do some action similar to this just prior to when the problems started? Because in my case I copied about 20GB of files from one of my internal harddrives, to an external raid unit. Apparently the last 20 or so files didn't copy correctly, and were sitting on my external drive as 0KB files. I deleted those files, and almost immediately my system began behaving normally again.

I have NO idea why an incomplete file copy would cause such an issue, but it seemingly did. Maybe try removing your other 2 internal drives, and just using your boot drive for a few hours (Just to test the theory, but that is of course assuming that the incomplete files aren't on your boot drive itself.)

It made sense in my case, because I had formatted my entire boot drive, and the problem persisted. Turns out the issue was in the other HD's having to do with the incomplete file copies.

The only other thing I can think of that I may be confusing what fixed it is, the very same day security patch 2011-006 was downloaded through the system update. Possibly that alone did the job, I really have no way of knowing. If I had to guess though, I'd still credit the deleting of the partial file copies as the thing that fixed it, as I saw immediate system performance increase.

I hope some bit of this is helpful for you, because I know first hand how irritating these problems are.

Good luck!

No worries, your data will be fine. Just shut down your system, pull the power cord, and slide out harddrive B, and C, leaving only your boot drive. Make sure to turn off the external HD units too, so the only HD in use is your boot drive. Then power up again.

If you see an improvement, and are confident your system is running normally, I'd shut down and re-install the other harddrives and then maybe try and find files on them that weren't completely copied, on mine they were fairly easy to find as the icons were just blank white pages 0kb in size. If you manage to find them, I'd delete them.

If you don't see an improvement, then I guess its possible that the affected files are actually on your boot drive itself. In which case, if you can track the files down and delete them, it should work all the same.

Theres always the unfortunate chance that you may not be having the same issue as me, and I hate to send you off on a wild goose chase for something that may not be there, but hopefully it is the same problem, because it was a fairly easy fix once I tracked it down. Symptom wise, it sounds exactly the same as what was happening with mine.