iMac slows to a crawl, only Time Machine restore brings it back to life

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Level 1

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iMac slows to a crawl, only Time Machine restore brings it back to life

This has been going on for at least 6 months now and I'm fed up with dealing with it.

After upgrading to 10.8 or 10.8.1, I noticed that my computer would slow to a crawl unexpectedly; even just in the finder with no apps running. I would have mouse movement, but even to click within menus, or to open a folder would be met with no repsonse and the spinning beachball. I would walk away, and an hour later, the **** beachball is still spinning and my folder hasn't opened. A restart would result in the same behavior. I tried starting in safe mode = same behavior. I would run disk utilility and repair the disk and disk permissions = same behavior.

I ended up doing a restore from Time Machine to a backup that was dated before the trouble started = Things ran smoothly again. I mean really smoothly; I thought "hey, I like this 10.8!". It seemed to be hitting on all cylanders for once. But after a week or two of normal usage (web browsing, youtubing, some adobe creative suite usage), the OS came to screeching halt again.

I tried the same steps as before, and the only thing that helped was a Time Machine restore to a backup from a couple of days prior.

And so it goes, I am able to use my computer normally and happily for a week or two. But it is ineveitable that my OS will spontaneously slow to a crawl and nothing can break the spell except for a couple-of-days-old Time Machine restore- and poof, I'm back up and running. But I can assure you, this is very frustrating and time-consuming.

I swear I'm not downloading anything illicit to my machine; I perform regular computing activites on this computer and my usage varies little from day to day.

When things are running well, I will open activity monitor and leave it up so I can watch out for any memory hogs, but this pursuit seems to be fruitless as it teaches me nothing.

Maybe this bit of info helps: at one point, a while ago, I created a new user account during one of my Mac's spells, and it seemed to work okay when I logged in. But when I logged back into my main account, I again was faced with the dreaded beachball and could not perform any functions within the Finder. I contemplated migrating all of my files to this new user, but decided that I was determined to salvage my main user account since it was clearly a software issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'll be checking to answer any questions about my situation.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), Early 2008 iMac, 2.4 Ghz, 6GB RAM

Posted on Apr 11, 2013 11:03 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 11, 2013 12:09 PM in response to Willow1013

How large is you HD and how much space do you have left?

User Tip: Why is my computer slow?

What to do when your computer is too slow

Speeding up your Mac

Check out: Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball/freezing & crashing

Reply

Answer 2

Willow1013 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 11, 2013 12:17 PM in response to Baby-Boomer-USofA

Good question but I don't think that's it. I have a 250GB HD with about 60GB remaining. What else could cause this? I'll check out the links you posted. Thanks!

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Apr 11, 2013 3:25 PM in response to Willow1013

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

There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily.

Reset the System Management Controller.
If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane.
Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any.
Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items.

Otherwise, take the steps below 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. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning.

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. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.

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Answer 4

Willow1013 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 12, 2013 5:38 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks so much, I will try these steps the next time I encounter the slow down again. Hopefully the log will show something helpful.

I will try to do the backup restore tonight so I can get it running again, and back to a fresh starting point.

Reply

Answer 5

Willow1013 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 23, 2013 6:43 PM in response to Linc Davis

Okay, here goes. It took a few days after my last backup restore, but I started experiencing a slowdown. This happened less than an hour after booting up. Sorry for the length, but I didn't want to leave anything out. Please help!

Top % CPU is 'Safari Web Content' ranging from 5% to 45% at times

% User is 6.5%

% System is 3.25%

% Idle is 90%

Page Outs: 0 bytes (0 bytes/sec)

Swap Used: 0 bytes

Reads in/sec: 0

Writes out/sec: 0

Last 50 or so log entries leading up to and during the slowdown.

4/23/13 9:05:18.929 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Will copy (54 KB) from Macintosh HD

4/23/13 9:05:18.930 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Found 29 files (54 KB) needing backup

4/23/13 9:05:18.931 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: 3.39 GB required (including padding), 25 GB available

4/23/13 9:05:23.860 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Copied 1414 files (78 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.

4/23/13 9:05:24.002 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Created new backup: 2013-04-23-210523

4/23/13 9:05:25.316 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Starting post-backup thinning

4/23/13 9:05:44.037 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Deleted /Volumes/TM_Backup/Backups.backupdb/Le iMac/2013-03-24-002031 (20.1 MB)

4/23/13 9:06:01.110 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Deleted /Volumes/TM_Backup/Backups.backupdb/Le iMac/2013-03-23-001342 (30.7 MB)

4/23/13 9:06:02.360 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Deleted /Volumes/TM_Backup/Backups.backupdb/Le iMac/2013-04-21-221452 (967 KB)

4/23/13 9:06:04.337 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Deleted /Volumes/TM_Backup/Backups.backupdb/Le iMac/2013-04-21-211453 (1.1 MB)

4/23/13 9:06:05.367 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Deleted /Volumes/TM_Backup/Backups.backupdb/Le iMac/2013-04-21-201452 (1 MB)

4/23/13 9:06:05.368 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Post-back up thinning complete: 5 expired backups removed

4/23/13 9:06:05.504 PM com.apple.backupd[411]: Backup completed successfully.

