Entourage freezes during strange disk access

J

jay

I am increasingly having a problem where, for no apparent reason,
Entourage hangs up on my Powerbook while I hear a ton of hard drive
access, as if it was saving or sorting or reading the disk. Everything
works fine after it stops, but this situation occurs, now, multple
times per day and for a good minute or so each time. It also impacts my
ability to use other applications, since it kind of dominates my CPU.

I have a lot of old emails, and also sort mail into folders to keep
them organized. Is there a magic point where Entourage suddenly can't
handle the volume of old email and starts having to constantly
rearrange the files, or something? I have gone and deleted many very
old emails, but I use the computer for my consulting work, and many of
the old emails are important for archival purposes.
 
M

matt neuburg

jay said:
I am increasingly having a problem where, for no apparent reason,
Entourage hangs up on my Powerbook while I hear a ton of hard drive
access, as if it was saving or sorting or reading the disk. Everything
works fine after it stops, but this situation occurs, now, multple
times per day and for a good minute or so each time. It also impacts my
ability to use other applications, since it kind of dominates my CPU.
Click to expand...

This doesn't sound like an Entourage problem directly. I would check the
following two things:

(1) Are you running Tiger? If so, tell Spotlight to keep its mits off
the Microsoft User Data folder and its contents.

(2) Are you running out of hard disk space, perhaps because don't have
enough RAM and you are generating a lot of swapfiles? My MemoryStick
freeware app can help alert you to that kind of situation.

m.
 
B

Barry Wainwright

I am increasingly having a problem where, for no apparent reason,
Entourage hangs up on my Powerbook while I hear a ton of hard drive
access, as if it was saving or sorting or reading the disk. Everything
works fine after it stops, but this situation occurs, now, multple
times per day and for a good minute or so each time. It also impacts my
ability to use other applications, since it kind of dominates my CPU.

I have a lot of old emails, and also sort mail into folders to keep
them organized. Is there a magic point where Entourage suddenly can't
handle the volume of old email and starts having to constantly
rearrange the files, or something? I have gone and deleted many very
old emails, but I use the computer for my consulting work, and many of
the old emails are important for archival purposes.
Click to expand...

The only consistent repetitive disk access you should be getting is the
database engine carrying out a consistency check, but this is barely more
than a 'tick' every couple of seconds.

The other possibility is that you are seeing a lot of swap file access
because the system is running low on useable memory. How much RAM do you
have? Is the problem reduced when you restart the system and only start up
entourage?
 
J

Juliemaya

I am experiencing the same issue as Jay and have ever since upgrading
to Tiger a few weeks ago. I have 2GB of SDRAM and about 7GB of
available hard drive space. With the maximum amount of memory possible
in my PowerBook G4, I don't think it is a memory issue on my system. I
do have a lot of email stored in folders on the system, also important
for archival purposes for my work.

This problem is really driving me nuts; it locks up Entourage all the
time, mainly when I am drafting email. The lock up takes so long, that
I just quit trying to type and go to a different application until I
hear the hard drive stop spinning. It doesn't matter if Entourage is
the only application running or if I have three Adobe apps running
along side it, the performance issues are still the same.

Any advice or fixes are much appreciated! I've looked for additional
information, but haven't come up with any solution.

Thanks!

Julie
 
J

Juliemaya

This fix - posted elsewhere on the board - seems to have worked for me.
Good luck!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joe Selvaggi blames it on Spotlight and has a suggestion:

I am experiencing the spinning ball problem in Entourage since
upgrading to
Tiger. There a corresponding sound (like frantic memory/ disk swapping
activity) coming from my PowerBook. Apparently it's Spotlight trying to
index the Entourage Mail DB. Tell Spotlight to ignore the Microsoft
User Data folder (Users > Documents > Microsoft User Data). Should do
the trick, or at least it appears to work.
 
J

jaysonrjones

welcome to the world of Microsoft. I migrated off the PC to a G
owerbook over a year ago. My mac has not operated as well since
installed a Microsaoft aplication on it. Ye it will freeze and continu
to freeze eating every resource it can. It appears to happen when th
syncing with the server. I would imagine it is sucking up ever
resource (RAM) it can to prevent interuption. I have sent probably 5
emails to MS complaining. Even more perplexing, you cannot perform
simple print execution from calendars or contacts.

So, I just bought a Dell laptop nd converted back because of the pai
and agony I faced everyday for so long....

I AM A BEATEN MAN...
 
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