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RepairOSX10xTable of ContentsIntroductionI've created this site because so many of the Macintosh users that I have encountered have expressed frustration that they don't know what to do, or what to use, for performing routine maintenance on their Macintosh running OS X. There is also a huge amount of misinformation going around on the subject. Even Apple has contributed to the confusion with conflicting tech notes on their Web site. With the assistance of a few free utility programs, routine maintenance under OS X is very easy. The problem for most users is figuring out which utility to use, and for what. This site will tell you that. Just a little routine maintenance can make a Macintosh that is acting old and slow run like it was new again! It can also banish vexing spinning beachball cursors, rid you of "out of memory" error messages, and keep your valuable data from being lost. Memoryhttp://www.hillmanminx.net/dinmm/index.html (As of the date of this writing, "Do I Need More Memory" is no longer supported by its developer, but it still works perfectly.) This Web page doesn't cover troubleshooting hardware problems. For instance, many, maybe even most kernel panics (i.e. system crashes) http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106227 under OS X, are caused by hardware problems such as bad RAM, problematic USB hubs, incompatible PCI cards, etc. For more information on troubleshooting hardware, please have a look at my Jaguar and Panther troubleshooting Web sites, referenced below. Disclaimer: When using any Disk Utility, there is always the slim possibility that things can go horribly wrong. So, it is always a really good idea to have an up to date backup of all of your important data before using any Disk Utility. Actually, its just simply a good idea to always keep a backup of your data in any case, because hard drives are notorious for failing when you would least expect them to and you can least afford them to. For backup software, I suggest that you check out SuperDuper ($28) http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html and consider getting a FireWire hard drive to backup to. At this time I prefer Other World Computing FireWire hard drives: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB If you are experiencing a problem with your Macintosh, performing all of the suggested routine maintenance on this page will often fix the problem. If it doesn't fix the problem, check out my two OS X troubleshooting Web sites: How To Deal With Common OS X 10.2 Jaguar Problemshttp://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html How To Deal With Common OS X 10.3 Panther Problemshttp://www.macattorney.com/panther.html This page only refers to Macintosh OS X versions 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. If you have an earlier version of OS X I strongly advise upgrading to a more recent version, as OS X, in my personal opinion, didn't become a really good product until version 10.2. The routine maintenance necessary for OS X 10.2 through 10.6 is almost identical, but 10.4 through 10.6 can often handle corrupted user preferences files automatically, and you no longer have to be mindful of OS X’s built-in maintenance scripts when using OS X 10.5 or later, as they automatically take care of themselves. REPAIR DISK PERMISSIONSSlow operation and generally unusual behavior are signs that may indicate that permissions need to be repaired on your Macintosh's hard drive. To do so you can run Repair Disk Permissions from within Disk Utility, located on your hard drive at: Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility Note: There is no need to verify permissions before you repair them. Unless you can read the report and understand what Disk Utility proposes to do, there is little point in verifying first. For some reason permissions often seem to get fouled up under OS X 10.2. Under OS X 10.3 through OS X 10.6, file permissions are less of a problem. But you should still run Repair Disk Permissions regularly. Maybe once a month, and every time after you have installed new software. (Contrary to popular belief, it is not at all necessary to run Repair Disk Permissions prior to installing new software. Though doing so won’t hurt anything.) Open Disk Utility, and on the left side of the screen select your hard drive, then select the First Aid tab on the right side and click on "Repair Disk Permissions." See: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712 and http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963 for further details. Note: Some users are reporting that they run Repair Permissions over and over again, and the same permissions are reported as being incorrect, and they are not being repaired. You should know that, in addition to reporting faulty permissions, until very recent versions of OS X, running Repair Permissions in Disk Utility also gave you advisory messages. For instance, it might report that it is using an updated set of rules to determine if any permissions needs to be repaired. These are not error reports and they will not change no matter how many times you run Repair Permissions. Advisory messages do not indicate that anything is wrong, and they can safely be ignored. Example: "We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/hfs.util. New permissions are 33261" http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107298 As of OS X 10.4.6, Repair Permissions no longer gives these advisory messages. