That can't be good
After three years of never rebuilding my
OS (even though I moved machine) and seriously heavy usage, my Mac has
started to slow down recently. Today was a clincher. See photo:
I was running an XP VM, a windows 2003
enterprise VM, Lotus Notes, Keynote, Word and 2 RDP sessions (then skype/tweetie/browser
etc). It barfed. Hard reboot sorted it (It hadn’t been rebooted in
2 weeks) and I had time machine running with my Seagate 500MB usb powered
drive "just in case". But I think when I get home I will
have to invest a day into a rebuild. Not a time machine restore (which
is easy), I mean a full installation rebuild. Regardless of operating
system.. that’s a pain in the ass. OS/applications/Data etc etc.
Another reason for this is the unstoppable
habit Macs have to just consume disk space. Space seems to disappear
every week and I have no idea where it goes. Even with Snow Leopard.
I will try to match the installation that I have now, and data as
best I can, just to see how much space was consumed by another universe.
And yes MS office for Mac.. I’m looking at you with your fortnightly
"updates".
Mac rebuild has been added to my todo
list when I get back to Ireland.
Michael Kobrowski Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 4:10 am
Hope for you it keeps working while you are traveling….
Karsten Lehmann Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 7:14 am
That picture looks like my 2 year old MacBook right before the NVidia chip crashed (bad series).
Paul Hudson Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:11 am
I have had the screen go wrong on several Macs. Sometimes reseting the PRAM fixes the screen problem
{ Link }
Hold
Command + Option + P + R
at start up
Michael de Haas Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:20 am
Paul, is it not possibly the old issue that infact it is the reformat that will do it and not necessarily the reinstall? I do not use a mac, but once a year I “spinrite” my win machines and the performance increase is noticeable (I always maintain my machines beyond any good sense replacement age), although the disk reliability of the last few years has improved. Personally, the pain of reinstalling all the tweeks is not worth it unless I have “validated” the effort after spinrite has worked on it overnight. The best time saver for my money, in this category.
PS: This is not meant to be a plug for the product, but any tool this useful is worth passing on the experience.
Pedro Quaresma Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:24 am
Wait… but… but… but… I thought Macs would “just work” ?! Why is a reinstall or rebuild needed?!
Paul Mooney Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:29 am
@5 Im not a fanboy. I like my Mac, but I’m realistic. And dont try the Linux card with me either… I have had to rebuild Linux distros before.
Ben Poole Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:50 am
I did my first ever format / clean install on my MBP the other week, and it wasn’t so bad, so don’t fret. I’ve had the same OS X account since 2001, and have migrated it through three machines / several OS X updates, so I wasn’t surprised when the MBP started to get a bit huffy.
Seems happy now!
Paul Mooney Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 9:56 am
@7 I know – will be easy enough. Just these things take time and there is ALWAYS software that I forget to install!
Alan Dalziel Said,
November 27, 2009 @ 3:06 pm
At least you didn’t drop your Mac under a bus . . .
{ Link }
Pedro Quaresma Said,
November 28, 2009 @ 9:30 am
@6 – Hehe, absolutely, Linux can be a pain as well. There is no perfect OS, but OSX is often praised for “just working”.
Now Amiga OS… that was amazing!