10.3.8 update slowing down my computer

[trainguy77]

Has anyone else had a problem with the 10.3.8 update slowing down there computer? When i open up apps for the first time since login it is very slow. Any ideas?

 

[trainguy77]

I just was doing permissions repair and it froze on me. Something is wrong with the update it seams. I have never had these problems before this update. Any ideas? Or a way to revert to the old OS without doing a complete new install?


I am doing another permissions repair. I was looking around as i did this and with 1 word document open and the repair i only had 12 MB of ram left. I have 768 MB installed. Is this normal? the proccess called Kernal_task was taking up almost 125 MB. and word was taking 50 mb. The kernal_task was also taking 747 mb of virtual memory. Wow. is this normal?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Just had a couple of restarts after updating to 10.3.8, but I think you're right. The time from the login window appears until I can actually type my password has increased, and the time from hitting the "Log in" button (or enter) until Finder is up and running takes forever...

Edit: Has repaired permissions and FileVault is Off...

 

[daveL]

I just was doing permissions repair and it froze on me. Something is wrong with the update it seams. I have never had these problems before this update. Any ideas? Or a way to revert to the old OS without doing a complete new install?


I am doing another permissions repair. I was looking around as i did this and with 1 word document open and the repair i only had 12 MB of ram left. I have 768 MB installed. Is this normal? the proccess called Kernal_task was taking up almost 125 MB. and word was taking 50 mb. The kernal_task was also taking 747 mb of virtual memory. Wow. is this normal?

First off, don't you think there might be some good info here?:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=109595

Secondly, there have been reports that the MacAlly joystick software is causing problems similar to yours. Do you have one?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

First off, don't you think there might be some good info here?:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=109595

Secondly, there have been reports that the MacAlly joystick software is causing problems similar to yours. Do you have one?

There has been no mention of this problem in that thread, as far as I have found. Lately it has been most about fans on G5 and GPUs, not interesting for my iBook, and threads tend to become a bit unmanageable when getting close to 500 posts...

I don't have any perifirals connected, and even if I had I don't see why login times should increase...

Permissions, on the other hand may have something to do with it: I repaired them after upgrading to 10.3.8 on Wednesday, and started again after reading this post without expecting it finding anything. I was wrong:

Repairing permissions for “Drue”
Determining correct file permissions.
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./System/Library/Filesystems/cd9660.fs/cd9660.util. New permissions are 33261
We are using a special uid for the file or directory ./private/var/at/jobs. New uid is 1
We are using a special uid for the file or directory ./private/var/at/spool. New uid is 1
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/install.log, should be -rw-r--r-- , they are -rw-r-----
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/log/install.log
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/log/install.log
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/wtmp, should be -rw-r--r-- , they are -rw-r-----
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/log/wtmp
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/log/wtmp
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume

Permissions repair complete

Think I'll have to do another restart...

Update: Restarted again, still very slow from login window to Finder's ready to go...

May have to change my opinion of it...

 

[daveL]

Your permission repairs were the same ones I had on several different machines I updated; nothing unusual.

Have you tried running Activity Monitoring and sorting by %CPU to see what process(es) are using up your resources?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Your permission repairs were the same ones I had on several different machines I updated; nothing unusual.

Have you tried running Activity Monitoring and sorting by %CPU to see what process(es) are using up your resources?

No nothing unusual, except this was today, and as I said they were repaired three days ago, after updating to 10.3.8...

 

[incognito]

I had the same kind of slow down on my G5 after doing a normal upgrade to 10.3.8 - beachball hell!!! It was taking ages for the Finder to launch.

In desperation I downloaded and tried the 10.3.8 combined updater (huge download, about 100MB's) - seems to have fixed everything!

Hope this helps.

 

[Littleodie914]

I had the same kind of slow down on my G5 after doing a normal upgrade to 10.3.8 - beachball hell!!! It was taking ages for the Finder to launch.

In desperation I downloaded and tried the 10.3.8 combined updater (huge download, about 100MB's) - seems to have fixed everything!

Hope this helps.

Nice to know someone's found a solution (we hope.)

I installed the 10.3.8 update a few hours after it came out on my iBook G4, and it works just fine. It was also the combo update, acquired through Software Update. Give it a shot, we'll keep our fingers crossed for ya,

 

[Floyd WHO]

revitalized

I noticed the same conditions after the update, "Photoshop elements" took about 3 minutes to load and Canvas was just about as slow. Repaired Permissions and everything is running about normal now

 

[musicpyrite]

Try entering these commands into the Terminal. Don't know how useful they 'll be, but they won't hurt.

sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

sudo diskutil repairPermissions /

(the last command is just repairing permissions, only using the Terminal instead of Disk Utility)

Then reboot.

