“After Apple recently announced a delay to OS X 10.5 Leopard, I had to delay my iMac upgrade until the Autumn. This led me to thinking about how to speed up Tiger to get the most out of my ageing G5,” ImAFish blogs. “This is what I came up with…”
General System
1. Repair Disk Permissions
2. Clear out login items
3. Clear out unwanted applications
4. Clear out unused system preferences
5. Clear Desktop
6. Empty Trash (if it wont empty see #38)
7. Turn off Universal Access (if not used)
8. Turn off Bluetooth (if not used)
9. Turn off speech recognition (if not used)
10. Turn off internet sharing (if not used)
11. Check there is plenty of disk space on the boot drive.
12. Remove Unwanted Language Packs
13. Remove any desktop changing programs
14. Check dock for unwanted apps.
15. Choose suitable applications for files
16. Check Software Build
Eye Candy
17. Remove dock animation
18. Avoid animated desktops
Dashboard
19. Remove unused widgets
20. Check to see how much processing power and memory each widget uses
Tinkertool
21. Remove animation effects
22. Disable Dock shadow
23. Disable Dashboard
24. Skip checksum verifications when opening DMG files
25. Remove or deactivate unwanted login items from the Login Items pane
26. Reduce delay time for display of loading pages in Safari
OnyX
27. Un-tick Graphic Effects
28. Un-tick Animate ‘Opening applications’ and ‘When alert in background’
29. Disable Dashboard
30. Set Safari speed of web page display to fast
31. Repair Disk Permissions
32. Run Maintenance Scripts
33. Reset Spotlight Index (it may take over a day to rebuild the index afterwards)
34. Run complete system optimization
35. Clear Internet Settings
36. Clear User and Font Caches
37. Clear unused logs
38. Force Empty Trash
39. Check settings – The default settings should be fine here. Click Execute.
Safari
40. Clear Cache
41. Clear History
42. Clear AutoFill
43. Clear Favicons
Firefox
44. If you use Firefox then you can get specially optimized versions of the browser based on your processor architecture – either G4, G5 or intel
45. Use Extensions wisely
iTunes
46. Smart Playlists: deactivate live updating
Other
47. Check your HP Printer drivers
48. Check Classic is not running if not being used
49. Run Software Update
50. Update other applications
51. Add More RAM
52. Reboot your Mac
Full article with explanations and links here.
MacDailyNews Note: Over on MacUser, Derik DeLong breaks down “52 ways to speed up Mac OS X,” debunking many of them here.
Sounds good. Will have to try a few.
Nice to occasionally reboot the Mac due to WANTING to instead of HAVING to, often, like my old Windows PC. I generally reboot the Mac about once a month. This is both at work and at home!
I didn’t realize it needed speeding up. My PM G4 867 x 2 runs plenty fast (as fast as it ever did). Actually, it runs faster now than it did w/ Jaguar. I guess I must keep it cleaner than some.
Mostly things I’ve already learned – and others in my household have NOT! Especially those who use Classic! “Dear, that uses up your RAM – causing thrashing – and your CPU cycles.” “Could you say that in English?” “It slows your system down.” “How?” ARGhhlh! Shut! It! Off! “how?” G4 iMac … maybe more memory? 🙁
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod-Cast
Crap advice.
Definitely check out Macuser’s rebuttal as much of this list is based on folklore and old sysadmin’s tales…
MW: “planning” – As in a little of really is the better choice. I still find it scary looking at the MW…
I just got my G5 to go quite a bit faster by buying a new second SATA drive (my startup drive had just 6 gigs left) and moving most of my documents to it. Adding another 2 gigs of RAM helped loads too.
That’s all you need to do. Also a tidy clear desktop seemed to help a little.
Mostly useless info … whatever you do .. don’t “optimize” your system in Onyx …
OSX already does that automatically …
If you force it in Onyx it will take forever and there’s no reason to do it …
Clean up some disk space maybe, but speed up the Mac,not likely.
The fastest way to speed up your Mac
1: Keep less than 50% of your boot drive filled, use external drives for files, movies and changing content.
2: Max your RAM.
3: Clone your boot drive to a external, boot from it, Erase w/Zero the original and reverse clone using Carbon Copy Cloner only. (as it copies via files/folders on the main directory in alphabetical order thus optimizing your drive.)
4: If you have a MacPro, PowerMac, get a pair of 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptors and RAID O them, clone Mac OS X from a external onto it. Some PowerMac G5’s etc, require a Firmteck bootable SATA PCI card with the new Raptors. Check Accelerate Your Mac for info.
Yeah, they actually missed not having a lot of files/items on the desktop. I sincerely doubt a couple extra icons in the dock hurts anything. And some of these other items are of dubious value also.
Oh, they did say “clear desktop”, okay.
Mostly useless advice.
One thing that does seem to have a positively effect is OnyX. It’s a free program that runs a number of routines (such as repairing permissions, clearing caches, etc.) It’s very nice and professional.
Try Onyx if you think your mac could use a little maintenance.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582#revs
This is to give switchers a fix by tweaking their OS even though it’s entirely uneeded.
“This is to give switchers a fix by tweaking their OS even though it’s entirely uneeded.”
I agree completely with that statement. The article is for “tweak-o-philes”. Note to switchers: stop being paranoid and start creating something that brings joy to your life. Then you will “get it” You don’t have to do any adjusting on your dishwasher before you start a cycle, the Mac is not much different. It’s my favorite appliance.
well, if you use a mac, you should know about that already. it’s necessary. but it’s not giving speed up. of course, it’s much more smooth to operate. but it’s not speedy. if you want to do that, you should upgrade hardware like memory, faster hard drive period.
