My Mac starts up funny (and slow)

My Mac OS10.3.9 has suddenly started acting strange (and slow) on startup. First a small square with a globe inside appears and flashes, then about 3 mins later it turns into a small Mac folder that also flashes. Eventually it starts up normally. How can I stop this and make it start up normally (and faster).
Thanks
Michael

Michael,
It sounds like your computer may need a reminder about where the system is located. Open System Preferences...Startup Disk: "Select the system you want to use to start your computer" Click on...Mac OS X, 10.3.9 on Macintosh HD.
;~)

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I just got a Mac started it up and had to update 2 apps ,they were pages and aperture. it said that update is unavailable with this Apple ID may be bought by a different user or item was refunded or cancelled I've have not done either. Please help

I just got a Mac started it up and had to update 2 apps they were pages and aperture it said that update i'm available with this Apple ID may be bought by a different user or item was refunded or cancelled I've have not done either. Please help

Try each of these in order until one works:
Open App Store and click on your Purchases tab. If you're prompted to accept them, then do so.
Put the old ones into the Trash, temporarily. Open App Store and see if you can download them for free from their individual product pages. If asked to buy them, see the next option.
Click here, contact Apple, and wait for a response.
You will have to purchase them using your Apple ID.

My i phone 4 screen suddenly starts showing funny and distorted images then goes blank. how do i get the screen back to normal.?

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Did you already try to reset the phone by holding the sleep and home button for about 10sec, until the Apple logo comes back again? You will not lose data, but a reset can cure some glitches.
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My browser takes minutes to open then when the tab is fully loaded it will start saying "Connecting" and slow down or freeze.

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hi all
i have a 2010 mbp 17" and it is playing up, start up takes anywhere from 30 - 240mins started activity monitor and nothing really showing up, tried to work on some photos in aperture and it was a nightmare quit several times and took me over two hours to import 235 photos then face detection just kept on running.
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@ jobethg
It's generally better to start your own Topic, rather than adding onto an existing one which has been inactive for 2 months.
Please start a new topic about your issue so it can receive more focused attention.
===========================
When posting in Apple Communties/Forums/Message Boards.......It would help us to know which MBP model you have, which OS & version you're using, how much RAM, etc. You can have this info displayed on the bottom of every post by completing your system profile and filling in the information asked for.
***This will help in providing you with the proper and/or correct solutions.***

Mac Freezing Up / Unresponsive and Slow

I've had my iMac for a little over a year now and it's been very reliable up until about the last month. Twice now during that time I will find that the system just freezes for seemingly no reason at all. When I say freeze, I mean that you click on an app, or some open window and the little spinning top comes up and stays that way permanently locking the system. In order to get back, I have to push the power button to turn the machine off and then back on to reboot. When it reboots, it takes over a minute (usually it took only 20 seconds) to get the working screen, then there is no menu bar whatsoever. The desktop icons are there, the dock shows up, but nothing is launchable.
The first time this happened, I went through all kinds of various diagnostics starting with renewing the dynamic ram, and using the disk utility to fix any problems (there were none). After a handful of other recommended things I found on the web I ended up reloading Snow Leopard from the install disk, then did the appropriate software updates. This seemed to cure the process....for about 3 weeks.
Now this has happened again, again, seemingly for no reason...i.e. no new apps no new system utilities, etc. I checked the disk, and other than some complaining permission issues (which I let it fix), there were no errors. So, again I reloaded the OS. Now, the system is bootable, but everything I click on brings up the spinning top for at least 10 seconds before anything works. For instance, clicking on Finder->File, results in the top spinning for 1- seconds and then I get the drop down window. Clicking an option there, like Opening a new Window, same thing happens. On examination, I have over a half GB of free memory out of 2GB present. The main processes are SIMBL Agent, mds, and kernel_task (which has 64 threads). In short, nothing seems to be "grabbing" the CPU.
Can anyone explain this, or suggest something I might try? Sorry for the long post, but I thought I'd put in everything I'd done so you can get the big picture
Thanks,
Korky

Kirk - OK I was thinking about doing that anyway. It takes an inordinate amount of VM.
Speaking of that... Is it normal to have 148.28 GB of Virtual Memory? That just seems ridiculous. That's basically half the rest of my remaining storage on my drive!

Mac mini server networking and DNS setup help

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this. I'm working at a small business where I'm the only guy with any IT experience at all, but I'm new to Macs and OS X (<1 year) and being a server admin so please bear with me.
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I guess my problem is, where else do I change the DNS hostname? Or do I have to change the DNS hostname back to corpserver.private (in Server Admin)? That way, I think at least everything will be consistent, but would I be able to still configure it somehow so that externally, we could access the server by the server.companyname.com URL?
Also, can the mini be a wireless router for the office? As mentioned before, we want to cut the existing wireless router out and use the mini instead (and use the Time Capsule as a wireless bridge).

