My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Hi, since yesterday my N900 turned to very slow and the screen is not as sensitive as before.
Plus, when I try to open a new program, the screen is getting stumble for a second.
I didn't update anything for more than two weeks and didn't install any new software.
Is that possible it got virus? How can I do with this situation?:confused:
Thank you very much.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Open terminal, run top, post screenshot / report results.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

the phone is not vulnerable to viruses firstly and secondly did you try a restart that should clear anything buggy in your memory hopefully.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

A virus is highly unlikely. Leaky apps/applets or low free space on rootfs is what I would check out first. Will check out first, mine hasn't been snappy lately. Something I have on mine makes it slow down over night. I had trouble getting it to respond to the snooze button this morning, and yesterday it stuttered at playing most sounds.

Edit: obviously, a reboot helped.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

It's more or less impossible for it to be a virus.

You haven't given many clues.

How long have you had it? How do you use it?

You can "reflash" everything and get it back to how it was when new.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

I'd echo the guys above advising to restart if you haven't already done so.

I had the same sort of problem yesterday, everything suddenly went to a crawl. Nothing was responding except the power/lock button.. I had half opened windows ghostly appearing all over the handset from icons i tried to select. I ended up having to restart it twice, first time it restarted and was just as slow but after the second restart it was back to normal. I have no idea what caused the problem, but it occurred just after I selected my internet access point so I guess something related to that.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Thanks. but I don't get it. what does open terminal mean?

For this phone, I just have about a month more. Normally just listen some music and video. Browse some websites like forbes, youtube, Nothing else.
by the way, I put a lot swf file on it and use the flash player. would that be the cause?

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Its possible there is a flash process still running in background chewing up the cpu

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

This is an open terminal. http://mg.pov.lt/n900-xterm-toolbar.png

You can get it open by pressing Ctrl + shift + X.

To run top, type "top" in there. It will list what uses the most CPU on your phone right that second and until you exit. The second to last column says what percentage of CPU time each process use, the last column is the process. Look at it for a few seconds to see what is on top.

Then you can exit "top" by pressing ctrl + c, and the terminal by pressing the usual X or typing "exit".

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

OH MAN, I have restarted once yesterday but it doesn't work. I even changed the battery. But just now, I restarted it again. Exactly like what you said, all the problems are gone. BACK TO NORMAL.

Thanks guys.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpmLrz_lSuE

Gives me Windows ME vibes... Reboot twice for maximal effect.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Thank you very much for your help.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Yay! Hip-hip-hooray!

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

What is the safe way to clear rootfs besides restarting because when i typed top in terminal it says 15132k free and i was told, that could be bad. i just want to make sure i shut off whatever is taking up space. do widgets take up alot of root? even small ones? what about shortcutd or custom operator? do they effect it too o_O? was curious.

-MASTER

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

To have so little rootfs free, it sounds like you have a lot of apps from -devel installed, or maybe just a ton of cached stuff lying around!

Check out this guide:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

I used those steps (I didn't move microb-engine though) and I have over 58MB free, with a ton of apps installed, including a few from -devel.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

The Wiki has a good section on clearing out rootfs.

My favorite, because it's easy, is disabling the catalogs in app mgr. You can disable all of them if you want, and just open ones you want to use, but then you won't get update notices. So you should just disable ALMOST all of them.

You want around 20mb of rootfs, though you can use up more than that.

All of the suggestions in the Wiki work fine for me. There's not much point in getting more rootfs free space than you need, so don't get obsessive.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Mmm. One of the script files linked to in the Wiki (i think) didn't work so well for me - probably because I had followed other tips before from one of the rootfs threads here. My browser stopped working, and before I could fix it, I managed to break it worse. So I ended up having to do that dual flash thingie.

Saying this because you specified "safe". Safe is, remove applications, disable repositories and be very picky about what you want to move out of rootfs. In /usr/lib you'll find that locale and the browser are the biggest bulks, but as I said, don't rush it.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Thanks guys. BTW i have installed quite a few apps and i cant even remember which ones where from devel (noob alert) and i think some of them went to extra testing or are now in maemo extras. Does that matter, or do i have to reinstall those apps =/?

-MASTER

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

You shouldn't have to reinstall them.

HOWEVER, I got the feeling at one point that all was not right with my N900, and I backed up everything and reflashed and also reflashed my eMMC, using Linux. You might want to consider doing that just as a precaution at some point -- I had a feeling that some program had messed something up and I just wanted to feel pure. After I did that, I noticed an improvement. (I restored the programs from backup, of course.)

I have used lots and lots of extras testing and extras devel programs, so maybe that's why I feel the need to purify my system periodically. I have had mighty few problems, and that might be one reason.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Please don't confuse rootfs space with any number reported by top. top reports about application memory (RAM) while rootfs space is like harddisk space, just that the N900 doesn't have a harddisk but flash memory built-in.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Oh ok thanks well in top it moved up to 20k instead of 15 somehow but thanks for clearing that up. i believe my root is closer to 40 now but i have to recheck. i also uninstalled some apps that i really didnt use and follow the instructions on the wiki. Definitely helpful and thank you for the links.

It seems the phone is a little better/faster. I am kind of thinking of doing the OC thing but i am waiting until it becomes a lot easier to do that with just one or two clicks lol. Thanks again.

BTW i tried to update the brightness applet through extras devel now and it says it is missing packages?? i only have devel enabled and not testing. is that why?? im about to check but if it isnt that, does that mean i have to uninstall it and reinstall it??

-MASTER

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Don't worry about it, it's built for PR1.2. You just won't be able to update it until PR1.2 comes out.

Re: My N900 suddenly turned to very slow, stumble.
 

Oh thank you. for a sec i thought i had messed up an app or two. Great help guys.

-MASTER