cardinal Posted August 28, 2006 Share Posted August 28, 2006 My Hackintosh developed a strange problem today. I'm not sure what caused it. When switching apps, CPU usage spikes to 100% for about a second in the app I just switched to, and the app and it's menu don't respond for about a second. For example, as I'm typing this, if I right-click on desktop, it will take a second for menu to pop up. If I rightclick on a dock icon, menu will pop up instantly, but, as I move mouse over menu items, they won't start to highlight for about a second. If I click on date in menu, a menu drops down instantly, but it takes a second before I can click on anything in it (and during that time, SystemUIServer spikes to 100%). Interestingly, if I click on close or minimize button of a background app, the action is carried on instantly. But if I switch to that app first, the close or minimize buttons become unavailable for a second on that window. Something like this would be typical of a thrashing system, but I have 2 gig of ram and there is no disk activity. I've tried disabling all non-essential kexts and quitting all apps, including all hidden background apps that can be killed (ie, Palm Pilot HotSync, etc), but nothing seems to help. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_muad_dib Posted August 28, 2006 Share Posted August 28, 2006 ohh i thought it was only a Windows issue eheh QE & CI are enabled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardinal Posted August 28, 2006 Author Share Posted August 28, 2006 ohh i thought it was only a Windows issue eheh QE & CI are enabled? Yes, and everything works just fine (except the usual Hackintosh issues, like no waking up from sleep, no sound in, etc). I have a feeling it is somehow related to menus, but I can't pinpoint it. Nothing appears in system.log. If it is not related to kexts, or running programs, what could it be? A broken framework of some kind? I guess I could try to make a simple app in Xtools and check in debugger what exactly the app is spending time doing during the switch that is taking a second of CPU time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pp15 Posted August 28, 2006 Share Posted August 28, 2006 I also have the same problem, who can give help?? By the way, what is QE & CI? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korrupted Posted August 28, 2006 Share Posted August 28, 2006 Disable a core since you're using PD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardinal Posted August 28, 2006 Author Share Posted August 28, 2006 Disable a core since you're using PD. Could you elaborate on this? I heard of some "stuttering" problems with Athlons, but I thought Pentium Ds are working just fine with dual core. Also, I just became aware of this yesterday, after months of using this computer... I'm sure the problem was not occuring before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Careless Posted August 28, 2006 Share Posted August 28, 2006 Could you elaborate on this? I heard of some "stuttering" problems with Athlons, but I thought Pentium Ds are working just fine with dual core. Also, I just became aware of this yesterday, after months of using this computer... I'm sure the problem was not occuring before. on boot prompt, try typeing fn=3 or idlehalt=0 idlehalt=0 helped with my AMD stuttering, but it seems to only work with a certain core designation, mine's is a Toledo Core. It probably wouldn't work the same with a NewCastle or Venice core, for example. check it out, it might help. Disabling a core worked for me too, but my computer took a 30% performance hit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardinal Posted August 29, 2006 Author Share Posted August 29, 2006 It would seem that dual core was not the problem. I fixed it by clearing all caches on a hunch with OnyX and rebooting. Now application switching takes no extra CPU time and everything is responding instantly. I'm fairly certain that this is what made the difference, as I had rebooted a number of times already hoping the problem would go away. This fixed it. I don't know enough about OS X, but whatever these caches are for, it sounds a lot like Windows Registry. I don't mean in terms of purpose, but in terms of obscure problems that are very hard to diagnose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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