REALLY slow computer, Firefox

Question

REALLY slow computer, Firefox

My computer slowed to a crawl to the point where it was taking 45 seconds just to open Preview application. It started with Firefox today where YouTube was taking 10 seconds to even load up my homepage. Then opening videos was really slow, etc. I opened ActivityMonitor and found the usual QuickLook Helper using a ton of resources. After I quit that, the slowness continued and I haven't had my computer act this retarted...ever.

I Verified my external drives, repaired permissions with only this action taken:

Group differs on "Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist"; should be 80, group is 0.

Repaired "Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf/plist"

This is the ONLY thing that pops up when I repair permissions, what does it mean?

Also, when I boot up and open Activity Monitor, I have 90 processes working. Is that a normal amout or is it a little high? I'm not one that has 15 toolbar applications running when I start up, just a date/time one.

Thanks for any insight as to what could be slowing my computer to a crawl. Oh, btw, when I opened Safari and quit Firefox, my webpages opened normally.

2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, Mac OS X (10.7), 1 Tb of storage

Posted on Dec 11, 2011 11:03 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

speedmaxpc

Level 1

5 points

Dec 11, 2011 6:57 PM in response to James Williams2

May I recommend a scan, to maybe diagnose what the problem could be?

You could try speedmaxpc.com

or

CCleaner

There's a number of these types tools out there to help you in situations like these.

Both offer really good diagnostics, both also charge a small fee if you want to let them repair the issue.

But that's another discussion, for now I would just let one or the other find out just what the heck the problem is,

then you can determine whether or not you fix it yourself.

I think that would be the best way to go, that is if you know what to do.

Peace out!

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Answer 2

Dec 11, 2011 8:50 PM in response to speedmaxpc

speedmaxpc wrote:

May I recommend a scan, to maybe diagnose what the problem could be?

You could try speedmaxpc.com

or

CCleaner

There's a number of these types tools out there to help you in situations like these.

Both offer really good diagnostics, both also charge a small fee if you want to let them repair the issue.

But that's another discussion, for now I would just let one or the other find out just what the heck the problem is,

then you can determine whether or not you fix it yourself.

I think that would be the best way to go, that is if you know what to do.

Peace out!

May I recommend ignoring the above suggestion unless you really want to compromise your system. Wait for a suggestion from a more experienced member here, but avoid these Malware programs at all costs.

Good Luck

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Answer 3

Dec 16, 2011 10:27 PM in response to James Williams2

I actually found a semi-solution myelf. Apparently Firefox can be quite the resource hog if not watched carefully. I've had the same Firefox window motif, extentions, add-ons, etc for over 2 years now without issue. But, when I removed the color scheme of my firefox window (ie returned the aesthetics to the standard issue), Firefox went back to normal...or even faster than it has for months.

Amazing! Just disabling the fancy color scheme tripled my download/upload speeds!

Who knew?

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