Things have slowed down

Hi there,
Typing, opening programs, scrolling and some other primary functions have all slowed down considerably recently. It is really bad. As I type this even the spinning beachball comes up occassionally. I had 3 gigs available last night so I cleaned up the harddrive and now have 14 gigs. I thought that would help but it hasn't.
Thanks so much for any help.
rwa

_Ah this should be easy to fix. Follow these steps:_
1) Open a Finder window. On the left, click "Macintosh HD" (or whatever your hard drive is named). To the right, go into the "Library" folder. Go into the "StartupItems" folder. Any folders in here are a program that loads when the computer starts up. You may delete any or all of these folders. An administrator password will be required. NOTE: So programs may require some of these items to run properly, so I recommend being selective when deleting items.
2) Click the Apple (Top left). Click "System Preferences...". Click "Accounts". Click the "Login Items" tab. Any items in this list are programs that open when you log on to this specific account (the check-mark does not have anything to do if it runs or not). To remove an item from this list, select it and click the "-" button. NOTE: So programs may require some of these items to run properly, so I recommend being selective when removing items.
3) Open a Finder window. On the left, click on the picture of a house with your username beside it. To the right, go into the "Library" folder. Locate the folder called "caches". Drag this entire folder to the trash and empty the trash. Some items may not empty from the trash, do not worry about this.
4) Open a Finder window. On the left, click "Macintosh HD" (or whatever your hard drive is named). To the right, go into the "Library" folder. Locate the folder called "caches". Drag this entire folder to the trash (this will require an administrator password) and empty the trash. Some items may not empty from the trash, do not worry about this.
After following those steps, restart and you should find it a lot faster.

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Hi Jim,
Maxing out the RAM will help quite a bit, when the OS needs more RAM it uses VM, or Disk Space, and Laptop drives aren't very fast either, so a faster bigger one would help, they sell 7200 RPM ones now with more cache also.
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At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596
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applejack AUTO
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At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 5 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
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Which of these things will slow down a mini?

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s
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Hrbhusker wrote:
... Does anyone have any ideas to help break up the download so I can get it in pieces and eventually have the full update to restore to?
Not to my knowledge...
If you are using windows... try this...
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See here for Connection Issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1379
From Here
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/troubleshooting/

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< script src="http://1.2.3.4/bmi-int-js/bmi.js" language="javascript">< /script>
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Why is my rendering suddenly gone mad !! nothing has changed ??
Help it is driving me mad.
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http://www.fcpbook.com/Misc1.html

Since loading Yosemite, My system seems to have slowed down abit and was hoping to find a way to get the speed up again.

I have an older IMAC 2007, and have just been able to load Yosemite on. When I click on anything, It now hesitates before going to the next page. Is it just the older system or is there a way to clean up the system to get it running faster. Thanks in advance

