User profile for user: arhee
arhee Author
User level: Level 1
0 points

1 year old Macbook Pro is suddenly slow; please advise!

Hello! I've been having some trouble with my laptop recently. While I searched these forums for some help, I haven't been able to fix the problem.


I have a 13.3" mid-2012 model, OS X 10.8.4 with a 2.5 GHz processor and 4GB of memory. I have very little on my computer and have only used about 90 GB of my hard drive (out of 500 GB). Mostly just schoolwork and a few apps/programs, no games. So far it has held up very well. Booting up took maybe about 20 seconds max and apps would open almost instantaneously.


About a week ago, I noticed that my Mac was booting up very slowly for no discernible reason. I added nothing new to the computer and I'm kind of frustrated, since I've been doing my best to avoid this kind of lagging. It takes well over a minute to boot up (usually about 90 seconds) and apps take forever to open. When I have multiple apps open, the screen freezes up.


In addition, while I don't know if it's related, Safari tends to close randomly when I try to open a new tab. (I double checked different threads, and no, I did not have a huge number of tabs open at the same time when they happened.) When I restart Safari, it just directs me to my home page, and there is no notification of any sort about the crash. I also noticed over the last few months that I can feel an electric tingling when I place my palm on the aluminum, and I can't tell if that's the computer telling me something's wrong.


I tried a few different methods, but the computer is still lagging. After I tried doing the safe boot-reboot method, my computer is actually now even slower! Now, even the desktop takes forever to load the few files I have placed on the screen when starting up.


I would like to try and fix this problem myself before going to Apple. Help would be greatly appreciated!

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jul 16, 2013 8:48 AM

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6 replies
User profile for user: JorddyT
JorddyT
User level: Level 1
60 points

Jul 16, 2013 9:20 AM in response to arhee

Hey sound like your cpu is bottlenecked which means your cpu is restricted by the amount of ram that you have.... also if you want to increase your app and boot time of your cpu I suggest you go with a solid state drive


macsales.com is a great place to upgrade ram and go from hard drive to solid state drive


you can increase your ram from 4 gb to 16 gb this would help significantly and by adding a ssd you would have an incredibly fast Macbook pro.....

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User profile for user: Linc Davis
Linc Davis
User level: Level 10
209,739 points

Jul 16, 2013 9:49 AM in response to arhee

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.
  • Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk.


Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the problem.


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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User profile for user: arhee
arhee Author
User level: Level 1
0 points

Jul 17, 2013 12:47 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you JorddyT and Linc Davis!


The CPU usage constantly fluctuates, but the highest value fluctuates between 0.2 to 19.5 tops, usually staying around the low teens or below. The top processes tend to be Safari, Activity Monitor, Safari Web Content, Flux, Flash Player, Dropbox, mdworker and Finder, and usually only the first five or so are above 0.0.


% User: approx 0.20~5.00

% System: approx 1.-00~2.50

% Idle: mid-high 90s


Page Outs: 106.8 MB (0bytes/sec)

Swaps Used: 515.8 MB


Reads in/sec: usually stays at zero, sometimes in the teens~30, but at one point it jumped to 200+

Writes out/sec: usually 1~10, but at one point it jumped to 300+ (at the same time as reads in/sec jump above)


7/17/13 3:22:43.559 AM UserEventAgent[11]: Captive: en1: Not probing 'WIFI' (protected network)

7/17/13 3:22:43.563 AM configd[18]: network changed: v4(en1!:192.168.0.11) DNS Proxy SMB

7/17/13 3:24:02.569 AM Safari[302]: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context 0x0

7/17/13 3:24:03.606 AM Safari[302]: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context 0x0

7/17/13 3:24:04.492 AM Safari[302]: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context 0x0

7/17/13 3:24:12.526 AM mdwrite[573]: [ERROR] [0.000s] com.apple. UBItemStatusNotification.c:805 _do_UBItemStatusNotificationRegisterURLs() can't find realpath for "/Users/ME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~system~spotlight/mdlabels", was blocked at "/Users/ME/Library/Mobile Documents": 2 (No such file or directory)

