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Something that will clean properly – or I’m starting again

Oct 19, 2009 | 8 comments

Inspired (and frustrated) by last night’s battle with the application that would not die, I’ve been going through and cleaning up my Macbook. I’m prepared to do a complete fresh reinstall of the operating system if it comes down to it – but if I can avoid it, I will.

There’s something I’m looking for. Logic dictates that it MUST exist. It’s an application that will go through your hard drive and completely remove all traces of files that were associated with software that you have uninstalled.

Let me be clear: I’m not looking for something that will do a clean uninstall of programmes I have on my machine and would like to remove. I’ve had one of those for a while now.

What I’m looking for is something that will deal with files left behind by programmes I deleted long ago. Any ideas?

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

Oct 19, 2009 | 4 comments

System Monitor

I had a problem on my laptop. Something called AddressBookSync was going crazy – sucking up almost all of my system resources. I don’t really know what it was, which piece of software it was connected to (though I have my suspicions) or even how I eventually managed to get rid of it – but the difference to my Macbook now that I’m rid of it is astonishing.

I only really noticed the problem over the last few days. The computer’s been getting more and more sluggish over time which, when it happens gradually, you’re only marginally aware of. But recently, the fan has been going nonstop, programmes were taking minutes to load, and it had started to do that thing where you type, go make a cup of tea, and return to see your words emerge, one character at a time, on the screen.

I went for the Activity Monitor and immediately identified the process to blame, quit it, and things calmed down. Three minutes later, it was back – and it was angry. I killed it again, but like the last 15 minutes of Terminator – just when you think it’s dead, up it pops again like an unstoppable, all-devouring technozombie.

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