Level 1

8 points

OS 10.7 Lion the slowest system ever - have I done something wrong?

I recently upgraded to os 10.7 from the App store, along with all the various things that need upgrading as well (.e.g Microsoft Office, etc), on a 2.53 GHz 4GB/500GB Macbook Pro (1.5 years old).

The systems is the SLOWEST and most ponderous I've used in 20 years!! It can take 10 minutes to start up when opening a couple of programmes (Mail, Word, Excel), the Office programs crash incessantly, swtiching between applications is slow, starting up Paralles is GLACIAL, applications freeze all the time. I've still got over 100 GB free on the hard drive.

Either I've got something set up terribly wrong (but 10.6 worked amazingly), or this is the worst system Apple has ever put out!! HELLPPPP!!!

Aperture 3, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on May 7, 2012 1:45 AM

20 replies

dobura Author

Level 1

8 points

May 18, 2012 6:42 AM in response to etresoft

KAV-cleaned and raring to go, I was looking forward to super-performance, but not so. A week later and I'm ready to throw my beloved laptop through the window about 10 times each day. OS 10.7 is still the worst OS i've seen in a long time. I guess the deafening silence from Apple, Kaspersky and others only confirms it ... cheers all

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

May 18, 2012 6:55 AM in response to dobura

The OS works fine for most people. Your system is still misconfigured. If you want to continue trying to solve the problem, please repeat the steps suggested in my message of May 8 and post the results.

dobura Author

Level 1

8 points

May 21, 2012 4:51 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hi Linc - here's the latest results ..

At the moment I've had the computer on for about 8 hours, mainly working in mail, excel, google earth ...

Activity monitor:

CPU all processes

- kernel_task is often at the top with ≈10%, otherwise a mix of Mali, google earth, firefox, excel - most of these at >3% most of the time

- At the bottom: %user 3.37, %system 2.5, %idle 92%; Threads 575, Processes 113

System memory

Page outs - 730 MB, Swap used 1.73 GB

Kernel.log - most recent posts:

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: /drv/ MacModule.cpp:299 powerStateWillChangeTo: found flag=kIOPMPowerOn (2)

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: /drv/ MacModule.cpp:304 powerStateWillChangeTo: found flag=kIOPMRestartCapability (80)

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: /drv/ MacModule.cpp:298 powerStateDidChangeTo: flags=82 stateNumber=3

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: /drv/ MacModule.cpp:299 powerStateDidChangeTo: found flag=kIOPMPowerOn (2)

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: /drv/ MacModule.cpp:304 powerStateDidChangeTo: found flag=kIOPMRestartCapability (80)

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: Previous Sleep Cause: 5

May 21 10:13:04 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: Sound assertion "0 == fAudioEngineArray" failed in AppleHDADriver at line 3163 goto Exit

May 21 10:13:08: --- last message repeated 3 times ---

May 21 10:13:08 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: en1: 802.11d country code set to 'GB'.

May 21 10:13:08 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: en1: Supported channels 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 120 124 128 132 136 140

May 21 10:13:10 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: MacAuthEvent en1 Auth result for: 00:22:b0:75:65:4f MAC AUTH succeeded

May 21 10:13:10 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP

May 21 10:13:10 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Up on en1

May 21 10:13:10 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: en1: BSSID changed to 00:22:b0:75:65:4f

May 21 10:15:59 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: nspace-handler-set-snapshot-time: 1337584561

May 21 10:16:36 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: [ffffff800eb43c00][BNBMouseDevice::init][66.6] init is complete

May 21 10:16:36 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: [ffffff800eb43c00][BNBMouseDevice::handleStart][66.6] Done

May 21 10:16:36 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: [ffffff800c3e4c00][AppleMultitouchHIDEventDriver::start] entered

May 21 10:16:36 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: [ffffff800c0fde00][AppleMultitouchDevice::start] entered

May 21 10:32:09 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::validateChecksum - 512-byte packet checksum is incorrect (expected 0xd5d6, checksum bytes were 0xffff)

May 21 10:40:40 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: MacAuthEvent en1 Auth result for: 00:22:b0:75:65:4f MAC AUTH succeeded

May 21 10:40:40 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP

May 21 10:40:40 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: en1: BSSID changed to 00:22:b0:75:65:4f

May 21 10:53:35 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: nspace-handler-set-snapshot-time: 1337586816

May 21 11:33:15 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT

May 21 11:33:17 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

May 21 11:35:37 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_WAT_ALERT

May 21 11:35:38 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: macx_swapon SUCCESS

May 21 11:42:45 Obura-MacBook kernel[0]: (default pager): [KERNEL]: ps_select_segment - send HI_

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

May 21, 2012 6:05 AM in response to dobura

Your problem is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory.

That can happen for two reasons:

(1) You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or

(2) You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.

Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination. In Activity Monitor, select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table once or twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If one process (not including "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more memory over time without ever releasing it.

This suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:

sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total

where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details:

Memory Usage Performance Guidelines: About the Virtual Memory System

If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.

dobura Author

Level 1

8 points

May 21, 2012 9:54 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks - I"ve done the former (I'm not going to try the latter!!) - there doesn't seem to be any egregious memory hog - mail, firefox, excel, finder and word top out from 325 - 125 MB of real memory, and about the same of virtual memory. kernel_task is at the top iht 425/112 and windowserver floats around 4th. I'll keep monitoring it to see if anything irregular develops ...

many thanks!!

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OS 10.7 Lion the slowest system ever - have I done something wrong?