Q: My macbook pro has become extremely slow...

Rather than ask a dozen questions for more details about the problem consider the following:

Apple Support Communities contributor etresoft wrote a very useful app to quickly gather certain system information that may help point to a cause of this problem. Go to his website, download and run EtreCheck:

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Etrecheck will be in your Downloads folder. Open it from there. You may see the following dialog box:

Click Open - etresoft contributes to this forum frequently and can be considered a trustworthy developer.

It will take a moment to run as it collects its data.

Copy and paste its output in a reply.

Do not be concerned about anything that says "Problem" or "failed".

EtreCheck was designed to remove any personal information (such as your computer's name and serial numbers) but if you see anything that looks like an email address or any other personal information that should not be divulged to others, please delete or obscure that information when you post the reply.

When you are finished with EtreCheck, quit the program. It occupies very little space, and you can keep it or drag it to the Trash as you wish.

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.

L1229 wrote:

 

Hardware Information:

System Software:

          Mac OS X 10.7.5 (11G63) - Uptime: 35 days 18:20

Reboot!

Problem System Launch Daemons:

             [not loaded]          ftp-proxy.plist

This isn't your problem, but unless you use an ftp proxy server in another location, you can safely discard it.

Internet Plug-ins:

          Flash Player.plugin

          FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

One too many of these. Since you are running Lion, I would guess the second one should go.

User Internet Plug-ins:

          npBcsMcTcIO.plugin

I don't recognize this one off the top of my head.  Google's not giving me much. Part of this discussion.

Top Processes by CPU:

              33%          clamscan

               9%          PluginProcess

               6%          ClamXav

               4%          TweetDeck

               3%          coreaudiod

               3%          WindowServer

               2%          WebProcess

               2%          EtreCheck

               1%          Kindle

               1%          mds

Running a ClamXav scan may be masking your real problem.  Run Etrecheck when you don't have a scan in progress.

PluginProcess is part of WebKit which, in turn is usually Safari.

Assume you still use a BlackBerry (rim), HP & Kindle devices?

L1229 wrote:

 

Blackberry no ...I went with an iphone =)

Trash all the com.rim.BB... items and remove "BlackBerry Device Manager" from your login items.

User Internet Plug-ins:

          npBcsMcTcIO.plugin

I do not recognize that and have no idea what it is supposed to do. Assuming you do not either, get rid of it.

Your complaint concerned Safari. Given that it is an Internet Plug-in, I surmise it is the primary cause of your trouble.

Don't install "plugins" or "toolbars" unless you know what they are supposed to do. Many such things are designed to deliver targeted advertisements or are outright scams, and their developers obscure their actual intent by labeling them "accelerators" or "enhancements". Don't succumb to these deceptive tactics. Even some "coupon printers" are poorly designed, and can cause the sort of trouble you describe.

Adobe Flash Player installs both those system-wide Internet Plug-ins, including "FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin", even on Lion and Mountain Lion systems. That's what installing Flash Player did to my systems in the past, anyway. Whether this is intentional or an oversight their part I have no way of knowing. If you don't need Flash then uninstall it, but unless the slowdowns correlate to websites containing Flash content, then they are not likely the sole cause.

John Galt wrote:

 

Adobe Flash Player installs both those system-wide Internet Plug-ins, including "FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin", even on Lion and Mountain Lion systems. That's what installing Flash Player did to my systems in the past, anyway.

The 10.6.plugin does not exist on my new iMac that came with 10.8.3 pre-installed.  Do the version numbers match?

Do you mean that Adobe Flash installer did not install the "FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin" when you last installed it? I'll download the latest Flash installer and let you know.

OK, here is Etrecheck before installing Flash Player:

(system info omitted)

Kernel Extensions:

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

                 [failed] com.apple.mrt.uiagent.plist

Launch Daemons:

                 [loaded] com.barebones.authd.plist

                 [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.plist

Launch Agents:

User Launch Agents:

                 [loaded] com.ecamm.printopia.plist

User Login Items:

          SpeechSynthesisServer

3rd Party Preference Panes:

          Printopia

Internet Plug-ins:

          iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

          JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

          QuickTime Plugin.plugin

          Silverlight.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Bad Fonts:

          None

Top Processes by CPU:

               7%          pbs

               2%          EtreCheck

               1%          WindowServer

               0%          hidd

               0%          WebProcess

               0%          Finder

               0%          fontd

               0%          coreservicesd

               0%          System

               0%          ioupsd

Top Processes by Memory:

          360 MB          WebProcess

          164 MB          mds

          131 MB          Mail

          98 MB          Xcode

          66 MB          Safari

          66 MB          Finder

          66 MB          Notes

          66 MB          WindowServer

          66 MB          coreservicesd

          33 MB          com.apple.dock.extra

After installing Flash Player 11.7.700.169:

Kernel Extensions:

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

                 [failed] com.apple.mrt.uiagent.plist

Launch Daemons:

             [not loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

                 [loaded] com.barebones.authd.plist

                 [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.plist

Launch Agents:

User Launch Agents:

                 [loaded] com.ecamm.printopia.plist

User Login Items:

      SpeechSynthesisServer

3rd Party Preference Panes:

          Flash Player

          Printopia

Internet Plug-ins:

          Flash Player.plugin

          FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

          iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

          JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

          QuickTime Plugin.plugin

          Silverlight.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Bad Fonts:

          None

Top Processes by CPU:

               2%          EtreCheck

               2%          WindowServer

               1%          pbs

               0%          System

               0%          Finder

               0%          coreservicesd

               0%          WebProcess

               0%          fontd

               0%          dpd

Top Processes by Memory:

          426 MB          WebProcess

          164 MB          mds

          131 MB          Mail

          98 MB          Xcode

          66 MB          coreservicesd

          66 MB          Notes

          66 MB          Finder

          66 MB          WindowServer

          66 MB          Safari

          33 MB          ocspd

I did not reboot after installing Flash Player (since I would lose this reply), which I think is the reason that the Launch Daemon com.adobe.fpsaud.plist says  [not loaded] . The presence of FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin is consistent with what I have observed in the past though.

I have no Snow Leopard mounted volumes.

If FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin disappears after a reboot, I'll post a follow-up, but as I wrote I believe it is normal for Adobe to install it on Mountain Lion. Whether Adobe knows what they're doing is another story.

Activity Monitor – Monitor Performance Problems          

Performance Guide

Why is my computer slow

Why your Mac runs slower than it should

John Galt wrote:

 

Do you mean that Adobe Flash installer did not install the "FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin" when you last installed it?

Sorry you had to go through that. If it makes you feel any better, I did the same thing and there was no such file in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/.

That's when it dawned on me that we were talking about EtreCheck, ran it and found that it does indeed appear there.

So I took a look at the contents of Flash Player.plugin and found

/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin/Contents/PlugIns/FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin/ inside.

No worries; it cleared up any uncertainty since I had not installed Flash Player in some time.

npBcsMcTcIO.plugin = Catalina Savings Printer Plugin