iphoto lost all photos - request to server failed?

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Level 1

21 points

iphoto lost all photos - request to server failed?

I have a 2011 intel iMac. It is the (supposedly) powerful 3.1ghz i5, and i upgraded the RAM to 12 Gig. Before buying this machine I had a 2008 iMac and LOVED it, it was superb. But this machine is SLOWER than that one was?! I am running OSX lion, iLife 09 and iWork 11. I am having a nightmare with this machine, it hands constantly, i only have a few apps open and still it can take 5-10 seconds (beachballing) for finder to draw my files when i open a folder. This can't be right. I have reloaded the entire machine from scratch twice by cloning files off and then MANUALLY rebuilding it (not using Migrate Assistant to ensure to i was not bringing any bad data or bugs across from old installation or old machine).

It is slow as a dog, way slower than my old iMac which had a mere 2 Gig of Ram! If i open more than 10 browser tabs in Safari it goes so slow I can't use the internet. The machine crashes at least twice a week and just hands so I have to force shutdown, and my latest error is iPhoto just lost ALL my photos, 5 years worth and gives the error "Request to server failed" but says nothing else of any use. I am hoping to recover them with TimeMachine but wait and see on that score as nothing seems to be right with this machine so no doubt TM will play up as well.

I have VMWare Fusion installed, latest version. It does seem slower when running that, but it still crashed and plays up when that is not running so I am sure that is not the source of any problems, it just makes them a bit worse due to processor usage.

Is it possible to get an iMac diagnostically checked (hardware) at an Apple store? It is still under warranty this machine, but I can't drop it off at a store without wiping all my data (clone) to external drive, because I have confidential information stored on it which I can't leave on if the machine leaves my office.

Appreciate it if anyone with any similarly bad experiences of newer iMacs could chip in and suggest any ideas. I struggled to afford to buy this machine, and thought it would sky rocket my performance and speed after my old machine started to get slow due to age, but even at its worst it was never this bad. I am now a very very disappointed Apple lover, ex-lover?!

One final point I should mention, I upgraded the RAM myself, using proper stuff from Crucial. I read that it didn't matter what order the RAM cards were fitted in, is that true or should I try moving them around?

Thanks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 12 Gig RAM, 3.1ghw i5

Posted on May 29, 2012 8:46 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

May 29, 2012 10:28 AM in response to joeyjohnson

Have you tried it with just the original RAM?

Open Activity Monitor, Show:>All Processes, sort on CPU%, see if anything using too much CPU% when this happens, click on Memory tab, do you have many Pageouts? Click on the Disk Usage tab, how much free space?

Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

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Answer 2

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

May 29, 2012 11:30 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks very much for such a quick reply, really appreciate any help I can get with this as I have basically had problems daily for months now and its really ruining my business now. I am not as techie savvy as many others on here, but will do my best.

I did everything you said and here are the results:

Activity Monitor shows top 3 (fluctuating) processes as:

shockwave flash (chrome Plug-In Host) 26% now but jumping between that and down to 8%

Google Chrome renderer 3-7%

Safari Web Content this varies usually between 2% right up to well over 100% (i have seen 120%). When machine is playing up i often see this as being over 100%.

Memory Tab:

2.1MB Pageouts

Disk Usage - free space is, have a 1TB drive so plenty of free space. 289 GB free

I looked in Console. Have never looked at that before.

I clicked "All Messages" and notice something possibly a bit odd.

There are THOUSANDS of messages like this one:

"29/05/2012 18:41:54.292 1PasswordAgent: [HYBI] socketDidDisconnect: Error Domain=GCDAsyncSocketErrorDomain Code=7 "Socket closed by remote peer" UserInfo=0x1058098d0 {NSLocalizedDescription=Socket closed by remote peer}" - I use 1Passwd to manage my passwords for browsers. There are lines and lines of these in Console messages. Looking through them, they appear every single minute of every hour, sometimes two per minute. They all look identical to this one quoted here.

Another noteworthy message in Console is:

"29/05/2012 19:21:17.000 kernel: IOSurface: buffer allocation size is zero". There was one in last few minutes, a few 20 mins ago, and some further up but not on any pattern of frequency.

Should I paste a long list in here so you can see what my console looks like?

Thanks so much

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

May 29, 2012 12:14 PM in response to joeyjohnson

Safari will make a Mac crawl here also when it's over 100%.

I think I'd turn off 1Password if you can, it failing for some reason.

The Pageouts don't seem bad, but it's dependent on uptime, so I'd expect none shortly after a bootup, & possibly some later, but no idea why with 12 GB it'd ever need to swap at all.

