Lion is very slow please help!

You are not going to like the solution I found but...

After upgrading my mid 2010 13" MBP, 4GB to Lion, Safari was slow, mail was slow, booting was slow.

I tried everything I found here except adding more RAM; 32 bit mode for Safari, changing my browser to Chrome, resetting account permissions with terminal, running disk repair, etc. I even archived and deleted all my old email messages. All seemed to help a little bit, but the machine was still nearly unusable and would get worse by the week.

So I made sure I had a good back up and reformatted the disk and did a Time Machine restore. Still no joy.

One poster on this thread or a parallel one had mentioned the same thing and said his solution was to reformat and do a fresh install rather than a TM restore.

I said what the heck, if I'm going to reformat again I might as well drop a new drive in the machine. Put in the new drive and did a clean install from the App store. It has been 6 weeks now and the machine just screams - better performance than when it was running 10.6

Don't know if the drive replacement or the clean install was the trick, but as Disk Utility reported everything was good with the old drive I'll guess formatting and clean install would do it.

I also did a App Store Lion upgrade on a 2011 Mini - it has worked flawlessly without any issues.

Ran some diagnostics, Disk Utility, etc., looked at Console log files. No obvious source of problem. Turned off System Preferences/ Energy Saver/ "put hard drive to sleep when possible" checkbox -- system back to it's old speed. I think Lion is too aggressive in shutting the HD down, leading to great spin up pauses. Onward.

Thanks Clean Install ....

After 10 MONTH Trying everything .... the only solution left was a clean instal ... formating the HD, Installing Lion directly from Internet (very easy) ans having a Time Machine Restoring.

Now my MBPro seem like an apple again, not a PC XT Anymore !!!!!!!

Intead of 6 minutes to open Outlook .... it takes only 8 seconds

Instead of 2 minutes to shut down the Computer ... it takes only 25 seconds

I Know this is normal for many people ... but I have forgotten that

Yey !!!!

I might get a speeding ticket now.....wow , thank you!

Just to clean up for people who may be experiencing this problem as well, I just studied your logs. Your problems were due to your Mac booting in Safe Mode permaneantly. Your logs (disallowing unneeded kexts) and the description of a loading bar coming up on the grey screen match this.

Interestingly, there is no public forum information as to what exactly causes this to happen or how to fix it without a reinstall. Had it been identifiable you could have repaired or replaced files to fix it, but the most likely case is that there were system extensions or the underlying UNIX core that were simply corrupted on install. It would be nice for Apple to implement a systems file integrity scan (like sfc /scannow) but that doesnt exist and likely never will as we all know a reinstall is much simpler on a Mac than a Windows Computer. (And repair harddrive would never detect this due to the checksums being correct on the corrupt files)

Amzing that you were able to carry on using you Mac permaneantly in Safe Mode for 10 months though! It would have definately diven me off using my computer!

Mountain Lion has improved things a lot.

But for the record, I never got the slowness fixed. And on other account logins on the same computer, at the same time, there was no lag. Go figure.

Interestingly, there is no public forum information as to what exactly causes this to happen or how to fix it without a reinstall.

Well, there are some common causes and well-known solutions for a computer always starting up in Safe Mode, see my post here:

http://applehelpwriter.com/2012/06/24/mac-keeps-starting-in-safe-mode/

However, if people have been messing around with MacKeeper or other harmful "utility's" it could be due to anything. General rule: stay away from all non-Apple apps that suggest their primary purpose is anything like "system utility", "cleaner", "zapper", "sweeper", "defender", "protector".

(ToU Disclaimer: this link to my site contains other links that promote my services as a technical writer)

I think this is definitely an install related problem, and if you read the posts you will see that those suggestions -apart from leaning on the shift key, which I would have found a tad condescending if it was suggested to me - were carried out.