Macbook Slowing Down?

Hi everyone! I've got a unibody Macook:

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

I don't have very much installed on it, but things seem to be a bit slower. I run Onyx pretty regularly but it's slowing down. What can I do?

 

First you have to find out whats causing it.

Maybe install istat pro, smc fan control, and/or menu meters to keep an eye on memory, cpu, disk, and temps and consult them when things seem slow.

There are just too many things it could be without more information.

 

This. OP, if it's not just you feeling like things are a little slower, there's got to be some cause -- and that requires a little detective work.

 

Cool will do. Are all of those programs you mentioned free? If not could you recommend a good free one to do all that?

 

Both iStat Pro and SMC Fan Control are free to download.

 

A few weeks back, my Macbook suddenly failed to fall asleep. Well, not completely. It still falls asleep when I close it but, as I have to keep it open overnight for my morning alarm to work, it's been causing me grief. I manually put it to sleep but as soon as the fans slow down completely, it just wakes itself up again.It stays extremely hot all night; the fans run at full blast. I've tried changing the settings on my system preferences but that doesn't seem to work either. So if anyone has any sort of technical sleeping pills for my Macbook, I will be forever grateful.

 

I feel my laptops mostly slow down after having used a faster pc or laptop for a while. Work laptop just got upgraded and everything else seems slow now

Just saying 'seems to be a bit slow' does not mean that there is any problem. When does it feel slow? opening programs? booting? Downloading files? etc... Each one could mean a different problem.

 

All of the tools I mentioned are free. You could also try running Oxyx or the free version of Cocktail to clear out your caches, turnover your logs, repair your disk permissions etc.

 

First try what we told the OP. It might be obvious that a program or process is running that is heavy on your CPU.

If you have Applecare this is a good job for their tech support folks. They will take you through sleeping your Mac and sending them console logs that shows much of whatever might be going in. It could be something corrupted or a program causing it.

You might start by:
a) Starting up in safe mode (hold shift key while booting) and many their party or non critical drivers, utilities, etc will not load. Try sleeping and see if that works. If it sleeps ok its likely one of the items that did not get started in safe mode.
b) Create a new user account and log into that and try a sleep. If it sleeps ok its related to something in your normal user account and if it doesn't change its something system related that cuts across user accounts.


After both of the above you can go to applications, utilities, console and take a look at your SYSTEM.LOG (select it in the left hand panel) to see whats going on in your sleep/wake cycle. Doing it in safe mode and/or with a fresh user will make the log smaller and may make the offending item easier to find.

Hope this helps. If it still happens in safe mode and with a fresh user and the logs don't help, try an OS install over the top of itself to refresh the system. If that doesen't help, do a format and install, taking careful not of each item you install and testing sleep after each one. Of course before either OS install backup your data.

Hope this helps

 

Hi,

What are your login items (i.e. what apps are running in the background)?

Have you tried resetting the PRAM and SMC?

Have you checked using Activity Monitor that there aren't any processes with abnormally high CPU usage?

You might also want to check to see if your hard drive is heavily fragmented. If so, then it may be attributable to your performance problems. The demo version of Coriolis iDefrag will analyse your hard drive and tell you how fragmented it is. However, you'll need to purchase the full version of iDefrag in order to do an offline full defragmentation.

Many argue that manual defragmentation isn't necessary with HFS Plus filesystems, due to the algorithms incorporated to reduce / prevent fragmentation.

While the majority of users won't encounter fragmentation issues, there are however some circumstances where a hard drive can become heavily fragmented, requiring user intervention, as acknowledged by Apple (see: About disk optimization with Mac OS X - Article HT1375). Another useful article on OS X and disk fragmentation: http://theappleblog.com/2009/04/14/disk-fragmentation-os-x-when-does-it-become-a-problem/

Recently, my Macbook Pro was rather sluggish, even after performing the usual maintenance tasks (using Onyx). The problem was particularly noticeable when using Finder, opening System Preferences and other small applications. After performing a full offline defrag using iDefrag, the sluggishness has since disappeared.​

 

Hey thanks for all of you who posted recently! I downloaded iStat Pro so I guess that's a good place to start. Which numbers should I focus on? What's good and what's bad?

 

For the most part it is starting up that feels slow. Especially Safari. There are also times when I'll tell it to do something and the colour wheel comes up and nothing happens for a few seconds.

 

Istat will show you how much CPU and RAM you are using as well as Network activity and Processes. If any of these are high it could be an indication of a program hogging something. For instance if XYZ process is using 50% of your CPU and you don't know what XYZ is (or you do and it seems out of place) that may indicate all or part of your issue.

If you have Safari set up to automatically open a number of tabs with a number of sites, this can considerably slow down its startup as it has to make connections to all of those sites, download updates etc.

 

Nope, it just opens one tab.

 

Just one more suggestion that might speed up startup and keep RAM free for running your browser faster:

- Go to System Preferences, click on Accounts.
- Choose your account, then choose the "Login Items" tab at the top of the window.
- Look for things in here that you don't think you need running. If you're not sure, maybe post back on here with your list and ask. If you see things you know you don't use anymore, remove those items completely, and then restart. It should be faster, and you won't be taking up the RAM for those processes and startup programs.

 

Has this been resolved? May want to take a look at your cpu temp. Over heating will slow it down to protect the cpu.