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303411 Note: With OS X 10.5 (Leopard) a number of problems were introduced for some users when trying to repair permissions. Early versions of Leopard had a problem whereby running Repair Disk Permissions might take a long time and you might get a lot of SUID or ACL error messages. For most, but unfortunately not all, users, this can be remedied by updating to the latest version of Leopard or updating to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). (For those for which updating does not help, sometimes downloading and running the latest updater again helps.) About "ACL found but not expected" or “Warning: SUID file” error messages http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306925 These messages can safely be ignored. "Permissions nightmare with Leopard (10.5)” http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=80606 Note: Some users have noted that their permissions revert to apparently incorrect settings every time that they restart their Macintosh. Disk Utility/Repair Disk will correct their permissions, but the next time that they restart the permissions have been changed again. This has been traced to the fact that these users are running security software such as Intego’s Virus Barrier. The security software is intentionally modifying permissions to close off potential malicious exploits. Note that in this case, it is neither necessary, or even desirable, to repeatedly repair your permissions to “fix” this situation. RUN ROUTINE MAINTENANCE SCRIPTSOS X runs its own built-in maintenance routines, sometimes called "cron jobs", or "maintenance scripts", automatically between 3:00 am and 5:30 am each day. (There are daily, weekly and monthly scripts). http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2319 The thing is that these scripts do just about nothing of great importance. If they don't run for weeks, or even months, it's just not a big deal. So, despite the fact that these are called "maintenance routines," don't get concerned if they haven't run in a long time. Don't ignore doing this entirely, though, because in time failure to run the maintenance scripts will allow your Mac's hard drive to fill up with a bunch of invisible log files. You can find a rundown of what the built-in maintenance routines do at: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=454874 http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8906776#8906776 Prior to OS X 10.5, if you didn't leave your computer on 24 hours a day, or if you left it on but you let it go into sleep mode at night, these routines weren't run. As of OS X 10.5 and later your Mac will run its maintenance scripts automatically at the next available opportunity if you put your Mac into sleep mode all night. Though the scripts still won't run if you shut your Macintosh down at night. http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6552347 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2143195&tstart=0 http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html NOTE: As of OS X 10.5 the maintenance scritps are no longer handled by the UNIX facility "cron", they are now handled by a similar facility called "launchd," if that means anything to you. If you are running OS X 10.2 you should probably run all the maintenance scripts manually every month or two if you shut your Mac down at night. You can run these routines manually, whenever your want, with the free utility MacJanitor: http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html NOTE: MacJanitor is not compaitlble with OS X 10.5 and beyond. For OS X 10.5 and beyond, if you decide that you want to run the maintenance scrips manually, you can instead use this free utility: Maintidget http://www.giantmike.com/widgets/Maintidget.html If you are running OS X 10.3 to OS X 10.6, the easiest thing to do is to download and install the free utility PseudoAnacron which will make sure that your routine maintenance scripts run every time that you startup your Macintosh: http://www.jaw.it/pages/en/x_misc.html NOTE: On PseudoAnacron's Web site it says that it works with OS X 10.4 to OS X 10.5. I've been in touch with PseudoAnacron's developer, and he says that it works perfectly with OS X 10.6 also. There is an earlier version of PseudoAnacron available for OS X 10.3. CLEAR CACHESEven though running the routine maintenance scripts clears out some temporary files, none of the system caches are touched by them. Occasionally caches become corrupted, impacting the performance and stability of your Mac. So it is a good idea to every rare now and then use a utility that clears the system caches, and/or your Internet browser caches. Deleting caches won't hurt anything. However, over time a cache speeds up your computer (assuming that you do some things repetitively), so if you aren't experiencing any problems, you may want to leave your caches alone. On the other hand, if it has been ages since you have flushed your caches, or if your computer is running slowly, or if you are experiencing odd problems, it might be a good idea to flush them. Use your discretion. Cache Out X is a free program which cleans out system and Internet browser caches. This can prevent some very hard to diagnose flaky behavior. (You may not want to regularly clear your browser cache if you have a slow speed connection to the Internet. Until your browser cache is rebuilt, your access to favorite sites may be very slow.) You can get Cache Out X from: http://www.trilateralsystems.com/CacheOutX/ According to MacAddict, October 2005, page 20, it is a good idea to occasionally clear out application-specific caches. They specifically recommend clearing out the two main cache folders in Mac OS X: 1) /Library/Caches, and 2)~/Library/Caches. ("~" stands for the folder with your username on it in your Users folder.) While