Q: Is Mavericks making your machine run slow?

michaelvee,

     Have you tried repairing your keychains, as I talked about in an above post? That fixed everything for me. All of the apple apps were taking a ridiculously long time to work, and repairing the keychains fixed it all. I found an old post saying that several keychains could battle with each other causing mail and other apps to hang up.

     Give it a shot, it won't hurt anything.

Hi, Bizarro,

Thank you, I did read your post and I did try, but there appeared to be nothing wrong, and it was all over in a blink of an eye! But I'll take another look. The frustrating thing for me is there's nothing catastrophically or obviously wrong with my OS / performance. It just feels "woolier"  than Mountain Lion, which is disappointing. I've run many diagnostic tests, and nothing comes back as a red flag....

Thanks again.

michaelvee wrote:

 

I've installed it and OnyX and honestly haven't noticed too much of an improvement. Frankly, I'ma little scared of OnyX: it's a bit deep for an idiot like me, but I managed to grasp some basics.

OnyX is a good tool when it's really needed, but does nothing unless you tell it to. It's also not something you want to run routinely since OS X takes very good care of it's own routine maintenance, so it's only a tool to fix something that broken, such as clearing out a corrupt cache (which is a rare occurrence anyway). I truthfully don't remember the last time I used it for anything.

I'm not unhappy with Mavericks to the degree of some unfortunate people, but I have to say that I'm a little disappionted with the slowness factor, relating to certain Apple ,er apps. It's not disastrous, but I still keep thinking that maybe I should reinstall.

Most people will be disappointed for a day or two since there are a lot of housekeeping chores that need to be done with any new OS. TimeMachine needs time to back thousands of new files associated with Mavericks and as applications are updated, either in the background if you allow it, or by installing them yourself they two must be newly backed up. Spotlight has a lot of work to do, also.  It's only after TimeMachine, Software Update and Spotlight have caught up that you can really judge how it will be for the long haul.

Not to say everything will be perfect. We're told that 10.9.1 to fix many of the items found during developer and seed testing that were not dealt with prior to release and that 10.9.2 will add some features that were likewise not ready at release. One such item being discussed in these forums is that icons are slow to show up in a newly opened Finder window. Some aren't seeing the problem, but many others believe they are.

I have personally observed some difference in the way Internet DNS queries are handled that delay some aspects of Internet services. I can't say that I've noticed browsing to be any different, but database updates seem to be failing and resorting to work-arounds routinely with Mavericks.

Once, after two days of using Mavericks, everything suddenly slowed to a crawl. Reboots, Safe Mode, guest accounts were all effected, so I resorted to using the Restoration Partition to reinstall the OS and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

I was probably fortunate in that I spent a considerable length of time moving from an old iMac G5 running Leopard to a new iMac with Mountain Lion. Most of that time was spent in preparation by tracking down all the PPC only code that had been there for years and knowing what apps needed to be updated. I chose to not migrate any Applications, installing everything I needed from original source. I believe that has paid dividends in reducing the effort needed to move to Mavericks.

One tip on repairing permissions that has changed. Disk Utility (and probably all 3rd party utilities) will not touch User permissions. The only way I'm aware of to accomplish that is by following these instructions:

Boot to your Recovery partition (holding down the Command and R keys while booting) and open Terminal from the Utilities menu. In Terminal, type:  ‘resetpassword’ (without the quotes), hit return, and select the admin user. You are not going to reset your password. Click on the icon for your Macs hard drive at the top. From the drop down below it select the user account which is having issues. At the bottom of the window, you'll see an area labeled Restore Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the reset button there. The process takes a few minutes. When complete, restart.

I didn't notice any improvement to Mail. If anything, it got a little worse for a time.

I'm told the only improvements to Mail were for Gmail users.

petermac87 wrote:

 

I would certainly uninstall Retrospect,Black-Magic design and AirParrot. Other things I have highlighted and underlined, such as ClamXav you will need to make sure they are up to date and that the updates are Maverick compatable.

