My brother has a Mac that is starting to run pretty slow. I looked around at it tonight but can't find anything like any Windows utilities to check it out with. It's a few years old at least. What can I do to make it speedy again?

Dangle an apple in front of it?

It depends on the OS. Because Macs believe in the simple "drag and drop" method of install, most programs don't come with an uninstaller. Theres a good chance that programs long since removed may still have their "extensions" installed and running.

Under OS 9 and below, look for a control panal called "Extensions Manager" and unselect anything not vital to running the computer.

Under OS X, I'm not sure of any utilites built in to disable extensions, but the problem you describe is less likely to also happen due to the modern OS features finally built into OS X.

I used to be able to optimise Mac OS to within an inch of it's life, but I've forgotten most of what I knew already.

Generally, Macs don't get slower and more crash-prone over time like Windows has a tendency to do - there is a lot less going on behind the scenes and most optimisations can be performed by carrying out some pruning in the system folder. As suggested already, play around with extentions manager - if you do anything that causes a problem and the machine won't boot, hold down the spacebar at boot to bring it up again, or hold down shift to turn off all extensions.

One common problem is too many fonts - if you have more than about a hundred fonts available, the systm will take longer to boot and each app will also launch more slowly. Check in System Folder>Fonts.

Another is that the virtual memory setting has been changed - In System Folder>Control Panels>Memory. Check it is turned on and that it is at least one meg higher than the real RAM installed in the box.

On the subject of memory, go to apple menu>about this computer and check how much memory it thinks is installed - maybe a SIMM/DIMM has worked loose.

Mac OS doesn't multitask too well - have a look in system folder>startup items to see if anything is launching at boot and sitting in the background slowing the system. If he has any pro graphics software installed you might see something like kodak color launcher - it's harmless.

If he is running anything prior to Mac OS 9, then it may be time to upgrade. I'm reluctant to suggest a complete reinstall as it really shouldn't be necessary. Mac OS X probably isn't the answer as his hardware probably isn't up to it.

very helpful

I used to be able to optimise Mac OS to within an inch of it's life, but I've forgotten most of what I knew already.

I know the feeling, I used to manage 200+ Macs, but can't remember many of the old tricks at all.

Generally, Macs don't get slower and more crash-prone over time like Windows has a tendency to do - there is a lot less going on behind the scenes and most optimisations can be performed by carrying out some pruning in the system folder.

I beg to differ, unless things changed dramatically with MacOS 9. When I was managing those Macs we were still on the last iteration of MacOS 8 and the Macs used to "decay" at a very similar rate to the PCs running Win95 and WinNT4.

On the PCs you could run tools to clean up the registry which would normally delay a complete reinstall by another six months. On the Mac, because any configuration data was generally hidden away in a binary file, there was little you could do to extend the OS install's live beyond shuffling the contents of the system folder around.

Comparing those MacOS 8.x machines and Win2k would be no competition, Win2k suffers far less from OS decay. I doubt if all the problem were fixed in MacOS 9 either, as they aren't the sort of problems you can just "tweak" out of software, a full redesign and re-write is needed to address them.

We brings me to MacOS X, which although I haven't used it, I am sure it suffers from few of these problems. I also hear that it's config data is in plain text file (or XML at least) ?

Thanks for the help guys. I know he is running Mac OS 9 so next time I am over there I'll have to check for some of the things suggested.

One other question, can I install more memory like any other computer?

Sorry Laura, couldn't resist... I know next to nothing about Macs..

Happy New Year BTW..

I know nothing about them either, they're strange beasts

Happy New Year to you also!

Yep - all but early powerbooks used standard memory - the idea that Macs used expensive proprietary memory is completely false.

Try - http://www.crucial.com

> When I was managing those Macs we were still on the last iteration of MacOS 8
> and the Macs used to "decay" at a very similar rate to the PCs running Win95 and WinNT4.

I never had that kind of problem myself, but then I ran a very streamlined system and didn't run too many extentions. A print bureau I used to work at would reinstall their systems every six months or so, but stuck rigidly to 7.5.3 which was probably one of the most crash-prone releases ever. I finally encouraged them to upgrade to OS 8.1 and they found the systems much faster and far more stable.

Did you run Norton Utilities or similar on the systems by any chance? I found that caused more problems that it fixed and if useless utilities such as filesaver were enabled, the system would get slower over time.


> We brings me to MacOS X, which although I haven't used it, I am sure it suffers
> from few of these problems. I also hear that it's config data is in plain text file
> (or XML at least) ?

All the Apple stuff is in XML (they inculde an editor in the dev tools too), the BSD stuff is usually plain text.

>> When I was managing those Macs we were still on the last iteration of MacOS 8
>> and the Macs used to "decay" at a very similar rate to the PCs running Win95 and WinNT4.

>I never had that kind of problem myself, but then I ran a very streamlined system
>and didn't run too many extentions. A print bureau I used to work at would
>reinstall their systems every six months or so, but stuck rigidly to 7.5.3
> which was probably one of the most crash-prone releases ever. I finally
>encouraged them to upgrade to OS 8.1 and they found the systems much
>faster and far more stable.

That would be the difference then, I had 250 or so users with a fairly free hand to do whatever they liked with the systems.

>Did you run Norton Utilities or similar on the systems by any chance? I
> found that caused more problems that it fixed and if useless utilities
> such as filesaver were enabled, the system would get slower over time.

I had much the same experience as you. About the only thing we used Norton for in the end was recovering deleted files. For about 18 months we did make extensive use of RamDoubler, until Apple built something similar into the OS. Without RamDoubler running MS Office on most of our machines was pretty much a non-starter.

They have pretty much switched over to PCs now, as the primary reason for having computers on their desks was to run MS Office.

You couldn't pay me enough to got back and manage that network of MacOS 8.x Macs again, about the only good thing that came out of it was that between Alan Cox and myself the AppleTalk routing in the Linux kernel got fixed so that it worked when there were two Linux boxes between you an a remote Mac.

I always used to spend half of Sunday mornings tracking down all the Macs that had locked up when Retrospect had kicked off on Saturday to back them up remotely (we had no big servers so almost all data was stored on people's desktops)...

>> We brings me to MacOS X, which although I haven't used it, I am sure it suffers
>> from few of these problems. I also hear that it's config data is in plain text file
>> (or XML at least) ?

>All the Apple stuff is in XML (they inculde an editor in the dev tools too), the BSD
>stuff is usually plain text.

Are third party developers sticking to the same approach ?

Thanks David for your help. I'll find out how much memory it has and then decide if he needs more or not. I did try talking him into buying a 'real' computer since prices are so cheap.

My dad used to run Norton Utilities on his computer and ever time I worked on it I would disable it to find it enabled the next time he screwed it up, I hate that program.

My dad used to run Norton Utilities on his computer and ever time I worked on it I would disable it to find it enabled the next time he screwed it up, I hate that program.

I used to have Norton disabled on my Mac and ran it as needed. It has a defrag and file sytem repair utility. It might speed it up some if you ran it. It's been a while since I used it though. I "made the switch" to PC this past Christmas.

Stu