Where is jump of the bus, Gus?
Don’t need a decoy, Roy?
Get a new plan, Stan?
Wait. That’s 50 ways to speed your mac on….
What if Leopard is released alongside new Macs that have a 6GB Flash drive built in, which OS X resides on… no more defragging, no more hassles, just a super fast OS on a chip.
True, Thorin, so true.
Reboot my Macs about once a month and run Onyx on them before I do so (usually put them to sleep at night, therefore, cron scripts don’t run). The best advice I can give on how to speed up your Mac is: keep your hard drive less than half full, get at least 1 GB of RAM per CPU/core, and most importantly, do a clean install with each major OS release!
That last one will keep you trouble-free for 2 years at a time. Try to say that, PC-heads!
Cubert, try using Anacron, it’ll run your scripts when you wake your Mac up.
http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html
Seem to have missed out the most obvious way to speed up a Mac – install Windows!
This is quite a redundant list. ‘Do this with Tinkertool. Do this again with Onyx.’
MDN MW: myself
I’m no expert, but even I myself can see lots of filler in this 52 item list.
“2: Max your RAM.”
How much RAM can those non Santa Rosa clunkers take?
Not only computers love RAM, but Intel iMacs and MacBooks have dual channel capability and always make sure you have both slots filled with the same type of RAM.
If you don’t plan to upgrade to Max RAM, instead of 1x1G, choose 2x512M option.
Believe me, my iMac is now much faster.
You guys are all barking up the wrong tree. !!!!! LOL
I got this from a reply vs the Window problem of windows locking up and all Cpu cycles going to some la la land. You think you have problems:
Check this out — Actual postings.
Quite easy to fix By Michael
Information: http://forums.micr….
Apparently the problem is with Microsoft Update (not Windows Update — they’re different). On machines that have the slowdown, restart, log in, open task manager immediately, then kill svchost.exe when it goes insane (so you can actually use the machine…). Then go into Windows Update, select “Change Settings”, check the box to disable Microsoft Update, save settings, confirm, and restart. This process sorted things out for my workstations……
Good luck!
No Surprise here. By Clay Garland
Well, Now my Win XP install uses about 60% of one processor when it’s idling. OS X. . . 4% of one processor.
I’m still waiting
By Kevin.
Silly me DL’s the update on four computers. One at work (1.8 MHz Pent5 1GB RAM) and three at home – (Celery 1.4 MHz / 758 MB RAM, 2.2 GHz AMD 3400+ / 1.5 GB RAM, 2.0 GHz AMD 3000+) and all four machines basically locked up for five minutes plus. That is ridiculous. ……Only fool leaves his PC on 24×7.
MS Conspiracy By Nexox Enigma..
The first reports that I saw of anything …..
The really terrible thing is that, even while Automatic Updates runs in the background, it runs at a normal priority. That means that for the 45 minutes or so that it checks for updates /every day/ (Windows won’t let you set the update check interval longer than 22 or so hours) it will render any machine slower than a 2ghz P4 (or so) almost unuseable.
The suggestions to revert to Windows Update are right…… That process has taken me upwards of 90 minutes on a 2.4 GHz P4 w/ 1GB of ram.
My theory is that MS intentionally did this (….. That said, I would also like to suggest that all of Windows ME was a ruse to get people to be more willing to switch to XP when it came out. Theres just no way so many problems could crop up in an OS that was essentially just Windows 98 + 3 features.
– Nexox
Title By Gee Salzweger .
Thanks to a online friend I got to your very helpful web site. I downloaded the Windows XP (927891) package but have No relief so far from the problem…still 100% CPU usage. Any other suggestion? I appreciate any help
Thanks in advance
Gee
An Ounce of Prevention …By dreamer.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />).
1. Disable junk services (Even conservatively … compare Automatic services on XP and….
2. Clean startup.
3. Don’t use IE. Opera is the best (even on my MacBook
4. Use perimeter firewall and..
5. Use WSUS, and always approve updates after making sure that there is no bad fe…
Cheers!
spvhost.exe bug of MY 11 By roberto vacca
For 4 days I had to unblock my PC by going to Task Manager, double clicking on CPU, identifying the spvhost tyhat bloched 98% of CPU, neutralize it,
On May 14 as soon as I switched on PC…after which the bug had disappeared – but no explanation, nor apology was given.
Bah
By Manofmilk “By James Carter:
This is just Microsoft’s gentle reminder that you really should be upgrading to Vista/Office2007. So get with the program!”
If only it wasn’t affecting my Vista machine with Office 2007 installed….
So far it seems that ticking ‘Don’t auto update’ + splitting ot the integrated office updates has fixed this bug but now when I try and manually update it returns error 80244028 and fails…. I was really getting along with Vista up to this point.
Same here….
I’m a volunteer at a charitable organisation,… Last patch Wednesday half of our stock, about ten machines, all of them P3’s with 256 Meg of RAM found themselves stuffed, svchost chewing up all processor time and RAM….
Microsofts failure to recognise that the problem even exists must surely be affecting some of their governmental customers, as some of these operate under the same constraints on resources we do…… Nice one Redmond, what a good advert for upgrading to Vista. If we can’t run XP, how the heck are we going to run Vista.
Utterly unacceptable.
I really love this. These are not Applefanboys trying to make MS look bad, these are regular talented windows users that are beating themselves up over this. Its great. Sorry to be so happy over someone’s misery. LOL
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