 

When uninstalling Retrospect make sure you uninstall it completely according to the developers website instructions. Then restart.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Good advice. I will uninstall those and report back. Now how about the real problem child?

This Mac Pro is extremely slow going to Safari, launching any apps, typing in Mail or other apps. In short, keyboard delays, launching, finder operations are all sluggish to say the least. I went away for an hour out of frustration after which the typing delays have improved.

It should be as bad or as sluggish as it still is (and wasn't before in 10.8). Noting your recommendations, I can easily get rid of one Logitech driver but not the other as noted in Kernel Extensions, that is the KB driver. The sonnet is for a PCIe card (USB3).

How does the above compare to these (Mac Pro) results?

Hardware Information:

          Mac Pro (Early 2008)

          Mac Pro - model: MacPro3,1

          2 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPUs: 8 cores

          10 GB RAM

Video Information:

          ATI Radeon HD 2600 - VRAM: 256 MB

Audio Plug-ins:

          BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0

          AirPlay: Version: 1.9

          AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0

          iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3

Startup Items:

          ParallelsTransporter - Path: /Library/StartupItems/ParallelsTransporter

          RetroRun - Path: /Library/StartupItems/RetroRun

          TiVoDesktop - Path: /Library/StartupItems/TiVoDesktop

System Software:

          OS X 10.9 (13A603) - Uptime: 1 day 6:50:41

Disk Information:

          PLEXTOR PX-256M5Pro disk1 : (256.06 GB)

                    EFI (disk1s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

                    Plextor SSD256 (disk1s2) /: 255.2 GB (73.39 GB free)

                    Recovery HD (disk1s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

          Hitachi HUA722050CLA330 disk0 : (500.11 GB)

                    EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

                    BubbaMac 500GB (disk0s2) /Volumes/BubbaMac 500GB: 499.25 GB (13.53 GB free)

                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

USB Information:

          American Power Conversion Back-UPS RS 1500G FW:865.L3 .D USB FW:L3 

          Wacom Co.,Ltd. Wacom Wireless Receiver

          Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

          Logitech USB Receiver

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

Kernel Extensions:

          com.sonnet.driver.SXHCD          (1.27.9b2)

          com.Logitech.Control          Center.HID

          com.Logitech.Unifying.HID          Driver

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

          [loaded] com.acclivity.fileconnect.plist

          [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

          [loaded] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist

          [loaded] com.barebones.bbedit.plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.1FDA77A8-74D3-454B-8C23-15FE617098D5.plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.7752DA9F-90CE-454C-B7EB-7139265B2637.plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.78F4179F-3240-4712-A03E-C2A0B3A8211B.plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.8A9655A9-0ED3-41BD-BDC2-BC3601262582.plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.C76AFCFF-EE71-49EF-A12C-EFA61ACC576A.plist

          [loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

          [not loaded] com.proquesys.NetSAW2.plist

          [loaded] com.prosofteng.KXInstaller.plist

          [not loaded] com.retrospect.client.updater.plist

          [loaded] com.retrospect.retroclient.plist

          [loaded] com.retrospect.retroisa.plist

          [loaded] com.winzip.WinZip-Mac.plist

Launch Agents:

          [not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

          [loaded] com.conduit.loader.agent.plist

          [loaded] com.Logitech.Control Center.Daemon.plist

          [loaded] com.retrospect.clientapp.plist

          [loaded] com.wacom.wacomtablet.plist

          [loaded] net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist

User Launch Agents:

          [loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

          [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

          [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

          [failed] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

          [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

          [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist

          [loaded] com.bombich.ccc-user-agent.plist

          [loaded] com.c-command.SpamSieve.LaunchAgent.plist

          [loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist

          [loaded] uk.co.markallan.clamxav.freshclam.plist

User Login Items:

          Activity Monitor

          Solar Service

          Capster

          ClamXavSentry

          AdobeResourceSynchronizer

          ClamXavSentry

          Dropbox

          Lacie 5

3rd Party Preference Panes:

