OS X 10.7 Lion - Slow to boot, run, launch Safari etc. etc.

I looked at /Library/StartupItems on all my macs and found a plethora of rubbish items which I removed, and it worked a treat. Less busy fans and faster startup

I was having the same problems with booting among others until I just had to revert back to snow leopard. Is there a chance that future updates to lion will rectify these issues? I have searched on the web and found vague answers to this question

Experienced the same problems on a 2-year old MB running Lion. Everything hung - I couldn't even do anything before the screensaver started at some stage. I did eventually manage to start "top" in Terminal (Terminal took about 4 minutes to start up) and saw that I had over 2 million pageouts even though I had just restarted my Mac. Something is seriously wrong with how memory is handled on my machine, it seems. I have "only" 4GB of RAM - but still.

The (temporary) solution for me was to restart in 32-bit mode. You can do this by holding down the keys "3" and "2" during start-up. Things work fine now, and pageouts is still at 0(0) after 15 minutes.

Hope this does the trick for others here, too.

Sebastian

I just wanted to add myself to the list. For the past week, my Macbook has indexed and re-indexed no less then 3 times. I don't know what the heck is going on. It has also had a kernel panic and a couple episodes of random freezing. I don't know what to do about it and its really starting to weird me out.

Early 08' Macbook, Lion 10.7.1, 4gb Ram

Alf, you can call Apple for 90 days after purchasing OS. Please post any solutions. Don't forget to take notes.

chinmaybhalke wrote:

I really really wish if there was a way to go back to snow leopard.

There is, and I have. But I had Snow on another (older) computer, so my task was relatively easy.

There are other ways to get back to Snow - some of them have been suggested in these forums - but you'll need to search for them.

For those of you having long boot or loading times, I suspect that you have quite a bit of data on your machine and have not let spotlight finish indexing. Spotlight needs to recreate the data network on your machine so that it can access all data and programs with greater efficiency. Once spotlight has completed its initial index, things should run a bit more smoothly. For those of you that are encountering a spotlight indexing issue everytime you boot up, I suspect that you have not let spotlight complete its initial indexing process prior to your last shutdown. If you do this, it will continue indexing the next time you boot up. My suggestion is to boot up your machine just before you go to bed, let spotlight continue and finish indexing all the data on your computer and in the morning all should be well.

Again, the reason things are running slowly are because prior to accompishing a complete index, your machine has to search for the proper path for each and every command you give it. Once indexing is complete, it essentially has the "map" it needs to find all the data it requires to complete whatever tasks you throw at it.

In other posts regarding these kind of problems I have read already that the initial indexing of Spotlight uses a lot of capacity. And yes, when Spotlight was indexing, as indicated in the top system bar on the screen, other work was nearly impossible. But I have already cleaned my Haq so the indexing does not take too much time. But even when Spotlight indicated that indexing was completed the problems like:

• hanging, not even able to startup Launchpad
• Safari showing colored wheels of death
• Safari opening new "nameless" windows with only white content
• Safari reposting HTTP transactions

still occured.

Noticible is also that my Macbook was also having difficulties with booting from the OSX Lion install partition.

There is no data on the install partition. I never touched the files on the OSX install partition.

After contacting Apple Support (again) their conclusion was: broken hardware.

I read somewhere a critique of our rush to 10.7, in it the comment was that snowleopard was a perfected OS and had reached a level of efficiency and stability so why did we rush like lemmings to a new OS. New OSs are always a bit flaky and have difficulties. I agreed with the article but I still installed Lion.

If you have done all the manitenance routines you can think of, cache deletion, PRAM zap, rebuld launch databse, spotlight reindexing complete etc ect then you need to start elsewhere.

Make sure you run time machine or clone your mac before doing anything drastic.

1st is legacy software still running or attempting to run in your system. Using one of the clean utilities can help here, also freeware like appcleaner for completely clearing apps and utilties when you delete them. Also as I have said before look in your /Library/Startupitems, do you recognise what is there, if not google search it and find out what it is. I had 7 items from installs on macs going back to X 10.1 they were all rubbish and getting rid sure made a difference in launch and finder responsiveness.

