Will restoring my Macbook Pro improve it's performance? It has become really slow lately on start up and in opening applications.

Possibly. If you've a Time Machine backup, you could always boot from your Recovery partition, erase the boot partition, reinstall OS X and then restore from your TM backup. It certainly won't hurt anything.

See ds store's excellent user tip - Why is my computer slow?

Clinton

SteveTee13 wrote:

By restoring I mean by backing up files with Time Machine and then proceeding to erasing everything that's in the HD and finally reinstalling the OS.

If your attempting to eliminate all causes of slow down issues, I advise copying just the users files you want to restore with to a external storage drive (not TimeMachine), then command r boot and use that Disk Utility to erase (with zero, move slider one spot to the right/security option if a hard drive) the Macintosh HD partition, then let it finish, then install OS X+ update, then programs, then user accounts, then known/good files from the storage drive.

So basically the only thing returned is user files, which usually don't cause slowdown issues, unless it's a rare corrupted/malicious and then you'll realize which one it is.

Once you do this and all set up nice and fast again, be sure to clone this configuration to a external drive, that way if you have a issue in the future (like I just had at Starbucks recently) you can simply hold option key and boot off the clone and reverse clone (after grabbing a copy of the latest files) and the cloning software will restore your machine.

TimeMachine rotates it's backups, a clone can remain more pernament configuration to restore from.

Most commonly used backup methods

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.