Mac Mini slow after 10.4.8?

Question

HI,
I've had a Mac Mini since June 2005, and have performed regular maintenance (running cron scripts, repairing permissions, repairing hard disk etc) I also use Yasu once in a while. However in the recent past, especially after the 10.4.8 update, it has become slow as a snail? Has anyone else had a similar experience? If yes were you able to resolve it?
I have a PowerPC G4 1.42 GHz Mac Mini with 1 GB RAM
Thanks and regards,
Mahesh.

Answer 1

If we take as a starting point the fact that there are no massive numbers of threads all reporting 10.4.8 has slowed Macs down, it would be reasonable to conclude that in itself, the 10.4.8 update (or indeed, 10.4.8 itself) is not the culprit. Certainly I have upgraded a number of Macs, including my own G4 minis, to 10.4.8 and neither have slowed at all. In fact it would be hard to identify any performance changes at all since the update, and even the old G4 is still running exactly as before.
I think one needs to be a little cautious with 'regular' maintenance tasks, because unlike you, I haven't ever run any on my systems and I've seen countless occasions when people perform maintenance on their Mac systems without any cause or reason. That's not to say that doing so causes problems, just that every time the user takes control of the system out of the hands of MacOS, is an opportunity to do something MacOS doesn't like.
I'd go with the previous poster's suggestion to download and install the combo update, bearing in mind that the restart afterwards will take some considerable time. When the system is back up and running, do nothing else other than to repair permissions.
If the system still runs slowly after that, you have a problem with something that is affecting MacOS, and it would help if you could post as much detail on what symptoms you see - ie, whether the application icons bounces for a prolonged period in the dock when you try and run something, or whether the system seems to pause and wait for periods of time. To help determine what's going on, download and install a copy of MenuMeters (from www.versiontracker.com) and switch all the meters on. When the system is running, you'll then see a running indication of what the system is busy with. Posting that will also help us work out what's needed.
lastly, like all utilities, YASU changes over time to match the various MacOS versions, so make sure it's the latest copy you have. Earlier versions could make errors with things like prebinding which could slow the system disproportionately.