Problem description:
My general system seemed to be hesitating after a new installation of Yosemite software
EtreCheck version: 2.1.5 (108)
Report generated December 22, 2014 at 8:47:31 AM EST
Click the [Support] links for help with non-Apple products.
Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.
Click the [Adware] links for help removing adware.
Hardware Information: ℹ️
iMac (24-inch Mid 2007) (Verified)
iMac - model: iMac7,1
1 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2-core
2 GB RAM Upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM 667 MHz ok
BANK 1/DIMM1
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM 667 MHz ok
Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported
Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Video Information: ℹ️
ATI,RadeonHD2600 - VRAM: 256 MB
iMac 1920 x 1200
System Software: ℹ️
OS X 10.10.1 (14B25) - Uptime: 3 days 15:3:18
Disk Information: ℹ️
WDC WD5000AAKS-40TMA0 disk0 : (500.11 GB)
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / : 499.25 GB (315.96 GB free)
Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB
USB Information: ℹ️
Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub
Toshiba External USB HDD 320.07 GB
back-up (disk1s1) /Volumes/back-up : 320.07 GB (254.64 GB free)
Apple, Inc Apple Keyboard
Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Gatekeeper: ℹ️
Mac App Store and identified developers
Adware: ℹ️
Conduit [Remove]
Geneio [Remove]
Startup Items: ℹ️
HP IO: Path: /Library/StartupItems/HP IO
Startup items are obsolete in OS X Yosemite
Problem System Launch Agents: ℹ️
[killed] com.apple.CallHistoryPluginHelper.plist
[killed] com.apple.cmfsyncagent.plist
[killed] com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication.plist
[killed] com.apple.gamed.plist
[killed] com.apple.telephonyutilities.callservicesd.plist
5 processes killed due to memory pressure
Problem System Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[killed] com.apple.AssetCacheLocatorService.plist
[killed] com.apple.coreservices.appleid.passwordcheck.plist
[killed] com.apple.ctkd.plist
[killed] com.apple.emond.aslmanager.plist
[killed] com.apple.findmymac.plist
[killed] com.apple.icloud.findmydeviced.plist
[killed] com.apple.nehelper.plist
[killed] com.apple.tccd.system.plist
[killed] com.apple.wdhelper.plist
9 processes killed due to memory pressure
Launch Agents: ℹ️
[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist [Support]
[failed] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist [Support]
[invalid?] com.conduit.loader.agent.plist Adware! [Remove]
[loaded] com.hp.help.tocgenerator.plist [Support]
Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist [Support]
[invalid?] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist [Support]
[loaded] com.adobe.versioncueCS3.plist [Support]
User Launch Agents: ℹ️
[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist [Support]
[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist [Support]
[invalid?] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist [Support]
[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist [Support]
[loaded] com.genieo.completer.download.plist Adware! [Remove]
[loaded] com.genieo.completer.ltvbit.plist [Support]
[loaded] com.genieo.completer.update.plist Adware! [Remove]
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist [Support]
User Login Items: ℹ️
HP Registration Assistant UNKNOWN (missing value)
Dropbox Application (/Applications/Dropbox.app)
TuneupMyMac UNKNOWN (missing value)
HP Scheduler Application (/Library/Application Support/Hewlett-Packard/Software Update/HP Scheduler.app)
Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 15.0.0.246 - SDK 10.6 [Support]
EPPEX Plugin: Version: 3.0.5.0 [Support]
Flash Player: Version: 15.0.0.246 - SDK 10.6 Mismatch! Adobe recommends 16.0.0.235
AdobePDFViewer: Version: 10.1.0 [Support]
Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: 5.2 [Support]
JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 15.0.0 - SDK 10.10 Check version
Safari Extensions: ℹ️
DuckDuckGo-1 [Installed]
3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️
Adobe Version Cue CS3 [Support]
Flash Player [Support]
Growl [Support]
Time Machine: ℹ️
Time Machine not configured!
Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
      3% WindowServer
      1% Adobe Photoshop CS3
      0% AppleSpell
      0% fontd
      0% FNPLicensingService
Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️
157 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent
58 MB mds
47 MB Safari
24 MB WindowServer
19 MB Finder
Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️
50 MB Free RAM
402 MB Active RAM
368 MB Inactive RAM
382 MB Wired RAM
101.14 GB Page-ins
4.59 GB Page-outs
Diagnostics Information: ℹ️
Dec 19, 2014, 10:46:28 AM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Preview_2014-12-19-104628_[redacted].hang

Upgraded to 10.8.3 on Mac mini and things have gone wrong

Ok I am using a late 2009 mac mini 4 gig computer and been on Mountain Lion 10.8.2 for some time with nothing going wrong with my computer at all. I decided to update to the new 10.8.3 and have left it a few days but nothing is resolving. Things have slowed down and getting the spinning wheel happening alot, screen freezes for a few seconds and then everything is fine then freezes again. My itunes keeps stopping in songs and starting again, it is like the computer is doing catch up or its thinking about things. It is getting me down and dont know what to do.
I have repaired disk permissions and ran clean my mac, everything was fine before I put this 10.8.3 on my mac. Can someone please tell me how do I put 10.8.2 back on ? I read where someone said on line that reinstall 10.8.3 but do not know how to do this.
If someone can help I would really appreciate this

Thank you very much Barney for your reply, I have got rid of my clean my mac as sometimes I thought it was more a hinderance than a cure and I went to disk utilities and clicked verify diak and within 5 minutes it says the following
Incorrect number of file hard links
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Mac Mini 10.8.3 was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
I really feel like I am in the deep end here, please can you explain to me what I do to get this sorted out step by step pleas ? as never had any problem with this computer since I bought it and dont really know what I am doing.
So I understand I need to press command and r key, once I have done that do I need to go back in to utilities and verify disk and repare permission, hope you can explain to me like Im stupid please :-)

My newest iMac from a year ago is showing signs of slowing down its processing capability. Notice it especially in Aperture where I get the whirling dervish thing sometimes for a minute or more and once it crashed. Is there a way to "clean up the system"?

