lw slowing down my mac
 

whenever im running lw it causes everything else to run really slow, even if im not downloading or searching just the program is opened
can anyone suggest how i can speed this up

Hi ..Please can you tell us which mac and OSX you have .. the processor speed, the memory and the free space on your start-up disc.

Are you new to Limewire and have just installed 4.10.9, or have you been running an older version for a tim?

i have ibook g4 mac os10.3.9 processor 1.33 ghz 256 mb memory
about 25gig disk space
i have been using lw for a while but it has always been like this
i am using lw 4.10.0 pro
thanks

Your set up seems fine apart from the memory. I am using 320 mb on a G3 Powermac with a much slower processor, but I am always being advised I need more memory. I would advise uprading the memory to 320 AT LEAST, 512 would be better. I'm not sure if this will improve things but I think it is well worth trying.


Does your mac slow down immediately you switch LW on , or after some length of time?

It would be worth watching your Activity Monitor (in applications>utilities) to see what resourses are being used with Limewire running

Problem with 4.10.9 and Memory
 

I too have this slow down. I have a powerbook G4 1.33 with 768 MB RAM running OS X 10.3.9. As soon as I run limewire, the whole system grinds to a halt. Nearly locks up my machine. On a hunch I ran top in the terminal. Take a look at the ram limewire is trying to grab!!! Something wrong here. Please patch.

yes it slows down as soon as i run lw ive been told about the memory as well but i cant afford it atm

This much ram is not right
 

Sorry, you must have missunderstood. Limewire is taking too much ram. Far too much. Must be a bug. The team needs to see this and fix. Maybe I'll re post a nother thread.

Do the limewire programmers look at this?

Actually 200 odd MB of ram for LW in OSX is not too bad. Some earlier versions were much worse.

I think you're confusing ram with virtual memory (VM). Yes there is an issue with VM which is related to OSX's Java. If you had Tiger you could update to Java 1.5 but unfortunately Mac doesn't offer later Java versions to earlier OSX versions. Java on OSX is less than efficient & Java 1.4.2 does have problems. The programmers are well aware of OSX's java & VM issue & have been aware of it for a long time.

So what can you do about it? Easiest thing is when the VM gets too high, close LW & re-open & VM will go back to the initial level. (When you close a program VM used always disappears.)

Other things, keep your shares below 2,000. Make sure your incomplete list doesn't get too large. Tip: Purge the Downloads Queue! Both too many incompletes (especially) & too many shares add greatly to VM!!!

Set your uploads & downlds for autoclear. Close off search tabs that are hours old. I tend to clear them if theirs more than about 6 or 8 of them. Keep LW in the dock or hidden when you're not actively using it (ie: not searching.)

Don't use the Resume/Find Souces function on all your files simultaneously or else this will use up a lot of resources & add greatly to VM.

Anyway, just some tips on helping to reduce VM growth. Particularly less incompletes makes a huge difference.

Makes me sad
 

Ok, but I've done all of those setting changes already. I've used older versions of LW and it has been a good program. Now it is unusable. It is not acceptable that a simple p2p needs more ram that an image manipulator like Photoshop. Also, it is the immediate need for VM that is grinding my machine to a halt. It must swap in and out of my HD constantly as soon as it opens.

Again this was not a problem before. Same Java and OS. Something has changed with the new version. If they are not addressing it, I'm sad I purchased the product and will no longer recommend it.

I was having same problems as you with the new version. Then I created a new account, totally afresh. No incompletes, & a reasonable no. of shares & there was no VM issue. Try it yourself. It was only on one occasion when I accidentally pushed shares up to 10,000 the VM got a little high but not as severe as in the normal account. (I added an external drive but forgot I usually only share selected folders from that drive ... iTunes library.)

On some people's systems this issue is worse than others. So it's more of a particular system issue believe it or not. As suggested, when I opened a new fresh account & used LW there, then there were no problems.

I'll try
 

I only have 17 shared files and I was trying to download two. However, I'll try it again. What do you mean new account. Do you mean a new user in OS X?

Jon

I have the same problem. I can only get my connection to fair or good. For a couple of seconds it may be at turbo charged level. I can download two files at once. My mac is less than a month old and it runs like an apple II e when limewire is open. LW keeps going all the way down to "starting conneciton". I am sorry that I purchased this, it has been so great in the past.

You can set up a new user account in OSX anytime. You can also delete user accounts very easily on condition you're the admin of the computer.

System prefs > System > Accounts & press the lock icon & enter your password. Then press the + & you can add another user account. Then re-login into the new virgin user account. This account won't have the complications of previous user account preferences, etc.

edunc22 did you configure your OSX firewall if you have it active & did you enable UPnP on your modem/router? Instructions here Connection problems? Check here first! (click on link) For you it might also be worth deleting your LW preferences folder whilst LW is closed; it's found here /Users/your_username/Library/Preferences/LimeWire
It will mean resetting your options next time you open LW, but it may just give your LW a fresh start. Also it's best to delete your LW prefs after updating to pro. Also check the tips given in my previous posts above.

