Performance of mac is slow what i have to do

performance of my mac is slow what i have to do

Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:
1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
    b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:
     Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the
     COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the
     computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager
     screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
4. Reinstall Yosemite: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.
5. Reinstall Yosemite from Scratch:
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
How to Clean Install OS X Yosemite
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.

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  • Mac running slow, what to do?

    My mac is running slow, what should I do to clean it up?

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
    For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior;  DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.
    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
    OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.  Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later and should not be installed.
    OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive.
    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
    See these Apple articles:
              Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
              OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              About file quarantine in OS X
    If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
    Troubleshooting Applications
    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
    If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar repairs install the freeware utility Applejack.  If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line.  Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
    Basic Backup
    For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
    1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
    2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
        used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
        requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
        drive being backed up.
    Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
      1. Carbon Copy Cloner
      2. Get Backup
      3. Deja Vu
      4. SuperDuper!
      5. Synk Pro
      6. Tri-Backup
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
    Additional Hints
    Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
    Pre-Mavericks
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Mavericks and later
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

  • Why is my Mac running slow? I have my Etresoft findings.

    Hardware Information:
              iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)
              iMac - model: iMac10,1
              1 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores
              4 GB RAM
    Video Information:
              ATI Radeon HD 4670 - VRAM: 256 MB
    System Software:
              OS X 10.9.2 (13C64) - Uptime: 0 days 1:0:45
    Disk Information:
              ST31000528ASQ disk0 : (1 TB)
                        EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
                        Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 999.35 GB (910.14 GB free)
                        Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
              OPTIARC DVD RW AD-5680H 
    USB Information:
              Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
              Apple Internal Memory Card Reader
              HP Officejet 6700
              Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
              Logitech USB Receiver
              Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub
                        Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
    FireWire Information:
    Thunderbolt Information:
    Kernel Extensions:
              com.silex.driver.sxuptp          (1.10.5 - SDK 10.6)
    Launch Daemons:
              [System] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist 3rd-Party support link
    User Launch Agents:
              [not loaded] com.apple.CSConfigDotMacCert-[...]@me.com-SharedServices.Agent.plist
              [not loaded] com.google.Chrome.framework.plist 3rd-Party support link
              [not loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist 3rd-Party support link
    User Login Items:
              Jawbone Updater
              Google Drive
              uTorrent
              Dropbox
              Android File Transfer Agent
              Caller ID
              Launch Nikon Message Center 2
              USB Control Center
              Google Chrome
              Launch Nikon Message Center 2
              ConnectService
    Internet Plug-ins:
              JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 14.8.0 - SDK 10.9 Outdated! Update
              FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 12.0.0.77 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link
              Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
              Flash Player: Version: 12.0.0.77 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link
              CouponPrinter-FireFox_v2: Version: Version 1.1.6 3rd-Party support link
              QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
              AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin101750: Version: AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin 1.0.17 - SDK 10.4 3rd-Party support link
              Unity Web Player: Version: UnityPlayer version 4.1.5f1 3rd-Party support link
              Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20125.0 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link
              iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0
    Audio Plug-ins:
              BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9
              AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9
              AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9
              iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9
    iTunes Plug-ins:
              Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9
    User Internet Plug-ins:
              BrowserPlus_2.9.8: Version: 2.9.8 3rd-Party support link
              Move-Media-Player: Version: npmnqmp 071706000001 3rd-Party support link
    3rd Party Preference Panes:
              BrowserPlus  3rd-Party support link
              Flash Player  3rd-Party support link
              Growl  3rd-Party support link
    Old Applications:
              /Applications/Nikon Software/ViewNX 2
                        ViewNX 2:          Version: 2.8.0 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
                        Nikon Transfer 2:          Version: 2.8.0 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
              SLLauncher:          Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
                        /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Silverlight/OutOfBrowser/SLLauncher.app
              UninstallCenter:          Version: 1.4.1 - SDK 10.4 3rd-Party support link
                        /Library/Application Support/Nikon/Uninstaller/UninstallCenter.app
              Nikon Message Center 2:          Version: 2.1.1 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
                        /Applications/Nikon Software/Nikon Message Center 2/Nikon Message Center 2.app
              RockMelt:          Version: 0.16.91.367 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
                        /Users/[redacted]/Downloads/RockMelt.app
              Picture Control Utility:          Version: 1.4.13 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
                        /Library/Application Support/Nikon/Picture Control Utility/Picture Control Utility.app
              Spotify:          Version: 0.8.4.107.g4fa0003f - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
              Amazon MP3 Downloader:          Version: INFO_PLIST_VERSION - SDK 10.4 3rd-Party support link
              HP Photo Creations:          Version: 1.0.0.11792 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
              RockMelt 2:          Version: 0.16.91.483 - SDK 10.5 3rd-Party support link
    Time Machine:
              Time Machine not configured!
    Top Processes by CPU:
                   4%          HP Scanner 3
                   3%          HP Device Monitor
                   2%          WindowServer
                   1%          EtreCheck
                   1%          mdworker
    Top Processes by Memory:
              139 MB          mds_stores
              135 MB          com.apple.IconServicesAgent
              127 MB          Google Chrome
              94 MB          Finder
              82 MB          WindowServer
    Virtual Memory Information:
              1.52 GB          Free RAM
              1.77 GB          Active RAM
              176 MB          Inactive RAM
              547 MB          Wired RAM
              599 MB          Page-ins
              0 B          Page-outs

