Tips For Solving the Mac OS X Lion Slowness (Lots of Beach Balls)

Question

Hi Folks,
Just a quick list of tips for this issue that some of Mac OS X Lion users face.
The main symptom is that we get the Beach Ball on almost any task, it takes 4, maybe five times more time to do what we need to do. So depending on the schedule, it can drive us crazy. I was facing that, and started to think that Lion was a Windows Vista relative.
Please remind that the tips below involve backing up and restoring your system. If you are not careful, you may lose everything. You are responsible for your acts. Be cautious!
How I solved my issue:
1) Checked for Disk Permissions and the Disk itself:
- Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility:
- Click on your disk, and then VERIFY DISK. If everything is OK, move on. If it is not, REPAIR DISK.
- Now click on VERIFY DISK PERMISSIONS. If everthing is OK, move. If not, Repair.
This step 1 is to make sure that your slowness is due to something related to the OS itself and not to permissions/disk.
If this solves the slowness, then you are OK. Now further steps are necessary. In my case, this just helped a little bit. The beach-balling reduced by 20% only. Still too slow.
2) Do a full backup of your system.
I used Time Machine. Make sure you have all of your applications closed. So the backup will be full. If you fail to do a good backup, you will lose everything! Make sure you do a good one. Maybe do it twice on 2 different disks! Now you have been warned.
3) Do a Full Restore of your entire system.
Now, get that Install CD that came with your Mac,
- Put it on your drive, shut down your computer.
- While holding the C key, press the start button of your Mac. It will boot using the Install CD that came with your Mac.
To recover your entire system:
Connect your Time Machine backup disk to your computer. If you’re restoring your system because of a problem with your startup disk, make sure the disk has been repaired or replaced.
Insert your Mac OS X Install disk, and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon.
In the Installer, choose Utilities > Restore System from Backup.
In the Restore Your System dialog, click Continue.
Select your Time Machine backup volume.
Select the Time Machine backup you want to restore.
Follow the onscreen instructions.
4) Remove the CD, and boot.
When I did that, the system came back very fast and responsive. No more beach balls (only on the really-intensive tasks), and everything was back to normal.
5) So, what was it anyways?
Before doing this Backup/Restore, I was getting lots of DISK I/O ERRORS, specially during boot time (you can check that by shutting down your mac, powering it back on and imediatelly pressing Command-V - Verbose Mode).
Sure, the first thing in mind was that I had a faulty hard drive, but I checked it several times for errors (via Disk Utility), and nothing showed up.
So I decided to do a full backup/restore of the system. And it solved it, at least for me.
My config:
MacBook Pro (2009 edition) - 5 GB RAM - 640 GB HD - Mac OS X 10.7
Regards.

Answer 1

Also my mac will not complete my 5 software updates, no idea which software, but it said it could not do it. Also backing up with time machine had failed twice today. Thanks