2nd Some installs as updates don't always take so well, and you should consider a clean install. I know this is hard as it then involves working out preferences you need afterwards, and you may have software whose source is dubious but it can make a real difference.

3rd Any time you install anything... an update, upgrade or whatever make sure you mac is in good health, run a file check and run a maintenance utility like OnyX or Mainmenu or something similar. Make sure evrything and evry test comes out A+ before installing.

Again I know this may be after the horse has bolted but when I first started on macs I used to have a screen saver, that just said 'read the manual first' because mostly I didn't bother, and it always became a problem.

I took a trip to the Apple Genius Bar today after trying everything possible that I read on the forum. I was told that Carbonite is sucking up most of my CPU, and draining the battery. I currently have it disabled, and am on hold for a Carbonite rep. Response time has sped up and the battery life has jumped from 2 hours to 3:33. Not the 7 I used to get, but maybe we are on to something.

I am not thrilled about not having backup, but I will not run my external HD or Carbonite while on the computer and backup at night.

After talking to a Carbonite rep. there is a box to check to use it as LOW PRIORITY TO SAVE BAND WIDTH. I am going to try that and see how it goes. Otherwise it is backup while I am sleeping so I can work (without delays) while I am awake.

I had Carbonite and an external HD with Snow Leopard and didn't have this issue; still hopeful that an update will fix this issue.

This is from Carbonite.

We are sorry you having trouble since upgrading. You will need to uninstall Carbonite by removing the individual files that make up Carbonite from your computer. For more details, please click the link below.

Manually Uninstalling: http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3701

Firewalls, antivirus, and anti-spyware programs may prevent Carbonite from installing properly. (Carbonite does not and never will install spyware on your computer.) Please follow the steps below to install Carbonite.

1. Disable any firewall, antivirus, or anti-spyware programs.

2. Log in to https://account.carbonite.com.

3. Hover your mouse over 'More' and click the 'Reinstall' link.

4. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

5. After Carbonite has installed successfully, you may re-enable any firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware software that you had disabled at the beginning of this process.

This should fix the issues you are having! Please let us know if you need additional assistance.

Sincerely,

Carbonite Customer Support

Back it up. Get it back.

< Edited By Host >

For those of you who like stats here are some numbers from a test I did today.

No programs opening upon startup.

Macbook Pro (2009) 4GB RAM

External HD was not plugged in during this test.

Comparing Start-up and Log-in speed with Carbonite Enabled-regular speed; Enabled-low priority; and Disabled.

I used a stop watch so it is quite accurate.

Enabled-Regular Speed

Startup - 1:23

Login - 0:18

battery (93%) 2:16

Enabled-Low Priority

Startup - 0:54

Login - 0:29

Battery (96%) 4:03

Disabled

Startup - 0:52

Login - 0:23

Battery (97%) 5:07

Hope that helps anyone who is running Carbonite or a similar program.

Like you, I tried everything I could think of and my 'new' MBP still runs like a dog. I switched to a MBP from being along term Windows user in order to complement my iPad2, iPod and in an attempt to get iTunes to stop deleting albums / screwing up my music on Windows machines.

Sadly I have had a bad experience and have now purchased a Cowon J3 for my music and will be selling my MBP in order to go back to a Windows based machine - sans iTunes.

I still wish you all every ounce of luck and hope you get Lion working - it ALMOST had me sold but fell at the last hurdle.

Cheers!

Guardinner wrote:

Like you, I tried everything I could think of and my 'new' MBP still runs like a dog. I switched to a MBP from being along term Windows user in order to complement my iPad2, iPod and in an attempt to get iTunes to stop deleting albums / screwing up my music on Windows machines.

Sadly I have had a bad experience and have now purchased a Cowon J3 for my music and will be selling my MBP in order to go back to a Windows based machine - sans iTunes.

I still wish you all every ounce of luck and hope you get Lion working - it ALMOST had me sold but fell at the last hurdle.

Cheers!

Wow - this is the first time I've ever heard of someone switching from Windows to Mac OSX Lion and then going back to Windows. I'm sure there are more.