 

[trainguy77]

i have done this already, but it seams to be better now that i have done the combo update. This seams to fix it.

 

[TDM21]

I had to do a similar thing when 10.3.6 was released. I had updated my system through Software Update. After words I had slowdowns and programs would crash before the completely loaded. After I got 2 kernel panics I decided to reinstall with the combo update. Once that was complete I repaired disk permissions and haven't had a kernel panic since.

 

[Hoef]

Sorry for the n00b question but where do yo get the "combo" updates?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Try entering these commands into the Terminal. Don't know how useful they 'll be, but they won't hurt.
(code)

Do you know if there is a way (e.g. in a log) to see when periodicals was run last...?

(A loooooong time ago (over a year ago) I remember installing a third party app that ran cron jobs at the next available time, if the machine was off when they should've run, like the periodicals that typically runs at night, when my iBook sleeps or is off. And I don't remember the apps name, or if it logged its activity... )

 

[jMc]

I updated on Friday, and logged in this morning to find that the remaining 5GB of space on my OSX partition had somehow vanished. I tracked down the problem to some sort of overflow in the log files in .private/var (Repair Permissions looked mightily similar to those posted by Mitthrawnuruodo). You guys might want to check out your HD space and also your log files since the update.

FWIW I deleted the log files, which freed up about 4GB of space and so far the problem has not returned.

jx

 

[whocares]

Do you know if there is a way (e.g. in a log) to see when periodicals was run last...?

(A loooooong time ago (over a year ago) I remember installing a third party app that ran cron jobs at the next available time, if the machine was off when they should've run, like the periodicals that typically runs at night, when my iBook sleeps or is off. And I don't remember the apps name, or if it logged its activity... )

Run a search for anachron on versiontracker.com.

If your comp is not on 24/7 (this insludes not going to sleep), some chron jobs may not be run frequently (if the job is scheduled for when uour comp is typically off/asleep). Anachron should fix this and run chron jobs if they are 'overdue'.

[Edit:] Just read the end of your post; guess you already knew what it did

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I updated on Friday, and logged in this morning to find that the remaining 5GB of space on my OSX partition had somehow vanished. I tracked down the problem to some sort of overflow in the log files in .private/var (Repair Permissions looked mightily similar to those posted by Mitthrawnuruodo). You guys might want to check out your HD space and also your log files since the update.

FWIW I deleted the log files, which freed up about 4GB of space and so far the problem has not returned.

jx

My /private/var/log folder is only 4.5MB (the whole /private/var ~137MB), not much to save there, and probably no (big) problems, etiher. I have some HD space left, 8.3 GB free of 55.88 GB total...

 

[deebster]

Other apps (I know of) that change the times the cron scripts are run are Cronnix and Macaroni, the latter being a prefernce pane visible within the System Preferences apps.

You can get the 10.3.8 combo updater from Apple's site here

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxupdate1038combo.html

 

[Soulstorm]

Other apps (I know of) that change the times the cron scripts are run are Cronnix and Macaroni, the latter being a prefernce pane visible within the System Preferences apps.

You can get the 10.3.8 combo updater from Apple's site here

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxupdate1038combo.html

Guys, I am also experiencing random kernel panics! What are those kernel panics anyway? In the error that is shown after each crash it shows "KERN_INVALID_ACCESS" and some other stuff... Are these kernel panics?

When I download the combo updater, need I reinstall my entire system in order to restore normal functions? Please help...

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Kernel panics are severe errors deep in the Mac OS X operating system, often assosiated with (caused by) hardware errors.

You may try a system restore or even a clean install, but the first ting I would do was to get all my data of the machine as soon as possible... (One way is to try if the Mac works in FireWire Target mode - hold 'T' down during startup - and connect it to another Mac and copy/burn the contents of your home folder and other data you cannot restore from CDs). Chances are everything will be repaired with a system restore, but if it's a hardware error you may loose all your data, and it's better to be safe than sorry...

 

[spiderlegs]

That lag in log in time is eaxctly what I'm experiencing. It's been a month since this thread was active, have any of you had any recurrences of the problems you were having. I'm leaning toward re-installing 10.3.8 with the combo update since it looks like it helped a few of you.

 

[trainguy77]

It has been fine ever since. I would go for it.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Guys, I am also experiencing random kernel panics! What are those kernel panics anyway? In the error that is shown after each crash it shows "KERN_INVALID_ACCESS" and some other stuff... Are these kernel panics?

When I download the combo updater, need I reinstall my entire system in order to restore normal functions? Please help...

I get KERN_INVALID_ACCESS errors from QuickTime Player when it decides to crash on me. This particular error isn't a kernel panic - it's merely an application crash. The kernel (and all your other running applications) are unaffected, as the dialog box says.