This article will help you to diagnose common problems such as lack of maintenance, permissions conflicts and Hard Drive glitches that cause your Mac to run slowly.
There are two main routes to take to make your Mac as lean and mean as it was when you bought it (or even more so!)—hardware upgrades and software maintenance. One of the easiest things to do is to purchase additional RAM. As a rule, I say you can never have too much RAM. If you don't have at least 2GB of RAM, you should immediately upgrade. In addition to RAM, you should consider getting a faster/larger hard drive, or video card. If your Mac is more than four years old, however, you might want to consider purchasing a new one, especially if you're running newer applications or the latest OS X operating system.
The following are essential utilities for keeping your Mac running smoothly (Click the links to go to their download sites):
Anacron (not needed if you have 10.5 'Leopard' or later)
OnyX is another free utility for running regular maintenance, although you must manually run this program's routines once a week or month (depending on your computer usage). One good thing about this utility, though, is that you can perform all the maintenance routines you'd need with one click in the Automation tab; after you do this, restart your Mac and see if everything's better.
Macaroni costs less than $10, but allows you to run all the necessary maintenance tasks automatically; it's kind of like combining both Anacron and OnyX, but Macaroni is easier to configure and use than both, and will make sure all the important maintenance tasks are run when the should be.
Monolingual is a free utility that allows you to delete unused 'localization' files—files that allow your Mac to operate in many different languages; if you only live in one country and speak one language, you can free up a lot of hard drive space (sometimes more than 1 GB!) by deleting languages you don't use. Macaroni also performs this task.
Disk Utility comes installed on Mac OS 10.3 or later, and allows you to verify your hard disk or repair permissions by clicking on your hard drive and then clicking on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button.
Every Mac user should make sure he runs three basic maintenance tasks:
'Cron' scripts: Mac OS X is a UNIX operating system, and there are 'cron' scripts that clean up messy log files, optimize certain parts of the system, and accounts for user activity. There are three tasks - one that should be run daily, one weekly and one monthly. Anacron, OnyX, and Macaroni perform this task, but with newer Macs running 10.5 'Leopard' or later, this is no longer necessary to be run manually—your Mac takes care of it.
Optimize Prebindings: Every time you install an application in Mac OS X, the installer will finish the installation by 'optimizing your system;' this is a fancy name for optimizing prebindings. Doing so will speed up application start times and keep things running smoothly. Macaroni does this.
Repair Permissions: Because Mac OS X allows multiple user accounts, and because OS X has UNIX underpinnings, file 'permissions' can become messed up sometimes, especially if you have many different users on your computer, and they use the same programs. Sometimes, really weird things can happen as a result of your permissions being messed up, and this can also slow down your computer. OnyX, Macaroni and Disk Utility perform this task.
One last thing you can do that will not necessarily speed up your Mac, but will free up a considerable amount of hard drive space, is to erase the thousands of foreign language files that are installed with every application and utility on your computer. Sometimes, this can free up more than a gigabyte of hard drive space! Use Monolingual to do this.
Ways to Keep Your Mac Running Fast
In addition to using the above programs, you should keep in mind a few important things while using your computer to check email, install programs, browse the Internet or chat:
Never open any attachments on emails that either you don't know who they're from or you don't already know what is in the attachment. Some malicious software can even make an email look like it was sent to you from a friend or relative! Better to be safe than sorry.
When installing new software, ALWAYS watch the installer and make sure you know what's being installed. Some programs will ask you if they can install additional software. This additional software is often unnecessary and can cause problems on your computer.
Don't use Internet Explorer (on Mac or PC). It is not being updated or supported for the Mac anymore. Use Safari, Chrome, or FireFox instead; these browsers are faster, offer more advanced features, and are more secure than Internet Explorer. (Plus, Safari is just darn cooler!).
If you chat, don't click on links sent to you by friends unless you are absolutely sure your friend intended to send you the link!
Upgrade your computer's RAM (Click on the Apple Logo (top right of the screen) and choose "About This Mac" to see how much you currently have). The more RAM you have, the less your computer will have to access the hard drive to run programs (especially if you run more than one program at a time!). This might actually be the best thing you can do to speed up an old Mac.
Make sure you have about 10-20% of your hard drive empty. Mac OS X automatically defragments most of your hard drive files, but it needs some free space so it can do this; plus, your computer will swap files with your RAM and hard drive to make certain programs run faster, so you need some free space for that. If your drive is almost full, you should consider getting a new drive; larger, faster drives can be very inexpensive when on sale at retailers such as Best Buy, Micro Center, Fry's and others.