Yes, I know how to make user accounts
 

Thanks. I am aware of how to make user accounts. However, I wasn't sure this is what you were instructing me to do. Although mac's fast user switching is fun to watch, I still would not go through the hastle of switching in and out of my account just for limewire. I won't bore you with the customization details of my current account, but they are difficult to setup and time consuming to reproduce. Since I've heard quite a few complaints from other users I am somewhat confident that Limewire will attempt to fix this ram sucking trend.

I'm not sure if you saw this thread

http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=53209

and the links within it

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301380

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918

perhaps they will give a bit of help .. please let us know

Poss solution
 

There's a thread doing the rounds which suggests OsX users should not use the Brushed Aluminium skin for LW 4.10 if they are experiencing system-wide go-slows when LW is open.
I had the very same problem - everything grinding to a halt the instant I opened LW. Changed the skin, problem solved.
My connection is still a disaster, but at least my system is no longer affected.

I cut down my shared files from 2k to 45 (was searching for specific vids, so I shared the ones I had to make sure I didn't dupe the files).

I no longer lose ALL my memory and I do NOT experience a slow down.

I do not enjoy sharing only a few files, but I will until LW fixes their memory issues.

The greatest help for me was always reset my modem. I have noticed two major issues with speed problems:.

1) The first one occures about 2 minutes after I start up LW. I have a system monitoring program and it shows about 2 minutes into running LW, it starts to read the hard drive with 7-8 MB and this of course instantly kills download speed. Have you also noticed that when you first start LW it runs fast, then it speeds drop all the way down, then they start to climb back up again? When I first start it up, for the first two minutes I get 40-50 kbps speed per files even just from 2-3 hosts. Then when the read happens, all downloads go down to 0, then they never recover to more than 10-15 kb/s even from 10+ hosts. If, however I unplug my modem at this point and restart it about 10-15 seconds later, download speeds go back up to high again.

2) Even after modem resets the speed will drop down gradually, this could take about an hour or sometimes even more. At this point, once again, I unplug my modem, then plug it back, the network speed is all reset.

Now, LW does not just affect itself with the slow downs. It affects the entire network, because when LW runs slow, everything else (e-mail, browsers ... etc.) begins to struggle as well. Even when I only download 2-3 files at 10-15 kb/s, everything else is slow. However, after I reset my modem and downloads are back up to 30-50 kb/s, my internet will works fast again. Plus after LW slows down and I quit it, my network speed comes back in a few seconds.

I also tried using another downloading program for testing, downloaded files for about 1/2 hour and it never slowed down, neither did my internet connection ever experienced any drop in speed. My network monitor indicated a full bandwidth use all along.

I still believe there is a glitch in LW somewhere, for no other program causes this slow down.

* My system: G4 dual 533Mhz, 1 Gig RAM, OS 10.3.9, DSL 1.2 Mb/s, LW 4.10.9.

OSX Java is very much to blame here. It's not as efficient as the other Java's. Mac do their own implementations of Java which is the pity. I noticed improvements after upgrading to Tiger & updating Java to 1.5. But that was on my system. Other people didn't notice such a big improvement. But still 1.5 has problems but not quite as bad as 1.4.x

Reducing shares but more importantly keeping incomplete files to a small number makes a major difference to how LW behaves. Having over 2,000 shares is risky on OSX with this issue.

The LW vm problem has been around for a couple of years. See http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?t=29871 for charts.

The LW devs and open source folks (like jum and rogerk) are aware and have tried to duplicate and narrow it.

I checked it again yesterday, and the vMem climbed up over 1.2 GB and turned my G4 iBook sluggish using java 1.4.2 and the SVN LW version.

However, I was surprised to see that switching to the betaPro4.11.0 and using java 1.5 (OS 10.4.6 allows setting which java to use in Utilities/Java), the vMem has remained below 1 GB after more than 18 hrs running as an UP.

So, if others can switch to java 1.5, see if that helps

LimeWire 21.80 %cpu 31threads 188.57 MB RAM 741.56 MB Virtual Memory

Stief, and Lord of the Rings, thanks for pointing these out. I never even looked at my VM, now I can see LW does take quite a chunk. Mine is at around 620 MB, still Safari passes it with over 700 MB. My CPU usage for LW fluctuates from high 30%s to low 70%s.

Still by far the best improvment for me is the modem reset. This morning when I started LW my two downloads were at 8-10 (from 10+ hosts) and 0-3 kb/s (from 1 host), after modem reset 55-70+ (10+ hosts) and 7-10 kb/s (1 host) respectively, even after 1/2 hour of running.

(Not to mention that my internet has skyrocketed as well).

Oh, by the way I have a Cisco 678 DSL modem.

--------------
LOL, just a few minutes later I am actually getting high 80s to low 90s now with that one file. That's almost 10 times as fast as it was this morning before I reset my modem :).

Hi Blade Blade
This resetting of the modem is fairly interesting. Does it have throttle controls, or logging turned on? http://www.qwest.com/dsl/customerser...8serverif.html shows a number of firmware upgrades are possible.

It might be interesting to find out what version of Firmware your modem is running, and see if others have the same problem.