Mac Pro running slow

[Alfy]

Hi All,

A Mac/OSX newbie here! Would like to ask for advice on what could be causing a slowdown in performance on a Mac Pro machine. The basic machine specs are as follows: Mac Pro Xenon quad core 2.9ghz, 8gb ram, 1tb drive(half full), OSX snow leopard. The machine seems to respond very slowly while doing minor tasks. For example, when using the Finder, the columns of data refresh noticeably slower than I'm accustomed to seeing. When burning a video file to a DVD using Titanium Toast, the encoding portion of the process progresses very slowly.

Additionally, when I tried the bring up the Activity Monitor it is nowhere to be found in the Utilities folder.

I have backed up the system in preparation to try an in place OS restore, thinking that somehow that I have caused an issue with the OS since the activity monitor app is "missing".

Would it be beneficial to add more RAM? Any other things to look at or try? This machine is a few years old but I think it should still provide very good performance.

Thanks in advance,
Mark

 

[iamwhoiamtoday]

I'd highly recommend reimaging the machine first.
Blowing out the system and making sure that there isn't any dust in the fans would also help.

Depending on your budget, tossing more memory into the system could certainly help.
4GB DDR2-FB dimms and 4GB DDR3 ECC dimms are pretty cheap right now on Ebay. If you have the slots, fill 'em up.