MacBook Pro (10.8.4) suddenly very slow, hardware OK. Problem with System Launch Agents and Daemons?

Do you have Applecare?

If yes, make an appointment at the Apple store. They will solve it, one way or the other by repair or replacement.

While beachballing & general overall lag can be indicative of a coming hard drive failure, if Disk Utility reports that the disk is good, you MAY BE able to rule this out.

Because your machine does not have a discrete graphics card, some apps (Chrome, QuickTime, etc.) may run more slowly.

My first suggestion would be to increase the RAM - 8GBs is the 'sweet spot' but your machine can handle up to 16GB of RAM, allowing you to keep more apps open concurrently and allowing you to actually use that RAM (576MB of free RAM is actually kind of small).

Go to the Crucial website and click on the System Scanner tab. You'll download a small app that will report your model, etc., back to Crucial and you'll be given recommendations for upgrades. I can't recommend a minimum of 8GB of RAM strongly enough.

Clinton

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.
• If you're booting from an aftermarket SSD, see whether there's a firmware update for it.

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.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CReq 'GPU D|I/O' | tail | open -ef

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).

Launch the Terminal application in the same way you launched Console.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).

The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.

A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Normally the window will be empty. If you get output like this:

kernel[0] <Debug>: disk0s2: I/O error

the boot drive is failing, or there's some other hardware fault in the storage subsystem.

If you get output like this:

kernel[0] <Debug>: ** GPU Debug Info Start **

kernel[0] <Debug>: ** GPU Debug Info End **

there's a fault in the graphics processor or logic board. The two kinds of output are not mutually exclusive, but if you get both, a logic-board fault is likely.

Please enter the following command in the Terminal window as before and post the output:

diskutil list | open -ef

You have a recovery partition, so you should be able to boot from it. If you can, but only if you can verify that it's working, then I suggest the following course of action.

Back up all data to at least two different storage devices.

Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and erase the startup volume. This operation will destroy all data on the volume, so you had be better be sure of your backups. Quit Disk Utility and install OS X. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade, so make a note of those before you begin.

When you reboot, the Setup Assistant will launch to take you through the initial setup process. Follow the prompt to transfer the data from one of your backups. Don't transfer the Guest account, if it was enabled on the old system.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a test, not a solution. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

Step 1

The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account.

Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your personal files or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

*Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac” is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

Step 2

The purpose of this step is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, or by corruption of certain system caches.

Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. Note: If FileVault is enabled on some models, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.

Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain iMacs. The next normal boot may also be somewhat slow.

The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.

Test while in safe mode. Same problem?

After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of steps 1 and 2.

Had this same problem, went through everything i could find on the net, nothing wrong with my software or settings though, so took it back to apple who did a wipe clean and re install, still same problem, then replaced a front sensor? cable...still was no good so they replaced the hard drive now it works fine.

All the tests said my previous hard drive was ok too.

Hope this helps and hope yours is under warranty. seems a small number of machines are affected this crops up occasionally if you google it.