    Hello & Welcome!
    FIrst,
    Completely uninstall ALL Google software per the instructions on Google's website. Currently, all Google apps, especially Google Chrome AND Drive are not playing well and are NOT 100% compatible/compliant with OS X Mavericks. Until Google releases an "official" fix or update for OS X Mavericks, completely uninstall all Google apps.
    If you do not like Apple's Safari Web browser, as an alternative, try using Mozilla FireFox. Mozilla constantly updates FireFox and just released a new update recently.
    You you have too many user startup/login items in your startup list. Having this many apps launching and running in the background can really cause a performance hit on your Mac.
    You REALLY NEED to examine which items you truly need have absolutely have launch and run at Mac startup and/or login.
    Add or remove automatic items
    Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Users & Groups.
    Select your user account, then click Login Items.
    Do one of the following:
    Click Add below the list on the right, select an app, document, folder, or disk, then click Add.If you don’t want an item’s windows to be visible after login, select Hide. (Hide does not apply to servers, which always appear in the Finder after login.)
    Select the name of the item you want to prevent from opening automatically, then click Delete below the list on the right.
    You need to update all of your third party software if there are OS X Mavericks updates that can be applied.
    You may need to, ACTUALLY, go to the third party developers' websites if there are no updates through the Mac App Store.
    Update all of your Web browser Internet plugins, extensions and add-ons as needed,also.
    Also, if you have any connected, third party devices, like non-Apple keyboards, mice, drawing tablets, hubs, card  readers, etc, you need to go to each device maker's website and update the drivers for these devices to OS X Mavericks compatible versions, if available and applicable.
    Good Luck!

  • Mac running slow, don't have much stored, how do I make faster?

    I transfer files to my external hardrive every week to keep my macbook hardrive fullof space so how can I cleanup sorta say, my macbook to make it run faster. For instance, windows allows you to choose the disk cleanup option. Anything like that for mac?

    Is your machine running more slowly now than it did when brand new?
    If so, how much more slowly, and in what way(s) are you noticing slowness?
    ~Lyssa

  • TS1702 when i open itunes,appstore,safari and apps immediately closes and the ipod it gets too slow. what i have to do so this wont happen again?

    Someone help me

    Try:
    - Reset the iPod. Nothing will be lost
    Reset iPod touch: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
    least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
    - Reset all settings
    Go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings.
    All your preferences and settings are reset. Information (such as contacts and calendars) and media (such as songs and videos) aren’t affected.
    - Restore from backup
    - Restore to factory settings/new iPod.

  • My macbook internet download speed is extremely slow. I have tried other computers both windows and mac on the same line and speeds are normal. What is the problem?

    My macbook internet download speed is extremely slow. I have tried 2 other computers, another mac and windows and the download speed is over 10mb but with this macbook pro it is less than 1mb. What is causing this and how to fix?

