Lion is very slow please help!

APierce24 - you are so right on.

This fixed the problem just as it did for you. Everyone should try this out beofre going to drastic measures like throughing a perfectly good computer away. You should be on the Apple staff.

Now I too can say "I AM GLAD I HAVE LION!" 🙂 - No 'lion' 😁

How can we boot from the install disk when Lion is a download from the App Store?

Thanks

When you reboot, hold down the ALT key and you will see two choices one is your Macantosh_HD and teh other is labeled something like Macantosh_HD Recovery. Choose the latter. Please See APieerce24 post it is very clear and works great.

Good Luck

To summarize, here are the steps I took. It's too early to tell, but my computer already feels more responsive:

-Repair Disk

-Repair Disk Permissions

-Uncheck "Use in 32 bit mode" for Safari and Mail (I had changed this over so I could use a plugin I no longer need)

-Clear caches

-Download and use Lion Cache Cleaner

-Update Microsoft Office 2008

I didn't play with the fonts yet... but so far, my computer is feelin' fresh.

Is there any way to revert to Leopard? I would do anything. Is it possible? After a few days running smoothly, Lions is baack to a Vista status, slow, crashing, slow, slow, slow....

This worked perfect for my mac!!!

Macbook Pro, early 2011 model, 4GB, Core i7... etc.

- Awfully slow performance etc etc after upgrade to Lion as well

- Last attempt (before going back to leopard) by walking in at an Apple retailer and explain my story

- Staff member showed me how fast the displayed Air's were running

- I couldn't believe it and went back home to get my Pro to show him my experience

- The guys didn't knew how to react: indeed 'not normal'

- Tried a couple of things and they came directly with the solution:

*** Resetting my Mac's PRAM and NVRAM ***

Copy this link to view Apple's instruction: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

(It comes down to holding down cmd / alt / p / r before the grey screen appears on startup, release the keys after you hear the startup sound).

Staff member explained to me that he thought that Snow Leopard 'actions' were stored in my mac's memory, and got in conflict with new to store Lion's 'actions'... my mac's behaviour now says he was right!

Reboot still takes a bit long compared to Leopard but all other behaviour is back to normal!

Back to being a happy Apple user (with Lion installed)! Hope it will help some of your problems as well. Good luck!

I just did this little excercise and now my apps open up instantly, FCP X takes a few seconds but was taking minutes before I did this. Thanks, this helped a lot.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I forgot all about zapping the PRAM! It worked like a charm! I was about to go back to Snow Leopard but gave this a try and I'm a Happy Mac again! I hope it stays as fast as it is now! Thanks again!

Same here ! I have had Lion since the day it came out. And it is stil ridiculously slow. Slowed down my new i7 mac book pro immensely. I cannot believe Apple is not addressing this issue.

What have you done to address this issue?

I have upgraded both of my Macs to Lion plus a number of Mac for users I help to support and so far none of them have shown any slow down. This tend to say to me that something is wrong with your Mac and not Lion.

Allan

I'm running a MBP with i7 processor and 4 gb ram, with an external cinema display and time machine HD. I have experienced everything here that everyone else has, but I would still not prefer Windows 7, which I also have on my MBP running under Parallels. Lion is maddeningly slow at certain times, and runs flawlessly othertimes. I have run disk recovery utilities, repaired permissions, zapped PRAM. I have also paid particular attention to activity monitor and console, and have cleaned house with appcleaner every application, and preference pane running in the background that has accumulated on my Mac over the years and I don't use anymore. There were some real process hoggers, and I suspect that at least some of the folks experiencing slow performance have similar issues. Everytime, I get a measure of improvement and less periods of laggy responsiveness. Still less than desirable.

That said, I have been a early adopter of every Mac OS X since its inception, and I go through the same thing everytime. This is nothing new. Incompatible apps, process hogging apps, and crappy performance for a time. After a couple of .X software updates, things are much better.

The bottom line is that I love the evolution of Mac OS X into Lion, and it remains the best OS out there. It will get better. Apple can't possibly account for everyone's computer and configuration with something as complex as an OS. Users always have to upgrade their software and fit their usage to the OS, not the other way around. If you are not willing to do that each time, stick with SL, Windows 7, or downgrade.

Dear Allan,

I am an IT Professional, not a newbie. Thank you very much.

Nothing is wrong with my Nov 2010 i7 mbp. The slow down occurred WHEN i installed Lion from the App store. And I am quite positive that is the reason. I have done just about everything mentioned on the "real people" boards. I do not appreciate people trolling the boards giving meaningless remarks to up their level.

To Everyone Else,

To others out there with this REAL issue - I did do a full reinstall of Lion from the recovery drive and after all of the indexing etc. does seem a little better. So, I do recommend giving that a shot. I backed up to Time Capsule before doing this, but after the install completed everything was there, just as before.

Regards, Donna

I have been work in IT since 1981.

I was responding to someone else so I don't really understand your being upset with my remark.

Allan

Hi all. I am experiencing the same slow, sluggish performance on both a MBP and MB. I tried the SMC reset as mentioned above and it worked like a champ! Commands almost leap off the keyboard, as they should!

Something must be wrong with the memory allocation. I have a Memory Monitor running and it was always maxed out with like 30-50Mb free memory at all times with nothing major running. Now it's cruising with all my usual apps running (Safari - 6 windows, Mail, iTunes, iCal, Pages) and I still have 700 Mb free memory!

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

SMC reset took 2 minutes to do.

Will report back if it starts to bog down again.

Thank you ceri139 for the tip!

Hi Allan,

You replied to djgogga - which is me. And you implied that since you have installed Lion for yourself and other users and have no slow down, there is something wrong with "my" mac and not Lion.

I dissagree. Many people have had the same identical issue with Lion. It is probably due to the scale of the OS "upgrade" and the method. As I mentioned, after reinstalled via the recovery drive, it appears to be somewhat better.

Below is the reply I was responding to. Just hit me wrong.

Thanks,

Donna

What have you done to address this issue?

I have upgraded both of my Macs to Lion plus a number of Mac for users I help to support and so far none of them have shown any slow down. This tend to say to me that something is wrong with your Mac and not Lion.

Allan