          AccountEdge

          Flash Player

          Flip4Mac WMV

          Logitech Control Center

          Retrospect Client

          TiVo Desktop

          WacomTablet

Internet Plug-ins:

          AdobeExManDetect.plugin

          CANONiMAGEGATEWAYDL.plugin

          CANONiMAGEGATEWAYLI.plugin

          CouponPrinter-FireFox_v2.plugin

          Default Browser.plugin

          DirectorShockwave.plugin

          Flash Player.plugin

          FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

          Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin

          GarminGpsControl.plugin

          Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin

          iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

          JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

          MRJPlugin.plugin

          PDF Browser Plugin.plugin

          PDEPrint.plugin

          QuickTime Plugin.plugin

          SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin

          Silverlight.plugin

          WacomNetscape.plugin

          WacomTabletPlugin.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

          CitrixOnlineWebDeploymentPlugin.plugin

          WebEx.plugin

          WebEx64.plugin

Bad Fonts:

          None

Time Machine:

          Skip System Files: NO

          Mobile backups: OFF

          Auto backup: NO

          Volumes being backed up:

          Destinations:

                    LaCie_Backup 4-1 [Network] (Last used)

                    Total size: 614.87 GB

                    Total number of backups: 33

                    Oldest backup: 2012-07-27 01:46:19 +0000

                    Last backup: 2012-08-11 09:27:43 +0000

                    Size of backup disk: Excellent

                              Backup size 614.87 GB > (Disk size Zero KB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU:

              37%          RetroISA

              25%          fontd

               3%          DashboardClient

               2%          WindowServer

               1%          EtreCheck

               0%          Retrospect Client

               0%          coreservicesd

               0%          opendirectoryd

               0%          retroclient

               0%          ClamXavSentry

Top Processes by Memory:

          870 MB             RetroISA

          430 MB             mds_stores

          338 MB             Mail

          276 MB             Contacts

          133 MB             Finder

          123 MB             Calendar

          113 MB             SpamSieve

          102 MB             Google Chrome

          92 MB              mds

          82 MB              soagent

Virtual Memory Statistics:

          708 MB             Free RAM

          4.09 GB            Active RAM

          3.65 GB            Inactive RAM

          858 MB             Wired RAM

          3.90 GB            Page-ins

          879 MB             Page-outs

Good advice. I will uninstall those and report back. Now how about the real problem child?

This Mac Pro is extremely slow going to Safari, launching any apps, typing in Mail or other apps. In short, keyboard delays, launching, finder operations are all sluggish to say the least. I went away for an hour out of frustration after which the typing delays have improved.

 

It should be as bad or as sluggish as it still is (and wasn't before in 10.8). Noting your recommendations, I can easily get rid of one Logitech driver but not the other as noted in Kernel Extensions, that is the KB driver. The sonnet is for a PCIe card (USB3).

You have an enormous amount of system modifications running. Many I've never heard of. You're going to have to figure out which ones are not compatible and update or remove them.

SIMBL has been a known bad actor in every version of OS X.

Why does an input device need to embed itself in the kernel? There is a high-level framework for handling those things.

Removed Decklink, SIMBL drivers, checked Keychains yielded no major improvements. Writing this post had a 1/2 second delay refreshing the screen while typing. Safari's actions are typical of my results. Also something in Safari launches and wants my login when starting up.

Thanks for the comprehensive, and lengthy reply, MM. Appreciated. I' m aware that OnyX will will do nothing nothing unless I tell it to. I'm just scared that I might tell it to do something it shouldn't! So far, though, nothing terrible has happened.

I've noticed the icon redraw phenomenon. Like opening apps for the second time, the redraws become much quicker on closing and reopening a window.

In terms of permissions, that would explain why many people are not seeing any benefit. I might well try your advice, using the terminal, but it seems a little crazy that an "ordinary" user should have to fiddle around under the bonnet like this. This smacks of Windows mods, to fix OS issues. In the past the Apple OS seemed to require less user interference. The fact that the future revisions appear to acknowledge the current user problems, seems to indicate an admissoin to certain OS ....shortcomings.... I accept, though that Mavericks is not base on the same architecture as previous OS'

I seem to remember Apple claiming that general Mail performance would be enhanced in the latest revision. Nothing to do with Gmail...