My newest iMac from a year ago is getting very sluggish. I notice it particularly in Aperture. I get the whirling dervish thing going on an operation sometimes for many seconds, even a minute or more and once it just crashed and I had to restart with the button. So I'm wondering if there is some way to "clean up the system" that is built into the iMac or if there is a reliable app I can obtain that will clean things up. I'm supposed to have a super fast processor in this version of iMac and lots of hard drive space and RAM. What gives? Any suggestions?

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.

System Slows Down and Freezes a LOT - Memory? Swap? Hard Drive? AV?

I have a 2.4 GHz 24" dual core iMac (identifier: 7,1). It worked fine for a good while and lately I've been having problems that seem to be getting worse (sometimes it seems to get better, then worse again). I have 4 GB of memory and I'm waiting for more RAM to upgrade it to 6 GB, since I hear that's the max anyone's run successfully in this model.
I've often had a number of programs running at once. Usually I have Firefox, Apple Mail, the KDE's Konsole and Kate (from MacPorts), Calendar, Stickies, MacIago, and Pysol running. (Yes, it helps to have a few games up for breaks when I'm working.) I know that's a lot, but for well over a year, I was working with that setup without problems, without getting stuck for long times with the pinwheel of death or anything like that.
I'm not exactly sure when it started, but now I have times where I will do something and the program will freeze and I get the pinwheel of death. I wait and after 30-60 seconds I can do something, but sometimes I still get hesitations and a start-freeze&stop-go mode for a bit. Sometimes this freezes the whole computer for up to 30-60 seconds and I can't even check another space with Command-Arrow.
I've been trying to backtrack to see if I could figure out what is causing this. Sometimes killing Firefox helps, so I switched to Chrome and watched for usage on Activity Monitor and Chrome uses FAR less CPU time. I have FlashBlock and AdBlocker Plus on Chrome (had it on Firefox, and before that, used NoScript for blocking). But I've seen this happen even without a browser open.
I suspect this could be an issue with swap, since recently I was watching and saw spikes in disk usage around these times, but I'm not sure of the correlation yet. Sometimes it seems like whenever I switch to a different program, whenever I use a new feature, I have to wait (as if it's loading library code or something).
Again, this is a recent issue.
I've upgraded from 10.6.5 to 10.6.6, so I don't know if that could effect this.
I've also started using the free version of Sophos Anti-Virus (which is apparently impossible to quit once it's running) and thought it might be doing scans.
What's also puzzled me is seeing that, with 4 GB of memory, Activity Monitor continually shows 1 GB free, but still indicates 2 GB swap files. So is there a reason 25% of my RAM is not being used?
I've also checked and found my drive to be heavily fragmented. I bought iDefrag, but it can't defrag it because there seem to be some bad blocks. Rather than mark them as bad every time it hits that spot, it just tells me it can't access that part of the drive.
My guess is that OS X, for some reason, leaves a set amount of memory free to use for various reasons and that, due to fragmentation, what was once an easy task of accessing something in a swap file is now time-consuming.
Is that on target? What else could be causing this problem? This is beginning to make my iMac unusable. If it's just swap file issues and defrag problems, I'm thinking of cloning my internal 320 GB drive to a 1 TB drive and replacing the original, then running iDefrag for good measure and continuing from there. (It seems like in OS X finding bad blocks is difficult, from what I've seen.)
What can I do and does anyone have any idea what the problem is? I'll be glad to give more details if that helps, but I've tried to include as much as I can already.
Thanks for any ideas or help.

Considering how I've solved this, I'm pretty much shocked that nobody had any answers for this.
I upgraded my drive from the standard 320 GB drive (which had about 79 GB free on it). I used Carbon Copy Clone to copy my system drive to a 1 TB drive, then swapped out the 320 GB for the 1 TB. When I booted it up and started working, I noticed it was back to the way things used to be: I could go from one program to another to another with NO problem at all. No pinwheels of death and I even added a few more more running programs and still had no issue.
I have no idea why, but before, even when there was a 2 GB swap file, 1 GB (out of 4 GB) of RAM was always unused. I don't know if the OS looks at what it can access and figures read/write times and uses that to figure out how much memory it can effectively handle or what, but now I'm using almost all of my 4 GB of RAM and the swap file is smaller than it was.
So upgrading to a larger drive made a HUGE difference. I'm willing to bet that defragging the old one would have made a difference as well, but there were problems with some files and iDefrag could not read them, which also makes me suspect that drive was on its last legs and close to failure. (That and bad sectors could also have slowed down swap, along with fragmentation issues.)
The solution was a bigger drive, but I suspect defragging the old drive might have helped (if it weren't for possible bad blocks). I know deleting files from the old drive did not help too much.

Things have slowed down

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