Apple doesn't recommend doing this routinely, they indicate that it is a good idea in certain situations: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1199 A MacOSXHints tip also suggests clearing out the application cache files occasionally:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060111202501460 This hint notes that there may be quite a few extraneous cache files in your ~/Library/Caches folder. You get to the ~/Library/Caches folder by following the path: [hard drive] --> Users --> [your user name] --> Library --> Caches. You get to the /Library/Caches folder by following this path: [hard drive] --> Library --> Caches You should be able to delete everything safely. However, if you want to be extra careful, just create a new folder on your desktop, and drag everything from your Caches folder into it and restart. You can trash the folder on your desktop when you are certain that everything is running fine. Repair and Backup PreferencesPreferences become corrupted way too often under OS X 10.2. This is still a problem under OS X 10.3, but much less of a problem under OS X 10.4 and later. If an application or applications quits unexpectedly under OS X, the first thing to suspect is that you have one or more corrupted user preferences files. Preferential Treatment http://www.jonn8.com/html/pt.html is a free utility that will check for corrupted preferences files. (It will sometimes even locate preferences files that are corrupted before you start experiencing any problems from them, so it is a good idea to use Preferential Treatment regularly. About once a week.) Preferential Treatment allows you to delete any corrupted preferences files from right within the program, so that they will be rebuilt when you restart the effected applications. Once all of your preferences files are known to be in good shape, it is a good idea to back them up. That way, in the future if you have a problem with a corrupted preferences file, you can replace the corrupted file instantly with a clean copy. This also allows you to avoid having to re-set any application or system preferences settings. You can use a backup program for this, or you can copy your entire Preferences folder manually. You can find your user Preferences folder at: ~/Library/Preferences You get to the ~/Library/Caches folder by following the path: [hard drive] --> Users --> [your user name] --> Library --> Preferences Make a copy of the user Preferences folder by holding down the Option key and click-dragging the folder to your desktop. This will leave the original in place and make a copy on your desktop. Click on the copy on your desktop once to select it, and choose File --> Create Archive. This will compress the folder, making it inactive (so your Mac's system doesn't get confused by having a duplicate Preferences folder for any reason) and stash the duplicate folder somewhere where you can find it if you ever need it. (Do NOT keep the duplicate anywhere in the Library folder.) In the event of corruption of either individual preferences, or the entire folder, you can simply substitute the backed-up preference file, or the entire backed-up Preferences folder for the existing one. This eliminates the need to troubleshoot your user preferences if you suspect that one of your preferences files is corrupted. If an application unexpectedly quits under OS X 10.4 or later, you are given the option of restarting that application with its ".plist" (preferences) file(s) deactivated, to see if that was the problem, and if it was, a new ".plist" is substituted for the old one. This approach isn't as pro-active as using Preferential Treatment routinely, but it should be entirely adequate and effective. More information: Tiger's new and improved “application crash” dialogs http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=200505120750592 Preferences Files: The Complete Story (Part V); How .plist files become corrupt and troubleshooting the results http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060606082246983 DO A FILE SYSTEM CHECK AND REPAIR DISKI recommend that you occasionally restart your Mac, and hold down the Shift key right after the startup chime is played, and keep it held down until the spinning black bar cursor appears. There is no need to hold down the Shift key past the time that the spinning bar cursor appears. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455?viewlocale=en_US This procedure invokes what Apple calls a "Safe Boot": http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417 and your Mac will report that it has been booted (started up) into Safe Boot mode. During startup in Safe Boot mode your Mac will do a file system check, entirely in the background, with no working status indicated, or report generated, and any problems will automatically be repaired. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US It may take a while for your Mac to start up in Safe Boot mode. Be Patient. Once it has fully started up, you should immediately restart your Mac normally, because certain files are deactivated when you startup in Safe Boot mode. Note: A wireless or Bluetooth keyboard and mouse may not allow you to startup in Safe Boot mode. (Also, be sure that all of the latest updates for your computer are installed.) http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2220 Item #6 Instead you may prefer to check your hard drive, and repair any problems, by using the method outlined below. The advantage of using the method outlined below is that both a working status indicator, and a report, are generated. The disadvantage is that you will have to have, and start up from, your OS X Installer CD-ROM. Put your OS X Installer