Keep your computer clean; if you have never opened your desktop computer and cleaned the dust from the inside, you should do so—you might be surprised at how much dust you find! You can use a Shop Vac and soft brush (keep static away, though!) or a can of compressed air (a few bucks at a computer store) to get rid of all the dust bunnies. Dust can cause a LOT of problems with a computer! Read more tips for cleaning iMacs, flat screen LCDs, iPods, and other Macs.
This article will help you to diagnose common problems, such as Spyware, Adware, Viruses, RAM and Hard Drive problems, that cause your Windows PC to run slowly.
Over the course of time, everything becomes dirty and needs some cleaning. Computers are no different; many different programs do many different things on your computer, and 'dirt' can result. It's a good idea to clean up your computer from time to time, and it's usually not very hard to do! Be sure to read through this whole article to find advice for keeping your PC running smoothly far into the future.
Now, in addition to fixing your computer's software, you can take additional steps, such as upgrading your hardware, to make your computer faster. One of the easiest things to do is to purchase additional RAM. As a rule, I say you can never have too much RAM. If you don't have at least 1 GB of RAM, you should immediately upgrade. In addition to RAM, you should consider getting a faster/larger hard drive, video card, or CPU. If your computer is more than three years old, however, you might want to consider purchasing a new one.
The following are essential utilities for keeping your Windows PC running smoothly. (Click the links to go to their download sites):
AdAware and Spybot are two programs to help you detect and remove "spyware" and "adware" from your computer (click here to find out what spyware is). It is a good idea to download the latest versions of these two programs, then, before you scan your system the first time, use the built-in 'web update' feature to get the latest scanning definition files.
Startup Control Panel is a good utility for seeing all the programs, system tray items, and extensions that load when your computer starts up. Instead of rooting through your computer's registry and possibly messing things up, you can turn on and off most of the essential startup items using this utility.
Norton Antivirus, McAfee VirusScan and other Virus detection and removal programs are very important for every PC user to have. If you simply go on the Internet, chat or check your email, you are at risk for viruses (yes, even the most scrupulous of users!). I don't recommend free scanners such as AVG Lite because they do not do as good a job at preventing virus attacks. It's a good idea to pay for a subscription to get virus definition updates as often as possible using Norton or McAfee products.
Microsoft Windows Update is built into your computer, but can be accessed by the above link, as well. It is important to try to keep your computer as up-to-date as possible, because more viruses, hacks and vulnerabilities are found every week. Sometimes updating can be quite a pain, and patches can cause problems, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Just make sure you have your important files backed up before you do large updates!
If you have all of the above programs, it is a good idea to run each of them (excluding the Startup Control Panel) at least once a month, if not every week or even daily. Most of these products are able to actively scan and protect your computer, and you should let them do so. You can change these settings in each program's 'preferences' or 'settings.'
Ways to Keep Your Computer Running Fast
In addition to using the above programs, you should keep in mind a few important things while using your computer to check email, install programs, browse the Internet or chat:
Never open any attachments on emails that either you don't know who they're from or you don't already know what is in the attachment. Some malicious software can even make an email look like it was sent to you from a friend or relative! Better to be safe than sorry.
When installing new software, ALWAYS watch the installer and make sure you know what's being installed. Some programs will ask you if they can install additional software. This additional software is often unnecessary and can cause problems on your computer.
Don't use Internet Explorer unless you absolutely HAVE to. Internet Explorer is full of vulnerabilities and bugs. Plus, alternative browsers such as FireFox are faster, offer more advanced features, and are more secure than Internet Explorer.
If you chat, don't click on links sent to you by friends unless you are absolutely sure your friend intended to send you the link!
If you see a window pop up while you're browsing the Internet, or if you close your web browser window and you see a window that looks like an error message, warning, or otherwise legitimate window, beware—it could be a link to spyware. If you see the link cursor instead of your mouse button when you move your mouse over the 'cancel' or 'X' button, DON'T click! Instead, you may have to force-close the window by pressing 'Control-Alt-Del' and quitting it via the Task Manager.
Don't download 'free' software unless you really need it and/or it doesn't seem 'too good to be true'. Many 'free' programs, such as the WeatherBug, the MySearch bar, and many file-sharing programs (such as BearShare, Kazaa, and LimeWire) can make your computer run slow and also send information from your computer to marketing companies (including personal information!).
Upgrade your computer's RAM (Right-click on 'My Computer' and select Properties to see how much you currently have). The more RAM you have, the less your computer will have to access the hard drive to run programs (especially if you run more than one program at a time!).
Make sure you have about 10-20% of your hard drive empty. If your hard drive is almost full, you should consider getting a new drive; larger, faster drives can be very inexpensive when on sale at retailers such as Best Buy, NewEgg, Micro Center, Fry's and others.