7/17/13 3:24:12.526 AM mdwrite[573]: [ERROR] [0.001s] com.apple. UBItemStatusNotification.c:805 _do_UBItemStatusNotificationRegisterURLs() can't find realpath for "/Users/ME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~system~spotlight/mdlabels", was blocked at "/Users/ME/Library/Mobile Documents": 2 (No such file or directory)

7/17/13 3:26:04.233 AM Activity Monitor[576]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

7/17/13 3:26:04.233 AM Activity Monitor[576]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

7/17/13 3:26:06.604 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.quicklook.satellite.9B79A004-2104-409D-B4E1-A3010EAC5A82[578]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:26:06.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 578 [QuickLookSatelli]

7/17/13 3:26:15.758 AM helpd[582]: CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary on line 3. Parsing will be abandoned. Break on _CFPropertyListMissingSemicolon to debug.

7/17/13 3:26:15.759 AM helpd[582]: CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary on line 3. Parsing will be abandoned. Break on _CFPropertyListMissingSemicolon to debug.

7/17/13 3:26:43.697 AM Safari[302]: CGContextClipToRect: invalid context 0x0

7/17/13 3:26:43.731 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[135]: (com.apple.pbs[574]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:26:43.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 574 [pbs]

7/17/13 3:26:46.298 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[135]: (com.apple.tccd[566]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:26:46.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 566 [tccd]

7/17/13 3:26:46.774 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[135]: (com.apple.CalendarAgent[565]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:26:46.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 565 [CalendarAgent]

7/17/13 3:27:18.484 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[135]: (com.apple.accountsd[584]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:27:18.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 584 [accountsd]

7/17/13 3:27:49.427 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.sleepservicesd[498]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:27:49.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 498 [SleepServicesD]

7/17/13 3:29:12.242 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.sleepservicesd[585]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:29:12.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 585 [SleepServicesD]

7/17/13 3:29:12.518 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.xpcd.F5010000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[408]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:29:12.632 AM Dock[148]: no information back from LS about running process

7/17/13 3:29:12.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 408 [xpcd]

7/17/13 3:29:16.448 AM librariand[600]: MMe quota status changed: under quota

7/17/13 3:29:19.095 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[135]: (com.apple.tccd[588]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:29:19.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 588 [tccd]

7/17/13 3:29:20.897 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.audio.SandboxHelper[589]) Exited: Killed: 9

7/17/13 3:29:20.000 AM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 589 [com.apple.audio.]

7/17/13 3:29:46.492 AM coreaudiod[151]: Disabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is active

7/17/13 3:29:47.056 AM coreaudiod[151]: Enabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is inactive

7/17/13 3:32:16.244 AM coreaudiod[151]: Disabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is active

7/17/13 3:32:16.778 AM coreaudiod[151]: Enabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is inactive

7/17/13 3:32:29.730 AM WebProcess[304]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

7/17/13 3:32:30.000 AM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(619) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

7/17/13 3:32:31.070 AM sandboxd[619]: ([304]) WebProcess(304) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

7/17/13 3:37:29.000 AM kernel[0]: MacAuthEvent en1 Auth result for: 00:26:66:6a:e5:54 MAC AUTH succeeded

7/17/13 3:37:29.000 AM kernel[0]: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP virtIf = 0

7/17/13 3:37:29.000 AM kernel[0]: wl0: Roamed or switched channel, reason #8, bssid 00:26:66:6a:e5:54

7/17/13 3:37:29.000 AM kernel[0]: en1: BSSID changed to 00:26:66:6a:e5:54

7/17/13 3:37:29.000 AM kernel[0]: en1::IO80211Interface::postMessage bssid changed

7/17/13 3:37:30.000 AM kernel[0]: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1

7/17/13 3:37:35.795 AM com.apple.time[138]: Interval maximum value is 946100000 seconds (specified value: 9223372036854775807).

7/17/13 3:40:32.471 AM coreaudiod[151]: Disabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is active


I hope this helps!

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1 year old Macbook Pro is suddenly slow; please advise!

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