Q: slow computer

jefffrentz wrote:

 

... Just seems like something is running in the background that is slowing everything down.

That is probably true, so your task is to find out what it is and fix it. Though rare, hardware failures can also be the cause and should be ruled out.

Cleaning caches and virus scans are a waste of time but that's behind you.

First, back up your documents and everything else important to you, not that there is any reason to believe your hard disk may be failing, but the symptoms you describe may presage an impending disk failure, and you should have backups anyway.

To help determine the possible causes of this behaviour read the following. None of what follows is intended to fix anything, but it will provide the additional information required to advance troubleshooting:

If you are running OS X "Lion" or later, boot OS X Recovery by holding ⌘ and r (two fingers) while you start your Mac. For Snow Leopard, start your Mac while holding the c key with its original OS X Install DVD inserted in its optical drive.

At the Mac OS X Utilities screen, select Disk Utility. Select your startup volume (usually named "Macintosh HD") and click the Repair Disk button. Describe any errors it reports in red.

When it finishes restart your Mac and test again for operation. If it's still not behaving as you expect it should, please post the results of EtreCheck in accordance with the following instructions:

Apple Support Communities contributor etresoft wrote a very useful app to quickly gather certain system information that may help point to a cause of this problem. Go to his website, download and run EtreCheck:

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Etrecheck will be in your Downloads folder. Open it from there. You may see the following dialog box:

Click Open - etresoft contributes to this forum frequently and can be considered a trustworthy developer.

It will take a moment to run as it collects its data.

Copy and paste its output in a reply.

Do not be concerned about anything that says "Problem" or “failed” or anything else that may appear in red.

EtreCheck was designed to remove any personal information (such as your computer's name and serial numbers) but if you see anything that looks like an email address or any other personal information that should not be divulged to others, please delete or obscure that information when you post the reply.

When you are finished with EtreCheck, quit the program. It occupies very little space, and you can keep it or drag it to the Trash as you wish.

After completing the above please determine if the problems also occur in "Safe Mode":

• Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode
• Starting your Mac in Safe Mode will take longer than usual, graphics will not render smoothly, audio is disabled on some Macs, and some programs (iTunes for example) may not work at all.
• Merely starting your Mac in Safe Mode is not intended to resolve the problem, it's to observe its performance without certain additional components.
• To end Safe Mode restart your Mac normally. Shutdown will take longer as well.

How large is your hard drive and how much hard drive space do you have left?

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.

Back up your information as I wrote earlier.

Obtain a replacement System Install DVD for your Mac by contacting Apple. They will need your Mac's serial number and a nominal fee ($25 or so).

Once you get the disc, start Mac while holding the c key with that disc inserted in its optical drive. At the Mac OS X Utilities screen, select Disk Utility. Select your startup volume (usually named "Macintosh HD") and click the Repair Disk button.

Even if successfully repaired, the failure is likely to occur again, so make plans to replace your MBP's hard disk as soon as possible. They are not unreasonably expensive to replace.

Uninstall Virus Barrier and any other Intego products and do not reinstall them. Whether Intego is the direct cause of the problem or not cannot be determined, but it is capable of doing nothing beneficial.