richfive

Q: Safari 4.1.3 Running Deathly Slow and Being a Memory Hog

Hi Everyone!  I am on a Powerbook G4 with 2 GB ram.  Running OS X 10.4.11 and Safari 4.1.3   When I first launch it take a long time to open first site I go to regardless of what site that it and then runs extremely slow, often unresponsive and also uses a ton of ram.  What can I do to speed things up and get better performance?  Thanks.

PowerBook G4 (17-inch 1.67 GHz), Mac OS X (10.4.11), Safari 4.1.3

Posted on Mar 11, 2013 8:26 AM

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Q: Safari 4.1.3 Running Deathly Slow and Being a Memory Hog

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  • by m1zxz,

    m1zxz m1zxz Mar 11, 2013 4:51 PM in response to richfive
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 11, 2013 4:51 PM in response to richfive

    Hi Rich,

     

    I use the same system as yourself.

     

    Under Tiger, my system was pretty slick and responsive but due to certain sortware plugins that I wished to use I installed Leopard 10.5.8.  Still performs well enough and is responsive.

     

    I also went through all the official Apple upgrade options which upgraded Safari to version 5.0.6.

     

    Installed onyX which is a system maintenance utility and cache cleaner, has few other tools too.

     

    You coud try Cache Out X, a basic cache cleaner to clear out all junk files that clog up your system over time.

     

    Under your Safari menu, click on Empty Cache on a regular basis.

     

    Empty your Trash Can securely on a regular basis too.

     

    All pretty basic stuff, and you shouldn't need to buy any expensive software tools to get your mac working better.

     

    All works for me and my happy mac G4

     

    Hope this help ya.  Regards Paul.

  • by romko23,

    romko23 romko23 Mar 11, 2013 6:20 PM in response to m1zxz
    Level 2 (395 points)
    Mar 11, 2013 6:20 PM in response to m1zxz

    Try the latest Webkit for Leopard.. It is more refined for PowerPC and is a lot faster at rendering pages. I use it on my PowerBook G4 1.67 DLSD and it works rather nicely.. Plus it has all the same updates as current Safari, of course your milage may vary with other web browers. I know of 15 different ones for PPC.

  • by bryonon,

    bryonon bryonon Mar 11, 2013 8:27 PM in response to richfive
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 11, 2013 8:27 PM in response to richfive

    I have the same system as you, but using a Titanium Powerbook with only 1 GB Ram. Is yours maxed out for RAM? That made a big difference for me.

    For the web browser you should be using "Tenfourfox" which is a Firefox like- program that is optimized for 10.4.

    To clear out your computer you should clean out as much of your hard drive as possible, maybe leave about half empty. Also use MacJanitor.

  • by Klaus1,

    Klaus1 Klaus1 Mar 12, 2013 2:58 AM in response to richfive
    Level 8 (48,821 points)
    Mar 12, 2013 2:58 AM in response to richfive

    If Safari is getting very slow:

     

    (Presumably you regularly empty your Safari cache by deleting the following file:

     

    Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/cache.db

     

    and clear your History)

     

    Adding Open DNS codes to your Network Preferences, should give good results in terms of speed-up as well as added security, (including anti-phishing and redirects) (Full information about Open DNS is here:   http://www.opendns.com/home-solutions ) and further independent information can be read here:

     

    http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57338784-263/free-dnscrypt-tool-enhances-ma c-web-security/?tag=mncol;txt

     

    and here:

     

    http://www.macworld.com/article/1146064/troubleshootdns.html?t=234

     

    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 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 as is described here:

     

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

     

    You can cancel DNS pre-fetching by going to Terminal and typing:

     

    defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled -boolean false

     

    You have to restart Safari for it to take effect.

     

    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 later versions of Flash 10.1 onwards appear to have improved the situation somewhat, but haven't completed eliminated it.

    For this and other reasons Apple switched their websites to HTML5 in January 2011:

    http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/26/apple_revamps_its_public_website_u sing_html5.html