CD-ROM (or DVD) into your optical drive (if you have multiple installer disks, use the first one), and startup from it (by holding down the "C" key during startup or restart). From there you can choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. Click on the disk that you want to repair in the left column and then choose the First Aid tab, and then click on Repair Disk. (If the Repair Disk button is gray, you either didn't click on the correct item in the left column, or you aren't started up from the Installer CD-ROM. You can't repair the disk that you have started up from.) http://www.fixya.com/support/r935084-mac_repair_disk DEFRAGMENT A HARD DRIVE THAT IS LOW ON CONTIGUOUS FREE SPACEMacintosh Myth #3: Most folks with an opinion will probably tell you that Mac's running OS X never need to have their hard drives defragmented. Here is a quote from a MicroMat technician, that I think is very insightful: The claim that installations of Mac OS X on HFS+ volumes do not fragment is a myth believed by people who do not have disk optimizers that allow them to see how much fragmentation their disks have. It is an example of ignorance that is not able to be removed by any amount of evidence. I think theologians call that "invincible ignorance". It is now a widespread form of the pollution of information space. http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/570817/site_id /1#import or http://tinyurl.com/yuqn4 Actually, Some Macs running OS X can benefit quite a bit from defragmenting their hard drive. But not for the reason that you might expect There is often little in the way of performance to be gained by defragmenting your hard drive. But defragmenting your drive can stave off some very flaky behavior, out of memory errors, and possibly even data loss. OS X handles "file" fragmentation (a file being broken up into chunks and strewn across your hard disk) automatically, and fairly well, every time that you launch a fragmented file under 20MB. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.macosx.general/22906 http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s =50009562&f=8300945231&m=9900929295 (registration required to access) http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-13383.html But OS X doesn't handle "drive" fragmentation (small bits of free space between files) well at all. In fact, OS X is prone to huge amounts of drive fragmentation. Drive (as opposed to file) fragmentation under OS X is mostly irrelevant with respect to performance, as long as it isn't severe. Where hard drive fragmentation becomes important is when there are no longer any large contiguous chunks of free space left on your drive for OS X to use for working space, for virtual memory, temp files, databases, etc. When this happens, OS X can start acting flaky, and eventually, in extreme cases, it will suffer from data loss. http://www.macfixit.com/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20070301091515843 &title=Does+Mac+OS+X+need+a+disk+defragmenter%2Foptimizer %3F&type=article&order=&pid=25346 I used to recommend that folks defragment their hard drive when it was approaching 80% full (no matter how large the drive is), because I've heard from so many folks who were experiencing out-of-memory errors and flaky behavior at this level (no matter how large their drive was), and defragmenting invariably fixes the problem. But I've heard from a number of users who made heavy use of their drive, and they have experienced the problem as early as around 60% full. And other folks won't experience the problem until their drive is well over 80% full. Clearly how you use your drive makes a difference as to when, or if you run out of free contiguous space on your hard drive. So now, instead of using a rough rule of thumb on when you should consider defragmenting your hard drive, what I recommend is that folks check to see how much free contiguous space the is on their drive routinely, once their drive is over 50% full. You can do this quickly and easily with the free demo version of iDefrag: http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php or the free utility ShowVolumeFragmentation http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18451 There is no need to purchase anything until and unless you need to. When you have no large chunks of free contiguous space left, you can expect problems to begin to appear if you don't defragment your drive. Note that if you let this problem advance too far, it may become for any utility to work on your drive, protesting that there isn't enough free space on your drive for it to be able to run. (This despite the fact that you may have many gigabytes of "total" free space left on your drive.) You may never need to defragment your drive (prior to purchasing a new one because the old one is becoming too full) or you may need to do so much earlier than you would expect, but by checking with one of these free tools you won't have to guess whether it is necessary or not. If you drive needs to be defragmented, the "only" hard drive defragmentation utility that I recommend is iDefrag. (See my comments about other hard drive defragmentation utilities in Note 1. below) It is the only one that I know of that can optimize the files on your hard drive in a totally OS X-savvy way. OS X, under OS 10.4 and 10.5, has a journal, a hot band, virtual memory, metadata, etc. to keep track of. It is very important that these things be located properly on the disk or performance will be compromised. Technical data about the hot band and meta data on hard drives running OS X 10.4 and later: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html#HotFile iDefrag is the only hard