Keep your computer clean; if you have never opened your desktop computer and cleaned the dust from the inside, you should do so—you might be surprised at how much dust you find! You can use a Shop Vac and soft brush (keep static away, though!) or a can of compressed air (a few bucks at a computer store) to get rid of all the dust bunnies. Dust can cause a LOT of problems with a computer!
Reinstall Windows. In some cases, if you can't get your computer running its best via the methods outlined above, it's best to backup all your documents, music, videos, etc., format your hard drive, and reinstall everything from the CDs that came with your computer. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, you might want to turn your computer in for this service (but it will cost a bit).
This article will help you to convert HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies to QuickTime compatible files so you can watch them in high definition in iTunes, Front Row, or QuickTime Player. The guide will also help you to be able to convert the videos into other formats so you can preserve the surround sound and the highest picture quality.
Converting the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray
1. Copy FEATURE_1.EVO and FEATURE_2.EVO to hard drive by decrypting them using AnyDVD, DVDFab HD Decrypter, or some other decrypter. Some DVDs use different naming schemes, but the files you need are the two largest 'EVO' files.
NOTE: I have only been able to work on HD-DVDs, so Some of the steps here don't work (or only partially work) with Blu-Ray, but I hope you can find some inspiration for getting your blu-ray files to work with Quicktime, if you so desire. Google can help you find how to get the blu-ray files ready for demuxing/conversion. Soon I will get myself an external Blu-Ray drive and start tinkering around with Blu-Ray movies... but for now I'm happy simply working on HD-DVD.
NOTE 2: I simply used the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, as I found one cheap locally (through Craigslist), and it works via USB 2.0. It's also quite compact! If you do so with Windows XP, you'll need to load a driver to enable support for the UDF 2.5 file format HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs use.
2. Mux (Actually, 'demux') the EVO files into an .mkv (1080p) video track and AC3 audio track using eac3to (first you'll need to run eac3to with just the 1.EVO+2.EVO to see which tracks the audio/video are on).
(This will show you which tracks are which; usually, you'll use track 2 (for the 1080p video track), and track 4 (for the E-AC3 or TrueHD English surround audio track); also, some DVDs use a different name than "FEATURE_X").
This process will take between 10-30 minutes if you have a newer dual-core Intel Mac. Note that I converted the surround track to AC3—I do this to save space. If you want the utmost quality in the surround, you can convert the audio file to .flac, which preserves the quality, but produces a much larger file. To do this, just replace .ac3 with .flac.
Note: If you use EVOdemux for this step instead of eac3to, then make sure your .evo files follow the "feature_1.evo" "feature_2.evo" naming scheme, or EVOdemux will become confused!
3. Convert the 1080p .mkv to a 720p .mp4 stream using MeGUI and AviSynth (three steps)
3b. Open MeGUI and create an AviSynth script by clicking Tools>AviSynth script creator.
-Set Video Input to your 1080p .mkv file
-Resize it to the size you want (in my case, for smooth playback on even older Macs, 1280x720, which is 720p)
-Crop it using Auto Crop if you so desire (I do)
-Click Save and save it as "Filename.avs"
3c. Convert the video to an H.264 stream.
-For the "Video profile," choose "PD-AppleTV," then click on "Config"
-In the Config window, set the Bitrate to 2200 (Leave it on Automated 2pass for best quality/speed ratio) and click okay.*
-Click "Enqueue" in the Video encoding section of the MeGUI window
-Click on the Queue tab
-Click Start to start the render
This part will likely take between 4-12 hours if you have a fast dual-core Intel Mac... so don't plan on doing a ton of things on the Mac during this time. I leave my Mac to do this overnight, because I typically sleep during that time! Also, you might want to do this part on a new PC, or using Boot Camp, as multi-core processor support is lacking in Parallels as of 9/2008, causing a significant slowdown during this stage of the conversion.
*If you want to compress the file at 1080p, or if you want the best HD quality, especially for newer movies, choose a much higher bitrate, maybe in the 5000-10000 range...
5. Re-mux the files together into a 720p .mkv file.
I use a program called "mkvmerge GUI" to re-mux the files (it's part of the "mkvtoolnix" package). Just drag the files (.mkv and .ac3 or .flac) into the Source pane and type in a new name for the final .mkv file, then start muxing. You can also use the muxer built into MeGUI if you'd like.
6. Open the file in QuickTime (requires Perian to be installed).
Warning! Once you open the file, wait until the playback bar at the bottom (to the right of 00:00:00) fills up, or else playback will be choppy—Perian takes a while to load the whole video in memory.
7. (OPTIONAL) Convert the File to a QuickTime movie for faster opening.
