mountain lion super slow

Please go to  Menu > About this Mac > and tell us Version, Processor & Memory specs on your Mac. Also available hard disk space, by choosing your Macintosh HD and "GetInfo" (cmd-i).

Did you just install and could Spolight still be indexing?

There's nothing wrong with the OS, millions are using w/o problems. I can tell you going in that Apple's specs for 2GH RAM are a little light. I'd consider 4GB a minimum.

but that said, it should run better than you say.

Try starting in Safe Mode and see if the problem still occurs?

Restart holding the "shift" key.

(Expect it to take longer to start this way because it runs a directory check first.)

EDIT: The amount of people with problems here is just about right for a technical support forum. You don't go to the emergency room and see gurneys full of healthy folks, do you?

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.

One possible cause of a slow user interface is a large number of image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons. If you have more than a dozen or so such files, move them to another folder.

Otherwise, take these steps when you notice the slowdown.

Step 1

Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.

Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.

Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.

Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.

Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?

Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in and Writes out.)

Step 2

If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.

Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.

Select the 50 or so most recent messages in the log. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Are you here to argue, or to fix what's wrong?

Paulin1160 wrote:

Well, I can tell you I've been with Mac for probably 2 decades and never have I experienced such problems.. My computer was fine untilI upgrade to Snow leopard then Mountain Lion, and look on the net and see how many articles are actually popping up about this issue..

Thanks anyway..

I've been on Macs since the original 128K Macintosh, so I've got you beat by almost a decade, not that has anything to do with your problem. But since it appears to be some measure of something important to you with respect to installing an OS, I've upgraded four Macs of differing capabilities to Mountain Lion and have not seen any of the issues you describe.

People had proglems with Lion and people have problems with Mountain Lion. They can normally be fixed. Of course this forum is full of people with problems. This is where they come for help to fix them. What do you expect to see?

You begin with:

I am just baffled that Apple could release such a crappy OS.. My system was flying before I upgraded to Snow leopard for chich I had to run around town to get a cd ( how messed up is that??) then paid again to upgrade to an OS that's a total mess.. system takes forever to boot, application take forever to load.. I mean.. a total mess!!

Then go off on Macjack. Really? Get over yourself.