drive optimization tool that does this perfectly (despite what some of the other companies that make hard drive defragmentation tools say). The downside to iDefrag is that you can't do a comprehensive defrag without booting from a volume other than the one that you are defragmenting. Coriolis Systems offers free software to allow you to make a boot CD-ROM to run iDefrag from. https://secure.coriolis-systems.com/login.php?targetPage=customer-licenses.php Another option, instead of defragmenting your hard drive with a software utility program, is to simply purchase a new, bigger hard drive; copy all of the data on the old drive to the new drive, and then reinitialize (i.e. wipe clean) the old drive and start over with it. Moving all of your data from one drive to another will automatically defragment your data. Though it won't optimize it. You have to reinitialize your data on the old drive for this plan to work, because if you just move "some" data from your old drive to your new drive, the old drive will still be badly fragmented, and without defragmenting the old drive it will still probably be flaky. (That is, even if you free up some space on the old drive, there more than likely still won't be the large chunk of contiguous free space available that the OS likes to run properly.) Defragmenting your hard drive prevents any unusual behavior from your OS because it creates contiguous space, combining fragments of space strewn all over your drive into one large chunk of space. Note that clearing off data from your drive, even a large amount of data, without also defragmenting, may not create enough "contiguous" space to keep your Mac running well CHECK S.M.A.R.T. STATUSHard drives are quite a bit more reliable these days than they were just a few years ago. Unfortunately, the old saying that "all hard drives die eventually" is still true. It would be nice to know in advance when a hard drive is going to fail. That way you would have time to backup your data before your drive ultimately met its end. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a feature built into most modern hard-drives that acts as an "early warning system" for pending drive problems. OS X 10.3 and above have this ability built-in, but it only works if the actual hard drive in your Mac has this technology built-in also. Disk Utility, which comes with OS X (it is in your Application/Utilities folder), under OS X 10.3 and above can tell you the S.M.A.R.T.-status of your hard-drive. Unfortunately, you have to remember to regularly launch Disk Utility to check this. (See below for free utilities that will automate this process.) To check your drive's S.M.A.R.T.-status using Disk Utility, launch Disk Utility and select your hard drive. If at the bottom of the window it says "Verified," your drive is in good shape. If it says: "About To Fail" you need to: 1) Not shut down your computer and hard drive until you have done the following... 2) Back up your hard drive, which you should do immediately, if you haven't already done so. Hard drives on their last legs often will finally fail by refusing to start up. I've been told that there is no hope for an internal drive once it reports "Failing" as its S.M.A.R.T status. Its time to get a new drive. SMARTReporter is a free application that can automatically warn you of hard-drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T.-status of your hard-drives. http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/ SMARTer is a free utility that reads mounted disks' S.M.A.R.T. status and reports it. You add it to your Mac's login items to have it run regularly. http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/software/index.html Volitans' SMART Utility ($20 for a 10 copy license) is different from other similar utilities which only read the overall S.M.A.R.T. Status. SMART Utility goes farther and displays the individual attributes tracked by S.M.A.R.T in an easy to read format so that you can see their status and information, and it also uses its own internal algorithm based on those attributes to detect drives failing before S.M.A.R.T. normally would. This pre-fail detection can save your data well before S.M.A.R.T. has determined that the drive is failing. http://www.volitans-software.com/Home.html Note: FireWire and USB hard drives (that is, external hard drives), even if their internal mechanism is S.M.A.R.T.-enabled, can't be checked for S.M.A.R.T. status. CLEAR YOUR DESKTOPMoving things to a location other than on your desktop is an easy and free way to pick up better performance. Users have noticed that reducing the number of items on their Mac’s desktop can noticeably increase the performance of certain activities in OS X. This is easy to do. You can even create one folder on your desktop and put everything on your desktop in it. That will do the trick. Nested items within folders on the Desktop don't count. It is only the total number of items directly on your desktop that matter. http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051117154624368 http://www.macworld.com/2006/03/features/speedtoptips/index.php Another way to go is to put all of the items that would normally reside on your desktop, that you want to be able to access quickly, in a folder; park that folder somewhere other than on your desktop, and then drag that folder to your Dock so that it is always available from the Dock. Whenever you click and hold (or Control-click, or right-click on a two button mouse) on that folder in the Dock, you will be presented with a menu of everything in that folder to choose from. Sort of like the old classic Apple Menu. Under OS X 10.5 this problem is ameliorated because your Mac’s desktop