    To find out how much space you have & what is left, open up Disk Utility/Machintosh HD/First Aid.  The info will be at the bottom of the window.
    Sluggish Finder - Bunch of icons on your desktop?  An overcrowded desktop slows down your Mac.
    Get rid of needless Finder calculations - Open a window in Finder/View/Show View Options:  ensure "Calculate All Sizes" option is unchecked.
    Internet related - It's likely that your broadband connection is the bottleneck.  You can check your speed on http://www.speedtest.net to see how fast your connection is.  If your web browser specifically performs slowly, quit and relaunch it.
       If browser remains sluggish, empty its cache.
    Safari/Empty Cache
    Firefox/Preferences - select the Network tab of the Advanced preferences and click the "Clear Now" button in the "Offline Storage" area.
    Application related - Launch "Activity Monitor" - Applications/Utilities - click the CPU heading and see what float to the top.  If an application takes up a large chunk of CPU and won't let it go, it could be dragging down your Mac's performance.  Quit it by clicking the Quit Process button at the top of the Activity Monitor window.
    Too little ram - max out your ram.
    Solution may be found if you search in the "More Like This" section over in the right column.

  • Hi there i have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a MAcbook i want to upgrade as some programmes are slow what do i upgrade to?, hi there i have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a MAcbook i want to upgrade as some programmes are slow what do i upgrade to?

    hi there i have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a MAcbook i want to upgrade as some programmes are slow what do i upgrade to?

    same here, annieeee.  bought a Late 08 running Leopard...i ordered Snow Leopard from Apple store for $20, and installed last night. now it updates apps like iTunes and runs my Office 365

  • I have a mac pro that is running slow. what can be done?

    I have a mac pro that is running slow. what can be done?

    Read the last two replies in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/message/24218682#24218682
    Reply here, not there.

  • My Mac is exceptionally slow, what can I do?

    Ok, heres the story. The day after christmas 2012, December 26 2012, I upgraded my Macbook Pro from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. I originally got the mac in 2010. The upgrade went by fine but after I noticed that the mac was slower than before, it would still function but there would be mild freezes every now and then. I was hoping that this was just the system possibly adjusting to the new software. The slowed performance never went away.
    About a three weeks after I upgraded I got a new iphone 4 from att and it was mailed to me by att. When I recieved the iphone 4 I pluged it into my mac and transfered the info from my previous iphone 3gs to the iphone 4, then I put my music on it. I put all my songs in a playlist and then transfered them all onto the iphone at once. I left the mac and iphone sit since it was going to take a while. When I went back to look at the status of the music the mac was froozen and I was unable to get it out of it, I could move the mouse but it was the spinning wheel and I couldn't click on anything or quit or force quit anything. So I manually shut down my mac and started it back up.
    From this point on the performance on my mac has been disasterous. With the Mountain Lion still on my mac it took over 20 minutes to start up from restart whether in safe mode, regular boot up, or resetting the NVRAM. Previously if I ever did have to restart my mac it would be able to start up within 5 minutes. Once the mac was running again, around every 5 minutes, almost routinely, the mac would freeze and come out of it after 2-3 minutes. Previously it would never freeze, unless I was running three movies at the same time or something like that. I could almost do nothing on my mac since it was always freezing. When I was finally able to start itunes thing would freeze almost immediately and freeze again almost every 3 minutes, even with everything else quit out of. I could not play any songs off of itunes and it seemed like every minimal task I tried to preform in itunes would severely freeze the mac, it would freeze for anything from opening the itunes store to pluging in the iphone to trying to play a single song. I would have to manually shut down the computer and go through the long reboot process again. After three days of researching what might be wrong (mostly through my iphone since the mac was froozen or taking two minutes to open a single page) I decided to erase everything on my mac and downgrade back to Snow Leopard.
    After fully upgrading Snow Leopard, it ran better but it would still freeze often and be hard to operate. The freezes went from every 5 minutes to about every 30-45 minutes. Every now and then I would get lucky and it would take over an hour to freeze, but eventually it would still freeze. Things would get disasterous again when I ran itunes (again). Running itunes 11, the performance went back down to how it was with mountain lion without running itunes. Itunes would be better at running task but it would always freeze randomly every 1-3 minutes, again with everything else quit out of.
    I downgraded itunes 11 to itunes 10.7 and things have gotten better, the routine freezings have stopped and now the mac only freezes when itunes is running, but it still severely freezes. I still can't put music on my iphone and the mac overall is still very slow, it took over 4 minutes to finally get to this page (exluding the signing in process).
    Can someone please tell me what is wrong with my Macbook? I am currently running Snow Leopard again with itunes 10.7. I am about a week away from completely erasing my iphone and mac and trying to reboot everything again. If that does not work I am going to go get a cheap PC. I just want to be able to listen to music while I'm surfing online again and put my songs on my iphone!