In the Memory tab does it show 12 GB Total, & how much free RAM?

On the buffer allocation, could be Flash...

http://www.quora.com/What-does-IOSurface-buffer-allocation-size-is-zero-mean-and -how-to-fix-this-error

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Answer 4

iCare

Level 4

2,490 points

May 29, 2012 2:31 PM in response to joeyjohnson

In addition to BDAqua's suggestions, any time you see constant beach balling like what you've reported you should also verify your hard drive SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) status. The hard drive maintains a log of the performance stats and errors to help identify drives that are beginning to fail.

I suggest downloading a copy of SMART Utility from Volitans Software and run it in the demo mode to view your log files. If you see the words failing or failed then you should quickly back up your data and take your system in for servicing. If the drive passes then your physical hard drive is OK which gives you one less thing to worry about. Please report your hard drive's status.

http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php

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Answer 5

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 4:48 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks BD. Appreciate any help I can get here.

Turn off 1P - when you say turn off, what do you mean? Should I uninstall completely? That scares me as I dont know what will happen to my stored passwords and i have hundreds of them.

Here is a screenshot of my activity monitor status currently...

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx231/doubledeckerjohn/ScreenShot2012-06-01at 123539.png

iCare- thanks for your post also. I will look into SMART shortly

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Answer 6

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 4:50 AM in response to joeyjohnson

One additional thing. I have not managed to get my iPhoto Library working again. My iPhoto app shows NOTHING. Yet if i unpack contents on the library file, it still shows 65GB of photos so the library is there. I tried renaming it, and renaming back causing ip to rebuild the library, i tried deletig the lib and restoring from a week ago (TimeMachine backup) and yet it still shows nothing. Very worried now.

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Answer 7

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 4:52 AM in response to joeyjohnson

finally, Expose is also dog slow. This machine should be snappy as ****, I have 12 GB ram and a decent process. I only really use browsers, Mail, Pages, Skype, iTunes, and maybe one or two other small programs like One Day. Thats IT! This machine should handle this all with ease. Yet when I hit the mouse nipple (i use wired KB and Mouse) to expose all windows, it takes 2-5 seconds to expose them.

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Answer 8

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 4:56 AM in response to joeyjohnson

Sorry, finally finally 😀 - I also run VMWare Fusion. I have this closed as much as possible now, only need it once a day to check PC based program (stock charts), and I do notice a slow down when I use it, but machine still buggy and slow when its not running.

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Answer 9

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 5:01 AM in response to joeyjohnson

in case its relevant, I also noticed one very weird thing....

New HTML5 videos seem to play everywhere now. I can't play them. They just dont stream, they jump around and pause, and never fully load. Even when I can play some of these videos (part of them) the audio is out of sync with video. I always have to click Restore Flash to get a smooth playback

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Answer 10

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 5:11 AM in response to joeyjohnson

My machine just went haywire again after posting above message. I took SS of Console logs and Activity Monitor which can be viewed below:

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx231/doubledeckerjohn/ScreenShot2012-06-01at 130310.png

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx231/doubledeckerjohn/ScreenShot2012-06-01at 123539.png

It went so slow I couldn't get into anything, had the beachball but managed to open activity monitor and console.

I had these extensions installed in Safari:

1Passwd

Click2Flash

GooglePR

Youtube Wide

I force quit the QTwebkit process in activity monitor and everything went back to normal. I then went to Safari and uninstalled Clck2Flash, GooglePR and YoutubeWide extensions in case any of those are causing problems.

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Answer 11

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 5:18 AM in response to joeyjohnson

Sorry for all the messages, just keep seeing things I think need mentioning!

I was trying to watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xp4L3a_Tlc&feature=player_embedded as it has ideas for pref pane clean up. EVERY time I try to load video on that page, I get the QTWebKit process back in Activity Monitor hammering CPU at 100%. I quit it again, as machine just stalls completely when it shows that process.

I have checked my Login Items in User Accounts prefs. I see 4 items in there:

SpeechSynthesisServer

iTunesHelper ("Hide" is ticked)

VMware Fusion Helper
ChronoriesAgent

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Answer 12

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 5:20 AM in response to joeyjohnson

how interesting, after 10 attempts, Safari just will NOT play that youtube video. However I tried in Firefox and it played it as smooth as a babies bum 😀

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Answer 13

joeyjohnson Author

Level 1

21 points

Jun 1, 2012 7:28 AM in response to joeyjohnson

I ran some first aid things, like repair permissions etc. I then ran Repair Disk on the internal drive from Disk Utility. I got this, and am a bit concerned! Should I be?!