How do I fix a Safari application that slows down and freezes everything?

Question

Apple called last fall and said my particular Mac had a hard disk problem and they replaced it at the Apple store in late January 2013.  I backed up the information on an external harddrive and used Time Machine before to transfer all the information to the new drive. Everything worked well and I finally put on Mountain Lion at 10.8.4.  I also have Carbonite as a backup and it apparently was not enabled when I transferred the files until early May.  In early May I had not used my iMac for about a month and when I started it I found about 40 named file folders on the Desktop that were empty.  Some of those had named items in them but when I clicked on them they would dissappear.  The actual files did exist and were not effected when I dumped the apparent alias folders. Safari started and would be ok at first but if I went away for an hour it would slow down.  I took it in to the Genius Bar at Apple and they ran some tests and got rid of MacKeeper which they felt was causing the problem.  I got my Mac back home and it still started slow but worked well at first and then started going slow.  If I opened Word it would also start working at a slower speed.  I needed to force quit Safari and the Word progran in order to quit or restart the Mac.  I got an appointment for the next day and they ran all sorts of tests and the hard drive was working normally. They tried tweeking different areas and sent me home again.  When I started working again it did the same thing, I would start out fine and eventually slow down and needed to be force quit to get out of it. A message came up indicating my MasOSX startup disk had no more space available for applications memory.  I took it in a third time and the Genius went to the Activity Monitor and the Safari PID was 221 and %CPU 107, Threads 21 Real Mem 2.73 GB, Virtual Mem 22.00 Kind, Intel (64).  I had no idea what that meant. I went home again and it still ran slow and couldn't run the programs for any length of time before it ran slow and affected the other programs so they would only quit if I used Force quit.  I took it in for the forth time an they decided to keep it overnight. They ran ASD first to rule out memory.  They noticed during the appointment the computer was slow to perform normal tasks such as showing boot options, booting into user, bootingto external user.  If the ASD passed then they would perform erase and install and only restore users and application files from backup drive.  They did this on Wed and Thur. night and I took it home Friday night, June 14 and it still has the same problem. Typing this message right now means typing and waiting for the words to appear.

Answer 1

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The following procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed. Don’t be alarmed by the complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out and won’t change anything on your Mac. 
These steps are to be taken while booted in “normal” mode, not in safe mode. If you’re now running in safe mode, reboot as usual before continuing. 
Below are instructions to enter some UNIX shell commands. The commands are harmless, but they must be entered exactly as given in order to work. If you have doubts about the safety of the procedure suggested here, search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects. 
Some of the commands will line-wrap or scroll in your browser, but each one is really just a single line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, and you can then copy it. The headings “Step 1” and so on are not part of the commands. 
Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. The other steps should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply. 
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways: 
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.) 
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens. 
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid. 
When you launch Terminal, a text window will open with a line already in it, ending either in a dollar sign (“$”) or a percent sign (“%”). If you get the percent sign, enter “sh” and press return. You should then get a new line ending in a dollar sign. 
Step 1 
Triple-click the line of text below to select it:
kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}' | open -f -a TextEdit 
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Then click anywhere in the Terminal window and paste (command-V). A TextEdit window will open. Post the contents of that window, if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. You can then close the TextEdit window. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that. No typing is involved in this step.
Step 2 
Repeat with this line:
{ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix)|org\.(amav|apac|cups|isc|ntp|postf|x)/{print $3}'; sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook; } | open -f -a TextEdit 
This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which you do have to type. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. Type it carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. Heed that warning, but don't post it. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. 
Note: If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before taking this step. If that’s not possible, skip to the next step. 
Step 3
launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}' | open -f -a TextEdit 
Step 4
ls -1A /e*/mach* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts 2> /dev/null | open -f -a TextEdit  
Important: If you formerly synchronized with a MobileMe account, your me.com email address may appear in the output of the above command. If so, anonymize it before posting. 
Step 5
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item' | open -f -a TextEdit 
Remember, steps 1-5 are all copy-and-paste — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output. 
You can then quit Terminal.