OS X Lion is incredibly slow (even after index)

You didn't have to do any of that. Clean install from the Apple server -- this is hideous advice for many people. Just repair permissions (which is common when upgrading OSes) and then install 10.7.1 again. It would be fixed. The 10.7.2 does nothing special performance-wise. Anyway, glad something worked for you..

I like that you both see the problem and have solutions at least.

I prefer not to reinstall from scratch, though when I was more into Windows and Linux I reformatted all the time trying to get things just right since I know crud builds up. Other than the interface and stability, the ease of use are the things that justify paying so much more for similar spec macs.

The Lion upgrade failed on that for me and a lot of fronts With an Apple upgrade, I would never expect a regular person to have to do something as technically fundamental (though easy, but scary running commands you might not understand for some) as repairing permissions when you didn't change anything. You just bought it from the Apple store, which is the only way they let you, and clicked install. For me, to have to track down serious performance degredation because of faulty permission is a serious bug, since it's something the upgrade should do right and check for or prompt if there are issues. Can you imagine the crap people would give if a Windows upgrade brought your computer to a halt for no reason, requiring command line fixes because the upgrade didn't even handle giving you correct permissions?

It was so bad I did not enjoy using my mac that I thought was fun using before. It was good to try though it messed with my brain going back and forth on the "natural scrolling", but that was easy to adjust. I already reverted back to my SL image since it didn't offer enough to lose programs I didn't expect to or be worth the performance hit, but I will keep track of these solutions in case I decide to give the upgrade another try. I hope Apple takes note and fixes it though. We all make mistakes. I'm fickle so I may be retrying it in another month even 🙂

Thank you!

Thanks Alexgo, this is a simple fix worth trying first before clean installs etc. I just tried it on my 2010 MacBook Pro and so far it seems to have worked a treat.

ONYX Might Be The Problem -----> Onyx to my blacklist

Bad news.

I was doing great with my re-install of Lion... BUT... I just used Onyx to do some maitenance to my MacBook Pro and when computer booted from the restart process the Lag Issue was again there.

This is the Onyx's set-up I used:

http://d.pr/IwXA

I'm not sure but I think everytime I used onyx after a re-install of Lion is when the issue comes up. I'll have to do a re-install again and put Onyx in my Black List.

I'm so frustrated ... it's like having a Windows machine..

Just to add I still had a few speed problems after doing the index stuff and looked at the activity log Utilities then Console and it looked like Kaspersky for Mac (installed to protect other PC users as I sometimes have to work with MS Office for Mac) was creating errors and hangups. So I selfishly uninstalled Kaspersky and now the Macbook Pro is humming along just fine. The Console Utility is a good way of identifying what's causing problems then if you google the errors there is a lot of helpful advice out there somewhere.......

Apologies for replying to myself but not sure how to post original threads here.

Outstanding APierce24,

and thanks, you fix has got lion purring like a kitty.

Cheers

Hmmm ... Doing an install over Snow Leopard does not work well. I Verified Disks, Repaired Disk, Reinstalled OS Lion. All these did not work. In addition, it would not let me revert back to Snow Leopard.

I Erased my HD and did a Clean Install of OS Lion. So far its working great. The only thing is i had to do a Clean Install. Its not making that horrible humming noise.

ONYX is not the problem.

I did another clean install and it was working fine untinl I restarted the machine, the bug came alive only by restarting the machine after the install. I used it for a few hours after the new install and it was fine. So not sure *** is causing the problem here but it's really really anoying.

I use iMac 2010 fall model. I had exact same problem after upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion. According to this thread, I used Disc Utility to fix permissions / damage. Right after that, the Lion became acceptable speed - still slower than Snow Leopard but can be used. A few hours later, it got back to the problem - incredibly slow.

Then I brought the iMac to Genius Bar. Then sent to Apple Service since even Geniuses could not install Lion from external HDD. My iMac was fixed by changing internal HDD. It's been several months. It is running fine since then.

If somebody has same situation, I recommend to check the HDD. The HDD damage never be found during Disk Utility / check by Genius.

For those running Little Snitch, make sure you upgrade to version 2.4.4. Until I did this I was running the Lion version 2.4 and assumed all was well. However I had a terribly slow Finder for the last few weeks which was a mystery to me. I tried all the usual things to no avail.

I just discovered iCloud requires Little Snitch 2.4.4. The speed of the Finder is restored to full speed since I installed 2.4.4. Yeah!

As a registered user I am surprised I didn't get an e-mail about this from Objective Development. It took me a while to figure out what was causing the slow down.

I have personally struggled with slow performance and plenty of beach balls over the past year. Frankly, I was getting worried that OSX was becoming a big problem. Then....I discovered this.

http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2011/09/want-to-really-repair-permissions-on-your -mac-try-this/

Boom. Resetting home folder permissions fixed almost a year worth of issues. I am amazed I didn't discover this before but my home folder has been the culprit. Repair permissions does not correct your home folder.

My home folder was established in Tiger so I guess it needed some love. Now, OSX Lion screams.

I have three Macs and all have been extremely slow since uploading to Lion. Thanks for your advice... all three work great after using the disk utiliity to repair the startup drives.

As per my previous post, I thought my system was fine by removing the apps in 'login items' located in System Preferences > Users & Groups. However after a few weeks once again Lion became very slow. I did all kinds of tests but to no vail. Then I noticed this happens each time my system wakes up from hibernation, so I decided to switch off the Energy saving and see if there was an improvement and I noticed the system was fine.

I took the advise of some of the posters and read a lot of articles about this on other sites and finally restarted my Mac by holding down the Command key and the R key (Command-R), and kept holding them until the Apple icon appeared, there I selected Disk Utility and chose my HDD and first did a 'Repair Disk Permissions" then I did a "Repair Disk". Then restarted the system.

I did this a week ago and so far the speed has been excellent, no problems whatsover. Don't know if this would help some of you but its woth a try.

Same her on iMac i7 with 2 gb graphic cart and 16 mb ram just painfully slow

Tired everything here with no success and it turned out to be Mailhub a mail.app plugin. Removed and returned to normal performance.