You can make the file open much quicker by simply following the directions in step 6, then choosing File>Export... in QuickTime with the following settings:
• Export: Movie to MPEG-4
• Click Options... and set the following:
⁃ (in the Video tab) Video Format: Pass through
⁃ (in the Audio tab) Data Rate: 192 kbps (for great quality stereo)
Note that if you do this, you will remove the 5.1 surround track from the file... but the advantage is that your file will open a heck of a lot faster in Quicktime!
Notes on PLAYBACK of HD Video Files
After doing a ton of research on playing back HD video files on a Mac in various formats, I have found that the most diverse and stable application for viewing .mkv and other videos (especially of sizes larger than 720p, up to 1080p) with minimal effort is Plex, which is based on the XBMC (Xbox Media Center) program. It will play VC-1 encoded videos, WMV, x264, MP4, etc., and way smoother than Quicktime. Perian is helpful in getting Quicktime Player to play specific formats, but is sometimes buggy. VLC and MPlayer OS X are both pretty good media players, but not all formats are supported, and I've found them both to be buggy apps at times.
Concluding Notes
Steps 1-5 require a Windows PC. I used Parallels running Windows XP on my Mac, and allotted 1.5 GB of RAM to the virtual machine. It would likely take less time if I had a quad-core PC sitting next to me, but I don't.
As of May 2008, I can't get Perian to pass through the AC3 surround signal, and supposedly this is a problem with Quicktime.
This method allows you to enjoy the videos in Front Row and iTunes (as well as other QuickTime-compatible applications) as well.
If you'd like to add metadata and a cover image to your video (especially for use in iTunes, so you can browse by cover), you can use a program such as MetaX.
Google is your friend - if you can't figure out how to do something, try Googling your questions - Doom9's forums are also very helpful!
If you have any questions, or an addition that may be helpful to this guide, please send me an email!
Life is a Prayer is the culmination of about ten years of work on more than eight different websites. Originally, I (Jeff Geerling) had the idea of making a simple page where I could put pictures up of family members to share with them, and post my resumé. This was back in the days of Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Claris Home Page.
Over the years, I started working on some more profitable ventures, including some websites for private small and large businesses, and my own mini web-domain had begun to grow. After I joined Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in 2004, I had less and less time to manage my websites, so it was a long-term goal to consolidate my work on the web.
With the power of the semantic web, CSS, XHTML, PHP and related technologies, I have been able to merge all my web development prowess into a single domain, and I'm able to control the look, style and content of my site with ease unheard of in my early days of web development (ca. 1996).
The website was converted to use the Drupal Content Management System in 2009 after many years of being a plain-vanilla HTML website. The site uses many modules for extensibility and image/content organization and management, and runs on a server at Hot Drupal.
About the Author
I am a computing and media consultant, living in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, Missouri. I have been working on many different websites over the past few years (including Kenrick-Glennon Seminary's website and Life is a Prayer.com), and decided to begin a blog in my first year of studies (in 2004) at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary which I still maintain today. In 2009, I started Midwestern Mac, LLC, a company dedicated to web design, Mac support, photography, and graphic design. I also set up the LOLSaints.com site and podcast, as well as Open Source Catholic, a site for Catholics sharing their web and technology solutions.
I currently work full-time with the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, increasing the Church's ability to communicate using new methods of social interaction and new technologies both online and in the 'real world.'
As of February 2010, I am engaged to a beautiful woman, Natalie, whom I intend to marry this coming October. You can read about our 'engaging' story, and you will be able to read about my experiences on the road to marriage (and beyond) on my blog.
I love discussing faith, politics, religion, technology and philosophy on my blog and with others, and I try to glorify God in all my activities. I am involved in many different Pro-Life activities, and try to help save the lives of those who are most neglected in American society—the unborn, the elderly and the handicapped.
I have used both Macs and Windows PCs extensively, but am staunchly in favor of using the Mac as my main platform. I've only had one or two small problems with any of the Macs I've owned, and I can count on one hand the number of times the Mac I'm currently using has locked up in the past three years (without ever reinstalling the system!).
One of my other passions, photography, has grown from an enjoyable hobby to a passion in the past few years. I currently shoot with a Nikon D90 (main body) and D40 (backup body) SLR, and have used many different Point and Shoot cameras (and a film SLR) before. You'll notice there's a whole 'Pictures' section on this site—with few exceptions, I shot all the pictures in that section, and if you'd ever like to use one for something or another, please ask (I also have a bunch of photos on Flickr). I have learned a lot at Strobist, and I suggest you visit the Strobist site and forums if you wish to improve your photography by learning how to light.
I pray daily for an increase in vocations to the priesthood, and remember fondly the five years I spent in formation for the Catholic priesthood. I ask that you pray for all seminarians and priests, as well as for those discerning a vocation to the religious life or to married life.
I am a computing and media consultant, living in the 
