Safari 4.02 *desperately* slow. I can back-grade to what I had before?

Question

and I don't mean a little slow, but painfully, uselessly slow. it seems to want to keep on loading things to a page. perhaps things which aren't part of a page, but which are linked to it?
bottom line is that before, pages loaded in a second or two. now? i can go make coffee while pages load.
takes me right back to the early days of the intertoobs.
I have a G4 Mini with Tiger and what I had before worked fine. Can I backgrade or am I lookin' at nuke and pave just for this?
thanks!
r

Answer 1

(First, if yours is an Intel Mac, check that Safari is not running in Rosetta, which is enough to slow it to a crawl.)
Adding DNS codes to your Network Settings, should gives good results in terms of speed-up:
Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu. Click on TCP/IP and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' enter the following two numbers:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
(An explanation of why that is both safe and a good idea can be read here: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/opendsn-what-is-opendns-why-required-2/2587 /
Open DNS also provides an anti-phishing feature: http://www.opendns.com/solutions/homenetwork/anti-phishing/ )
Wikipedia also has an interesting article about Open DNS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS
Whilst in System Preferences/Network you should also turn off 'IPv6' in your preference pane, as otherwise you may not get the full speed benefit (the DNS resolver will default to making SRV queries). If you want to know what IPv6 is:
This is Apple's guidance on iPv6:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8708.html
Click on Apply Now and close the window.
Restart Safari, and repair permissions.
If that didn't do it, then try this as well:
Empty Safari's cache (from the Safari menu), then close Safari.
Go to Home/Library/Safari and delete the following files:
form values
download.plist
Then go to Home/Library/Preferences and delete
com.apple.Safari.plist
Repair permissions (in Disk Utility).
Start up Safari again, and things should have improved.
Less likely, but possible, is that the slowness is caused by a Trojan such as the one called 'DNSChanger' or 'OSZ.RSPlug', which can alter the DNS settings of your network connection. This particular Trojan can be inadvertently installed if you have come across certain Quicktime movies where got a window stating that you have to download and install a particular codec in order to see the video.
If you have agreed to that installation, your system can be infected and your DNS settings altered, which results in your system using the wrong DNS servers, which can slow web surfing to a crawl.
This can be fixed by downloading and running a freeware utility called DNSChanger Removal Tool which you can download from here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33696
Once you have run that utility you have to re-boot your Mac, then reset Safari, and re-enter your DNS settings in System Preferences/Network.