So the ISP<->router connection can have a dynamic IP address, but the router<->server one should be static? I guess that means I have to set the IP address in the router. I hope I can get access to it. I don't suppose it matters which one I set first?
An IP router does not assign addresses.
A DHCP server does assign IP addresses upon receipt of a DHCP request from a client.
Some routers (and many firewall routers) do include a DHCP server.
A box with a static IP address does not need to send a DHCP request; it has a static address.
You'll need to ensure that the IP address pool within the DHCP server does not overlap the addresses that are manually assigned to your local hosts; the static IP addresses on your LAN.
[Here is an overview of the pieces involved here, and some of the typical terminology|http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/275].
I hate to belabour the point, but I just want to clarify: in my setup where ISP<->router<->server<->clients, where the server is the only machine connected to the router, which one should be the local DNS server? The server, right? So if the DNS server is turned on in the router, I should turn it off? Or do I need both (ie. router for its LAN (to server), and server for its LAN (to clients))?
So to confirm, the configuration includes (probably) a modem, a router (firewall) and a router (Mac), and then the rest of the (local) show? That is not the simplest configuration, and it's Particularly given that Mac boxes make expensive and slow routers.
The usual configuration is ISP>firewall>LAN and the LAN is usually built from WiFi, wired connections and switches. Within one subnet (which is typical) any host inside your firewall is connected on the LAN, and can communicate (directly) with any other LAN client. The firewall is configured as the gateway; that's the default route for outbound connections.
One more thing that's bugging me: I still don't understand why I couldn't connect to the internet when I plugged in the Ethernet cable from server to router. Even if I was using DHCP to get a dynamically allocated IP, shouldn't it still have worked? I'm worried that I'm going to set up everything as it should be but the connection still won't work.
That's likely because you're trying to use the Mac as a router, and that takes specific configuration steps. It's easier to have ISP>firewall>LAN, and have the Mac OS X Server box and the rest of the stuff as peers on your LAN. If you really want to use the Mac as an IP router, look around for setting up static routes on Mac; there are postings around for that.
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What is going on here? Why does it have problems doing the simplest things?
I have still not received a response from apple as to why this bug continues to go unfixed. It is extremely ANNOYING!!!!
I ALWAYS HAVE TO REBOOT IT BEFORE IT STARTS WORKING NORMALLY AGAIN... WHY?
Doing hardware tests does absolutely nothing to find anything wrong. Obviously there is something wrong when it doesn't respond for half a minute or more!
<Edited by Moderator>

These have been ongoing issues for quite some time. I suspect there are still some cache and/or memory management problems that have yet to be worked out. I recently had to put mine on an HDMI switch and it frequently becomes unresponsive and needs to be reset after I switch back to it from another device, so there are still some HDMI issues as well.
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Screen Sharing started acting funny with both iChat and Back-to-my-Mac

For some reason my Screen Sharing, whether via iChat or BTMM, started acting funny: I still connect, but now my cursor shows up about 1" to the right of where it's actually pointing (i.e., if I position the cursor on one icon on the large size Dock, and click, it will start the icon to its left); and when I move the cursor, sometimes it appears followed by a trailing stream of cursors; finally, if I can manage to move a window on the screen, it looks like only half or so of the window moves, and the rest of the window stays put.
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Ralph, you are awesome! Someone on the Remote Mac had done a <ctr>l plus <alt> plus "+" and zoomed up the screen once or twice. When I turned Zoom off in System Preferences Universal Access, things went back to being ok.
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Nick

HT6114 Slow start up on Mac Book Air second and fourth generations

Both of our Mac Book Air computers are slow at start-up. Average time to start-up is 41-65 sconds. Apple logo on screen with "circle" winding around... Any help our suggestions on how to reduce this start-up time would be appreciated.

If you go to System Preferences>Users & Groups>Login Items you will see a list of all of the applications that will start up when you turn on the machine. The only item i have in login items is 'itunes helper'. So for example, when i installed 'drop box' it was set by default to launch automatically when i turn on the computer. You can disable this in the app's settings or in 'Login items' window.

My mac book pro getting heated and starting up is very slow please me

MY config....please help me out
its heating too much

The temperatures that you iStat pro shows are not out of line for video and games. When internal temperature start approaching and exceeding 100c, then there becomes cause for concern. Never the less, run an Apple Hardware test:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1509
(you may have to press OPTION D keys to start it)
Regarding the slow boot time, start with these two user tip articles:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3521
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3353
Ciao.

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I haven't shut it down in over a month. I shut it down yesterday for over 12 hours yet upon starting up again the slowness persists. Removed Google chrome application the speed arose slightly any tips? I contacted a support member but unfortunately my warranty has run out, he suggested that may be a result of putting the mac into sleep constantly, and not shutting down and that there may be files i can clear to remedy the issue. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
Regards.

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.
There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily.
Reset the System Management Controller.
If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane.
Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any.
Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items.
Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk.
Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the problem.
Step 1
Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.
Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.
Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.
Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.
Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in and Writes out.)
Step 2
If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.

Is ther a way to speed up a Mac? Mine has gotten slower and slower over time. When memory comes close to full would that have an effect on performance? Is there a way to determine unused programs/software to remove and free space?

Is there a way to speed up a Mac (similar to de-fragging on a PC)? Mine has gotten slower and slower over time.
When memory/disc comes close to full would that have an effect on performance? How should I determine what programs/software to remove and free space?

Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                  The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                  The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                  The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                  Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.
Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later and should not be installed.
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive.
Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
See these Apple articles:
          Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
          OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
          OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
          About file quarantine in OS X
If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
Troubleshooting Applications
I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
Basic Backup
For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
    used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
    requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
    drive being backed up.
Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
Additional Hints
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
Pre-Mavericks
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Mavericks and later
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the View menu. Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

My Mac suddently started to run really slow a few days ago. I bought it 1.5 yrs ago. It runs on the OS 10.6.8. What to do?

My Mac suddently started to run really slow a few days ago. I bought it 1.5 yrs ago. It runs on the OS 10.6.8. What to do?

How large is your HD AND how much space do you have left? When was the last time you repaired permissions and restarted your computer? Boot up from your install DVD and run "Repair Disk" from the Utility menu. When done, restart back to your desktop, repair permissions and restart your computer.

My Mac starts up funny (and slow)

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