is no longer the default location for new downloads. There is a separate Downloads folder in your Dock. RESET SAFARLots of folks have problems with Safari bogging down and/or exhibiting the spinning beachball. When this starts to be a problem, there are several things that you can do to fix this. This hint from MacFixIt, http://www.macfixit.com/, works really well for some: "… go to /(username)/Library/Safari folder and delete the Icons folder." This will clear cached favicons (little icons that appear in the address bar). This tip from Mac OS X Hints will keep this folder from filling up with favicons again: http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-36615.html From MacFixIt: Under Mac OS X 10.3.x and Mac OS X 10.4.x there exists and issue where some users experience a stall in Safari or other Web browsers when accessing certain Web sites that usually leads to a complete system freeze accompanied by the unending "spinning beach ball" process indicator. One solution to this problem is the free utility Unlockupd: http://www.dshadow.com/software/unlockupd/ A rather extreme, but simple and usually quite effective thing to do is to restore Safari to like-new performance is to reset Safari, which will clear Safari's cache and other gunk: Choose "Reset Safari" from the Safari menu and click "Reset". Note. Resetting Safari clears the history, empties the cache, clears the Downloads window and removes all cookies. It also removes any saved user names and passwords or other AutoFill data and clears Google search entries. I'm also told that resetting Safari alters your keychain and bookmarks. For this reason you may want to make copies of the files: ~/Library?Cookies/ ~Library/Keychains/ and ~/Library/Safari/ so that those can be restored after resetting Safari. As of Safari 3.0 the "Reset Safari" command has been substantially improved, now offering users the option to customize the "reset", and "delete only select items". It also now has the capability to remove all Web site icons ("favicons"), which can have a surprisingly dramatic performance boosting effect for Safari. REBUILD SPOTLIGHT'S DATABASESometimes, under OS X 10.4, your Macintosh will slow to a crawl, and you can hear that there is a lot of hard drive activity, even though you aren't doing anything disk-intensive with your Mac. To determine what's running in the background, start up Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities folder), set it to show "All Processes" and sort by down-arrow "% CPU". That'll show which processes are running, and which, if any, are hogging CPU cycles to the point of drastically slowing down your Macintosh. Look for Dashboard widgets that are hogging CPU cycles. Poorly coded widgets have been known to hog CPU cycles even when you would expect them to be inactive. Uninstall any CPU hogging widgets. If the culprit is something named "mds" or "mdimport" (the processes that handle Spotlight data), it could signal corruption of your Spotlight database. (Make sure that you aren't just seeing normal Spotlight indexing. See if this problem perseveres after your computer has been left on all day.) If this problem persists, you can easily rebuild your Spotlight database by opening System Preferences, choose the Spotlight panel, click on the Privacy tab, and drag your main drive's icon into the Privacy window. Now highlight your hard drive's icon within the Privacy window and click on the "-" button (that is, the minus button in the Privacy Window). Or you could highlight the hard drive icon in the Privacy window and hit the delete key. This will cause the Spotlight database to be deleted and automatically rebuilt. (You won't be able to use Spotlight while its database is being rebuilt.). After doing this, leave your Mac on for an entire day (making sure to set the Energy Saver System Preferences so that your Mac won’t go to sleep) and allow Spotlight to index your entire drive uninterrupted. Some have suggested that it might be a good idea to rebuild your Spotlight database after every time that you update to a new version of OS X (a full "point" release, e.g. 10.3 to 10.4) REBUILD MAIL’S DATABASE AND BACK UP YOUR EMAILAs of OS X 10.4, all archived messages in Apple’s Mail program are kept in individual Finder-readable files. There are no archived messages in Mail's database. OS X keeps your archived mail messages in this folder: ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ This is a good thing. Some other e-mail programs, notably Microsoft’s Entourage, store all of your messages in one big monolithic database. If the database in a program with a monolithic database becomes corrupted and unrepairable, you can lose all of your archived mail. However, Mail’s performance can lag, and it can become less stable, as you store more and more archived messages in it: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1895?viewlocale=en_US Periodically deleting old, unwanted e-mail messages, and rebuilding Mail’s database, will usually give Mail a very noticeable performance boost, and help ensure continued trouble-free operation. Since there are no archived e-mail messages stored in Mail’s database, it is quite safe to rebuild Mail’s database, because if something goes wrong with the rebuild, you can just start over, having lost nothing. Every now and then (or, ideally, routinely as you use Mail) you should go through all of your mailboxes in Mail and delete all of the messages you no longer wish to keep. Then, in Mail, choose: Mailbox menu --> Erase Deleted Messages --> In All Accounts to purge all deleted messages. After doing this, quit Mail. You can then use this free utility to quickly and easily rebuild Mail's database: SpeedMail (free, donations accepted) http://www.1802.it/speedmail.php Or, instead, you can use this program, which has the advantage that you can set it to run automatically on a schedule: VacuumMail (free) http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2007/04/vacuummail-will-speed-up-apple-mail.html For many folks, storing their old e-mail messages, and being able to search through them, is very important. Unfortunately, if you use Mail itself to store huge amounts of archived e-mail, eventually doing so will impact both Mail's performance and stability. There are a number of automated backup/archive utilities for Mail, listed on the following Web site, that will allow you to both backup and search through archived mail outside of Mail itself: http://www.hawkwings.net/plugins.htm#archive I've been asked if just backing up all the folders in: ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ does a sufficient job of backing up one's e-mail. I've heard from a number of users who have had to restore their e-mail from backups of this type, and they have reported problems getting Mail to integrate and recognize individual messages when they have had to restore them from such a backup. Most of the application-specific Mail backup programs claim to instantly do that for you. Which sounds like a nice feature to have. (Of course, as of OS X 10.5, you can just use Time Machine to back up and access archived e-mail messages.) Defragmentation?Some manufacturers use the terms "defragmentation" and "optimization" interchangeably. For instance, as far as I can tell, MicroMat does this even though TechTool Pro doesn't really do any optimization when defragmenting your hard drive. http://www.micromat.com/ Prosoft's Drive Genius http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius_info.php does both file and disk defragmentation, but as far as I can tell, no optimization. However, their advertising seems to use the terms "defragmentation" and "optimization" interchangeably. Intech Speed Tool's documentation: http://www.speedtools.com/Users Guides/Disk Defrag Guide.pdf says that the product defragments your drive, but it does not optimize it. So it would appear that Intech's product is not an optimal choice. NOTE: Alsoft refers to what Disk Warrior, their popular hard drive repair utility, does as "optimization" and/or "defragmentation." However, they are referring to the drive's directory, not to defragmentation and optimization of the drive’s files (data) and free space on the drive. Many folks get confused by the terminology used and think that Disk Warrior is a hard drive defragmentation utility, and it is not. Your Macintosh maintains a "directory" which is an invisible structure that is a catalog of all of your Mac's files and system parts. (It is actually more complex than this simple explanation.) If the directory becomes corrupted your Mac can lose track of what is on your hard drive. (e.g. Your files disappear.) For a more detailed and technical explanation, see: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21692?viewlocale=en_US Disk Warrior fixes your Mac's directory by rebuilding a new optimal one from scratch. Other utilities attempt to fix the directory by patching the directory structure rather than by rebuilding it. Disk Warrior also optimizes the structure of the directory for maximum overall disk performance. Alsoft's hard drive defragmentation product, PlusOptimizer, is many years out of date, and it runs in OS 9 only. I highly recommend against using this product at this point (assuming that you even can), as it is not OS X-savvy and its use may seriously degrade your hard drive's performance. Routine Maintenance or Trouble Shooting TechniquesA couple of well-known Macintosh authors have recently said that many of the procedures listed on this Web page, such as Repairing Permissions, are not what they consider to be routine maintenance, but rather they are best reserved to be used as troubleshooting techniques when your Macintosh shows signs of decreased performance or starts acting in an unusual manner. They say that you can go a long time without having to perform any of the procedures that I list here. http://www.macworld.com/article/133684/2008/06/maintenance_intro.html I can’t say that they are wrong. However, I compare it to checking and adjusting the air in the tires of your car. Do you do that regularly, or do you wait until your tires start to show signs of unusual wear and/or your car starts to handle poorly? Many people do the latter, and I can’t say that they are wrong in doing so. What if it took less than ten minutes to check and adjust the air in your car’s tires, and you didn’t have to get your hands dirty, or leave the comfort of your home to do so? Would you then be more likely to check the air in your tires regularly, especially considering the benefits of better handling, longer tire life, etc.? It seems to me that it would be well worth your while to do so. That is where my feelings are as far as the procedures on this Web page. You can do them all quickly (see below), easily, and at no monetary cost, and there is no downside to doing them. But the upside to doing routine maintenance is that your Macintosh will always be running at its best (not just when you have noticed that things are really out of wack, and you decide that its time to troubleshoot and repair them), and you may even avoid some nasty problems down the road. You can decide for yourself if the extremely modest investment of time and effort is worthwhile to you. ReferencingMacintosh OS X Routine Maintenance - Retrieved on 7 April 2011 All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License |