OS X Lion is incredibly slow (even after index)

jswin......you've summarized my dissatisfaction very well. Additionally, I can no longer mount my external NTFS hard drive (not sure if it has to do with this drive being connected via USB when I downloaded/installed Lion).

Basically, every application is running much much slower or just crashing (e.g. Firefox, Word, Finder, etc.)

Sadly, I'm seriously considering using Time Machine to revert back to my Snow Leopard system from early Thursday morning.

: (

Ok guys I had the exact same problem but I think I found a solution. I just did it about 30 minutes ago and since then my MBP is running just like it used to with snow leapord. No gaurantees that i fixed the problem but this is what i did. I went to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility. I then ran a verify disk scan and found that there were many problems with me Macintosh HD drive. It said I needed an install disk of lion to fix. Since there is no disk I thought I would experiment and this is what I did.

1) shut down my computer and then started it back up while holding down the alt key. (this should bring up two disk options to run your computer)

2) I chose the second option (I believe it is called something like "recovery disk" but dont quote me on that. you want to select the one that is NOT Macintosh HD)

3) It loaded and then gave me four choises of what to do. I clicked disk utility.

4) From there I ran the verify disk scan again then clicked repair disk.

5) I then ran the verify disk perrmissions scan and then repaired those as well.

6) then I restarted my computer and spotlight indexed the computer (i let it do its thing without running any programs) once it was done my computer worked so much faster and for the first time I can say, I AM GLAD I HAVE LION! 🙂 I hope this is a permenant fix. Please let me know if you try this and how it works for you 🙂

Good Luck!!!

I am new to this forumn thing so I dont know if you get notifications that says I posted earthman. So just incase I am writing this as a reply to ou telling you to look at my above post and try that out.

I couldn't agree with you more! After installing Lion, it's like I have gone back in time to when I saw a sluggish PC with Windows! Ever single application I use is slower - the graphics are so jerky is horrible, saving files is OpenOffice is slow, surfing the web with Chrome you name it!

Could this be due to severe disk fragmentation after two OS upgrades (Snow Leopard & Lion)? To me this is doubtful as I have only used 25% of the available disk space but perhaps it is. "Disk Utility" gives no information about disk fragmentation though.

So what is it? I have plenty of memory and disk space so there's only one thing left: CPU. Did Apple forget to turn off debug mode? Is it the new security enhancements which slow down every single OS function call?

There's definitely something rotten in the state of Denmark... And I really don't have the time and energy to find out what!

I seem to have fixed the problem on my MBP i7. I shut down the computer and booted it while holding down the OPTION key. Then, select Recovery HD and click on the arrow. Select Disk Utility. When it's openend, select your Mac HD. I first clicked Repair Disk. As it went through this, it reported that my HD was fine. I then went to Repair Disk Permissions. It found a fair number of problems during this process and repaired them. After it finished, I restarted the computer and it seems much better now. I hope this process works for others.

Thank you so much! This seemed to have worked on my Early 2009 White Macbook. Hopefully Apple will have an update soon to fix the slowness in other areas. Did you notice your Preview even being slow? Mine was terribly slow before I did was you said, xraydoug. I was constantly getting the spinny wheel of death when I would switch through the pages too fast in Full Screen in Preview. Fortunately, doing this helped a lot! Thanks again.

Well I was quite doubtful about this strange sounding procedure but in desperation I tried it! It works! I am now a happy camper!🙂

Thanks very much!

Hi xraydoug - Thanks for the info. Did exactly as you said but to no avail. Still very slow and getting the rainbow wheel nearly every time I browse. Prior to download everything was excellent. Looked at most other users who have now found their mac to be much slower when Lion downloaded. Will try and wait to see if apple come up with some solution. Thanks again

Vic

Hi Guys,

I experienced loads of issues with my os x Lion install - my 2.53Ghx i5 was just crawling. I tried repairing disk permissions with little effect.

Then i disabled quicksilver. I knew it wasn't compatible but since it has been running on my macs for 5 years I was reluctant to get rid for some reason.

The SECOND that I quit it from the menu bar my computer was instantly more responsive.

A complete guess would suggest that since it indexes the machine, and it's not set up to run under os x Lion yet, it was getting stuck and being a memory hog?

Perhaps you haven't had quicksilver installed, but just try and disable all background running apps before you take the drastic step of reinstalling.

good luck!

Stuart

Hi APierce24, Thank you for your help ... your experiment does work for me as well ... yes, found some disk issue, repaired ... disk permission issue and repaired ... notice improved performance after i completed all the steps ... whew!! now the Lion is back!! enjoy 🙂

Lion OS is slow for me too. 2.4 Intel core with 2G of RAM. Totally disappointed. Will retreat to snow leopard. First time they got it wrong.

Thanks for all the information here, I tried everything suggested still same problem. My Lion is extremely slow. When I restart the system, for the first 5 mines it works fast then it starts dragging and eventually it becomes so slow that I have to retart th esystem again. I checked on eh Activity Monitor to see what coud cause this and I can see abot 50% of the CPU is being used by DaemonManager. I wonder if this is what the cause is.

Please Apple, find a solution for us!!

After having wrestled with this for quite a while, repeating what I described above often, as the problem kept returning, I finally did a clean install of Lion. It has worked perfectly since. I think there is something funky in the upgrade installation path. I highly recommend installing Lion to a clean drive.

Guys I found a fix. I don't know if this would help you all but give it a try and see if it does.

Basically like the rest of you I searched and searched for a solution, I even reformated my system and clean installed Lion but still I had the same problem.

Yesterday, I did the following:

Go to

System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items

You will see a list of some Applications that will automatically start at log in.

I deleted some of the apps that I have installed such as:

iTunes Helper

Snapz Pro

iTeleport

Then I restarted my system and it is now a day later and the system works perfect, very fast and not lagging at all. So you may have an application that is causing the Lion to be so slow, I would delete them one by one and test your system, once you find the culprit then you can easily add the other apps again to the login section.

Good luck