KVKN

Q: My 2010 Macbook Pro is incredibly slow - even with no applications running

Hi, my 2010 Macbook Pro has, over time, gotten incredibly slow. I have always taken good care of both soft- and hardware, but it seems like it's slowly dying. I've done multiple re-installations of the OS X and updated it every time I've had the chance. I have already tried the OnyX maintenance and it hasn't really helped. The specs of my Mac:

 

MacBook Pro

15-inc, Mid 2010

 

Processor: 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256 MB

Software: OS X 10.8.4

 

Now, I have not installed a lot of applications (about 5 non-Apple apps) and therefore have a lot of free disk space (461 gb free out of 500 in total). When I take a look at what Activity Monitor shows me, I can't seem to find out why everything feels slow and laggy. Even when I have no applications running, with the exception of Google Chrome, it still seems to respond very slow. When I try playing Football Manager 2013 my mac gets extremely hot and the game almost crashes... I've never had these issues with the FM-series before.

 

It might be worth noticing that I got a new motherboard installed half a year ago.

 

I hope you guys could help me out as I will not give up on my 3-year-old buddy!

 

Sincerely

Kasper

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jul 21, 2013 12:42 PM

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Q: My 2010 Macbook Pro is incredibly slow - even with no applications running

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  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Jul 21, 2013 4:16 PM in response to KVKN
    Level 10 (207,958 points)
    Applications
    Jul 21, 2013 4:16 PM in response to KVKN

    First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.

     

    There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily.

     

    • Reset the System Management Controller.
    • If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
    • If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane.
    • Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any.
    • Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items.
    • Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk.

     

    Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the problem.

     

    Step 1

     

    Launch the Activity Monitor 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 Activity Monitor in the icon grid.

     

    Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.

     

    Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.

     

    Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.

     

    Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?

     

    Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in and Writes out.)

     

    Step 2

     

    If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.

     

    Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

    View Show Log List

    from the menu bar.

     

    Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning.

     

    When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.

    Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

    Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.

  • by ds store,

    ds store ds store Jul 21, 2013 4:25 PM in response to KVKN
    Level 7 (30,395 points)
    Jul 21, 2013 4:25 PM in response to KVKN

    You probally have a hardware problem, likely related to this

     

    MacBook Pro 15" Mid 2010 owners

     

     

    or it could be the internal hard drive dying, this can test that and/or if it's the video card that's to blame

     

    Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive

     

    Bascially your going to install OS X on a external drive and boot from it, it's going to be a hair slower than the normal internal boot drive speeds, but it should be a good indicator if it's a hardware problem or not if you have the same issues or not.

     

     

    If you want, you also can do these two things and provide a lot of software related information about your machine as well (booted from the internal drive)

     

    Tune up your Mac here

     

    Help us to help you on these forums