    domh2010 wrote:
    All of that did absolutely nothing. Actually it made things worse.
    If you tried every possible solution in the all those links baltwo provided, there is nothing more anyone here can suggest other than waving a wand over the computer or you throwing salt over both shoulders. 
    Take the computer to an Apple store or an AASP.  Whichever is more convenient for you.  Let the geniuses there figure it out.  Diagnostic testing is free. 

  • Lion is very slow. I have problem to make copy of a file. How can I make a check  to see what is wrong?

    Lion is very slow. The big problem now is when I need to make a copy of a file in an external HD. A file about 7 Gigas can take 4 hours!!!
    Using Aperture I try to save a library in an external HD (another) with function "export project as a library" an takes hours for something around 1 giga.
    Since I have Lion I can not use Time Machine. I have a Western Digital 2 Teras in raid 1. 1 tera for copy and 1 tera as an image. It's been impossible. I had to format the HD and when I try to start using Time machine my 600 gigas of data becomes in 7 days!!. 7 days !! for a backup. An usually after several hours (sometimes 20hrs,  sometimes 1 day and a half) the process stoped abrudtly... and that's it. star again.
    How can I check or perform a exploration to see what is happening?
    thanks in advance
    RyJ     

    Is a Western Digital Studio Edition II 2T (in RAID 1 mirror). The HD has 2 drives 1T each an put one mirroring the second one.
    HD is connected to Mac through Firewire 800.

  • Mac book pro is running very slow what can i do to speed it up?

    mac book pro is running very slow what can i do to speed it up?

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
    For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior;  DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.
    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
    OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.  Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later and should not be installed.
    OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive.
    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
    See these Apple articles:
              Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
              OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              About file quarantine in OS X
    If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
    Troubleshooting Applications
    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
    If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar repairs install the freeware utility Applejack.  If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line.  Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
    Basic Backup
    For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
    1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
    2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
        used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
        requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
        drive being backed up.
    Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
      1. Carbon Copy Cloner
      2. Get Backup
      3. Deja Vu
      4. SuperDuper!
      5. Synk Pro
      6. Tri-Backup
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
    Additional Hints
    Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
    Pre-Mavericks
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Mavericks and later
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

  • My mac book pro is running really slow what should I do?

    My mac book pro is running really slow what should I do?

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
    For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior;  DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.
    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
    OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.  Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later and should not be installed.
    OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive.
    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
    See these Apple articles:
              Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
              OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              About file quarantine in OS X
    If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
    Troubleshooting Applications
    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
    If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar repairs install the freeware utility Applejack.  If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line.  Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
    Basic Backup
    For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
    1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
    2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
        used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
        requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
        drive being backed up.
    Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
      1. Carbon Copy Cloner
      2. Get Backup
      3. Deja Vu
      4. SuperDuper!
      5. Synk Pro
      6. Tri-Backup
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
    Additional Hints
    Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
    Pre-Mavericks
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Mavericks and later
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