Many thanks.

HenryS wrote:

 

Removed Decklink, SIMBL drivers, checked Keychains yielded no major improvements.

HenryS, given the enormous number of system modifications present it may be easier and faster to completely erase your system and rebuild it.

RetroRun was used by an extremely old version of Retrospect and must be removed, but there really are too many other modifications that are going to cause trouble, in addition to having spyware installed on your Mac. Most people don't install such things unless they are deceived into doing so. Removing system modifications manually is going to be a daunting task.

michaelvee wrote:

 

I seem to remember Apple claiming that general Mail performance would be enhanced in the latest revision. Nothing to do with Gmail...

Actually, it claimed "General Stability". Here's an exact quote from OS X: About Mail Update for Mavericks:

Mail Update for Mavericks includes improvements to general stability and compatibility with Gmail, including the following:

 

• Fixes an issue that prevents deleting, moving, and archiving messages for users with custom Gmail settings
• Addresses an issue that may cause unread counts to be inaccurate
• Includes additional fixes that improve the compatibility and stability of Mail

True. I guess it was referring to Gmail, but that third point seems to infer Mail unto itself, also.....

Well, personally I didn't have a Gmail issue, as I tend to use them as separate entities. For me, though, Mail is not what it used to be, under ML.

Thanks.

Thanks Brian for the tip. Repairing disk permissions from the recovery mode made my MBP become usable again.

Hi All

   I have spent the last 2 weeks trying to restore my imac performance back to a usable level after installing Maverick. Like others have commented on this thread, I am suffering from really poor performance ( response times, slow typing, slow to start apps ) which degraded over time to a point, where the machine is now unusable. e.g It was taking over an hour to restart the machine and log in. I had previously posted on this here :

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23692410#23692410

I had some issues with my backups so the option of restoring time machine is not possible. I do have a manual back with all my files. I have tried a number of actions ( Internet recovery which failed with an error -5010F, tried running disk repair but it failed ). 

I am now at the point where last night, I erased my hd and performed a clean install of Maverick using a USB installer. To my dismay, the performance of my machine is still the same.

I am the point of creating a mountain lion usb install and reverting back however I am wondering if I have a potential memory/hardware issue.

Can anyone provide some suggested steps before I revert back to my previous OS. I dont understand what the install of a new OS covers and what else you need to do outside those steps. I am thinking of the following :

1) perform hardware diagnostic

2) Repair key chain

3) Repair disk permissions

Any help would be much appreciated as my wife is a teacher and needs the Mac back up and running asap to allow her to prepare lessions.

John Galt wrote:

 

HenryS, given the enormous number of system modifications present it may be easier and faster to completely erase your system and rebuild it.

 

RetroRun was used by an extremely old version of Retrospect and must be removed, but there really are too many other modifications that are going to cause trouble, in addition to having spyware installed on your Mac. Most people don't install such things unless they are deceived into doing so. Removing system modifications manually is going to be a daunting task.

John,

Thanks for your thoughts. Your point is well taken and I had thought about that as well before beginning.

Believe it or not, that's exactly how I started installing Mavericks release version. Where I went wrong is not using Migration Assist. I hd considerable trouble from the point after the system install migrating all my apps, user accounts, settings and aliases. Migration Assist (MA), as nice as it is in theory, would not work for me as my backup drives did not appear as sources to use in MA once the new system install completed. If it had maybe my results would have been better.

The OS runs tremendously fast when there is nothing in it!

Mavericks is a huge disappointment here. Erraticness across the board. Safari, Mail, Note, Adobe - you name it... Nothing seems to work as I have come to expect it. Mavericks & iOS7 are marking a boarder where I am a very unhappy camper.

I have spend 2 weeks on trying any solutions / Workarounds etc etc etc. Today, I am downgrading to Mountain Lion.

DobaKung - how did you do a clean install?