Time Machine Causing Open Apps to Choke?

Question

Have been using Time Machine for over a year with minimal problems. More recently, however, I'm noticing that often my open applications aren't responding and sometimes must force-quit them ... almost always Time Machine is doing its thing when this occurs.
If I see that TM is active, I sometimes will use the pulldown menu to stop the process. Even if it says, for example, "Backing up 260K of 8.6Mb" it takes at least 5 go 6 minutes for the backup process to cease. There have been times when I've walked away from the computer and returned 20 minutes later to see that it's still "stopping back up."
Also having more diffulty with accessing anything on my wireless network (mail, internet, printer) when TM is engaged in its backup.
All of this makes me wonder if I'm seeing corrupt files or faulty hardware ....
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Katie \'OConnell wrote:
NOW it seems to think I want it to do automatic hourly backups again.
It's like the creature that won't die in a horror movie. What's up with this thing?
You may have to do a "full reset", per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
p.s. I took it off auto backups simply to see if it improved my system's performance. So far, YES!
You shouldn't have to do that.  Hourly backups shouldn't behave that way.  It sounds like something else is wrong.
Have you ever used a 3rd-party app, or followed instructions to manually edit some "plists," to alter TM's default behavior?  That might explain some of this.
If not, a clue may be lurking in your logs.  Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs.  Locate one of the backups in question, then copy and post all the messages here.