4/23/13 9:08:01.523 PM CVMServer[130]: Check-in to the service com.apple.cvmsCompAgent_x86_64_1 failed. This is likely because you have either unloaded the job or the MachService has the ResetAtClose attribute specified in the launchd.plist. If present, this attribute should be removed.

4/23/13 9:08:01.564 PM CVMServer[130]: Check-in to the service com.apple.cvmsCompAgent_x86_64_1 failed. This is likely because you have either unloaded the job or the MachService has the ResetAtClose attribute specified in the launchd.plist. If present, this attribute should be removed.

4/23/13 9:08:03.033 PM Safari[498]: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context 0x0

4/23/13 9:08:16.194 PM WindowServer[93]: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.

4/23/13 9:08:16.387 PM WindowServer[93]: reenable_update_for_connection: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Finder" after 1.19 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds)

4/23/13 9:08:55.707 PM Locum[518]: Connection with distnoted server was invalidated

4/23/13 9:09:18.915 PM QuickLookUIHelper[519]: CoreAnimation: warning, deleted thread with uncommitted CATransaction; set CA_DEBUG_TRANSACTIONS=1 in environment to log backtraces.

4/23/13 9:09:23.019 PM WindowServer[93]: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.

4/23/13 9:09:23.095 PM WindowServer[93]: reenable_update_for_connection: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Finder" after 1.08 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds)

4/23/13 9:09:49.757 PM Safari[498]: Couldn't contact spell checker for Multilingual

4/23/13 9:09:51.518 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:09:51.519 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:09:51.520 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:09:51.521 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:10:23.702 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:10:23.703 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:10:23.704 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:10:23.705 PM AppleSpell[471]: *** -[NSMachPort handlePortMessage:]: dropping incoming DO message because the connection is invalid

4/23/13 9:12:00.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(535) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

4/23/13 9:12:18.760 PM WindowServer[93]: CGXSetWindowBackgroundBlurRadius: Invalid window 0xffffffff

4/23/13 9:12:21.663 PM WindowServer[93]: CGXSetWindowBackgroundBlurRadius: Invalid window 0xffffffff

4/23/13 9:13:33.530 PM Finder[214]: ISGetIconFamilyFromStorage: seed mismatch for 22d10019, actual seed is af5934f1

1 OSServices 0x00007fff8d7c6720 _ZL26ISGetIconFamilyFromStoragejPP17CIconStorageArrayPj + 140

2 OSServices 0x00007fff8d7f4e5b _ISIsStorageOnTheVolume + 23

3 OSServices 0x00007fff8d81f506 _ISIsAnyOfImageStoragesOnTheVolume + 47

4 LaunchServices 0x00007fff8d5ff313 _ZN13CIconRefEntry23DataChangedAfterUnmountEs + 13

5 LaunchServices 0x00007fff8d5fe4a8 _ZN13CIconRefArray13UnmountVolumeEs + 82

6 LaunchServices 0x00007fff8d5ff2fc _ZL21MountNotificationHookP15VolumeNoticeBlk + 39

7 CarbonCore 0x00007fff96e028d7 _Z29_FSVolumeNotificationCallbacksPK10__CFStringPKvPv + 282

8 CarbonCore 0x00007fff96dcee3e _FSVolumeObserverCallback + 165

9 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b367e40 __CFMachPortPerform + 288

10 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b367d09 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE1_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ + 41

11 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b367a49 __CFRunLoopDoSource1 + 153

12 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b39ac02 __CFRunLoopRun + 1826

13 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b39a0e2 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 290

14 HIToolbox 0x00007fff8dfc4eb4 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 209

15 HIToolbox 0x00007fff8dfc4c52 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 356

16 HIToolbox 0x00007fff8dfc4ae3 BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 62

17 AppKit 0x00007fff93170563 _DPSNextEvent + 685

18 AppKit 0x00007fff9316fe22 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 128

19 AppKit 0x00007fff931671d3 -[NSApplication run] + 517

20 AppKit 0x00007fff9310bc06 NSApplicationMain + 869

21 Finder 0x000000010a330b86 Finder + 23430

22 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff954f27e1 start + 0

23 ??? 0x0000000000000001 0x0 + 1

4/23/13 9:13:33.532 PM Finder[214]: ISGetIconFamilyFromStorage: seed mismatch for 21e7001a, actual seed is c224c655