  • Mac OS slow performance after bootcamp installation

    So, I've been searching around here and on other forums, but I haven't found a solution yet to this problem and wanted to see if others knew of it. The problem is that the performance on Mac OS seems to have degraded when I have bootcamp (with WIndows 7, 64bit) installed. I've gone through uninstalling and reinstalling bootcamp a couple of times now and the result always seems to be the same, Mac OS is much slower... although I should note that the Windows side of things seem unaffected, and I'd say that (gasp) WIndows is running more smoothly that the Mac OS on m machine. Pretty **** annoying.
    Some symptoms:
    - Slow boot time AFTER I log in. The loading of the desktop and apps seems to take forever, when prior to bootcamp they'd all pop-up in maybe 10 seconds max. Note: this is not the general boot-time from OFF to the login screen... that's fine.
    - Loading applications (safari, terminal, etc) all seem to take forever to load. For instance, safari may take 30-60 seconds to load and show my home page. Before bootcamp, this would take a few seconds.
    - Once in Safari, the load time from page to page seems slow and jerky. Say I load engadget.com, or something equally image/content heavy, it seems like the whole page has to load before I can even start to scroll. Even then, scroll seems 'jerky' and not so smooth. Again, before bootcamp, this wasn't a problem.
    I've gone through a bunch of stuff to try and fix this, but nothing so far has helped. Here's what I've done so far:
    - repaired permissions
    - used disk utility to verify/repair any problems (it didn't find any problems, btw)
    - reset PRAM
    - rebuilt spotlight index
    - disabled spotlight indexing of the BOOTCAMP by placing a file called '.metadataneverindex' in the root directory on that partition. This interestingly helped speed up the the post-login boot-time, but application loading and browser performance is still pretty bad.
    Anyone else have these issues and figured out what's going on? An IT guy at my job told me to stay away from bootcamp 'because 'it'll slow down your machine', so I don't think this is an isolated occurrence.
    From what I've read all over the place, I shouldn't be taking a performance hit on the Mac OS side of things for installing bootcamp. Any thoughts tips you could provide would be helpful.
    *I might use Parallels or some other VM down the line, but I don't want to run Windows 7 solely in a VM. Yes, I HAVE tried installing Parallels with Windows 7 and it didn't slow anything down, but due to the nature of my work, I want to be able to boot to Windows directly without having any overhead. (this is small percentage of what I'd be doing with the Mac, but enough that I wanna get this bootcamp install working)

    Sorry, Macbook Pro 13" 2.4 Ghz... pretty much a stock 13" new MBP. I'm running bootcamp 3.0.2.
    I should also note that I was having this issue last week and decided to reinstall everything and start from scratch just to see if that helped. It's a new-ish Mac, so clearing everything out wasn't that big of a deal... other than taking the time to do it. I didn't use a time machine backup as I wanted to reset everything.
    So, I think I've figured this out after fiddling with the user accounts per your suggestion. I had set up my Mac so that my general-use account was 'standard' with a separate admin account for installing stuff.(more secure) This was different from what I had setup last week where I had one account that was setup as the admin. (less secure)
    I added a new user, 'test' as a standard account. I restarted into 'test' and still had an issue. I quick-switched over to my admin account for something and immediately noticed that everything speed up. Hmmm...
    I changed my regular account back to admin and that restored the performance on my mac to its pre-bootcamp state. (happy!) I'll need to play around with this more, but it seems that the two things I did to fix this were:
    1) Add the file to the bootcamp partition to exclude it from spotlight
    2) Login as an admin account
    I haven't had a chance to see if setting my account back to a standard account will in fact cause the performance to drop. I also then need to test with removing that file from BOOTCAMP to exclude it from spotlight. Right now, I think I have more correlation than causation, but at least it IS working well again.
    I'll update later today. Hopefully I'm not going to have to leave my main account as the admin.
    *ALSO, I tested out configuring Mac OSX to immediately unmount the bootcamp partition at login, and that did help with performance, but kind of made using Parallels a PITA as I had to then go and manually mount that partition when I wanted to get into Windows through parallels. It worked, but it was a janky work-around. I have since dropped that configuration and now just let BOOTCAMP mount.

  • My mac has become very slow - what are my options?

    my imac has become very slow - what are my options to evaluate why? and solutions to get my speed back?
    thanks in advance

    This is what Apple has to say.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10798
    There is also this...
    macworld.com/mac-troubleshooting-what-to-do-when-your -computer-is-too-slow.
    Basically... Make sure you have enough Free Hard Drive space for your Mac to Perform as expected...

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