Finder and OFC for Mac painfully slow since Mavericks

Hi CCAPPLE,

Welcome to the Support Communities!

The articles below may be able to help you with this issue.

Click on the links to see more details and screenshots.

OS X Mavericks: If your Mac runs slowly

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13895

OS X: About Finder Tabs

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5840?viewlocale=en_US

OS X: Tags help you organize your files

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5839

I hope this helps ...

- Judy

I have spent 3 days trying to solve this problem across nearly a dozen Macs....problem is NOT your hardware, problem is a bug in Mavericks. After being told by tech support to do everything from resetting SMC to resetting NVRAM to forcing Spotlight to re-index, to turning "always" on in scrolling setting in settings as suggested here, trashing plist as suggested here, it turns out that nobody at Apple has responded to the THOUSANDS of posts relating to this problem yet is completely aware of the problem. The problem is a Mavericks glitch and they are well aware of the problem.

Here's a snippet from recent support chat...even the support tech is having the same issue.

"I am so sorry this is happening and do fully understand as my Finder is doing the same thing. I am hoping an update will be released soon that resolves this issue as I know first hand how annoying it can be!!"

Would be so nice if collectively tens of thousands of hours didn't have to be wasted by thousands of people experiencing a problem, trying to figure out a solution when their issue could be simply solved by a single post from Apple letting everyone know that they were aware of a particular issue and working on a fix. Communication with Apple is all too often 1-direction, users submit things but nowhere are users told by Apple "got it, we're aware of and working on this particular issue". Think of all the support expense, user frustration and wasted time this would save everyone!

I want my 3 days back.

im having the same problem ive gotten all the same suggestions from support. also spotlight is reindexing constantly and even moreso when i connect by smb to my network storage. re-indexing, re-indexing, RE-INDEXING? ***?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Newbie here. Got my first Mac (iMac) a few weeks back. Was absolutely thrilled with many things, one of which was the speed. Not so much now.

I was happily flipping through thousands of pictures (many in RAW format) with Finder before importing them to whittle down the number. The image changed instantaneously. Then I updated to Mavericks. Now it takes 2-3 seconds.

Is it likely attributable to the same issue you folks are having?

It doesn't sound like it.

Your issue is with "QuickLook" which is when you use the space bar in Finder to view things (pictures, documents, etc.). I see a beach ball with QuickLook in Mavericks that I didn't see in Mavericks, which would make it a lot slower to go through thousands of pictures to whittle them down.

This is a "performance regression" which Apple usually tries to fix. I sent feedback to Apple on it; it wouldn't hurt if you did as well.

Have you all tried…

Safe mode:

Hold shift after the chime until the spinning 'gear' appears. Ensure the login window says 'safe mode'.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455

Be aware that some features will be disabled like wifi on some models, graphics drivers will be in a

reduced mode - this is normal in safe mode.

Safe mode will disable all third party extensions & startup items.

If the Mac runs better in safe mode it is time to get a system report and look at the third party items (see EtreCheck below).

Reboot to go back to normal.

New User test

Create a new user in the 'System Preferences > Users & groups'

Login as that new user to see if the issues are any better.

If they are better - it indicates login items or other background jobs in the main account.

If they are the same - it indicates the OS or something higher up in the system is at fault.

EtreCheck:

An app designed for these discussions use it to see what is running & post the report here…

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Thanks William and Drew for your attempts to solve and diagnose the problem.

William,

I don't think I was using QuickLook. When scrolling through photos in Finder, I am in what I believe is column view. The columns left to right indicate the path as I drill down, reaching the column listing the photos by name. To the right of that is a blank column or pane. I select a photo and a rendering with the file info shows up in the blank column. I used to be able to arrow down, and one photo after the other was displayed instantly. Now, it takes several seconds.

After you explained QuickLook above, I tried pressing Space and the photo was displayed in a window that pops up on top of Finder. I can scroll to the next or previous photo with the up/down arrows. It takes about 8 seconds to show the image using this method.

Drew,

I tried Safe Mode and it doubles the render time using the method I described above. Next, I tried a New User with the same result.

Newbie question: How do I send feedback to Apple?

Thanks again

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Safe mode will disable certain things like graphics acceleration, so the difference you saw is normal. The idea is to see if the bug goes away because non-Apple extensions are deactivated in this mode. If it worked better we could look at other software & remove or update it.

It's generally not a bad idea anyway if you have several migrations on your data.

EtreCheck reports can give you a good overview.

Here is the report:

Hardware Information:

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)

iMac - model: iMac13,2

1 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 4 cores

16 GB RAM

Video Information:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX - VRAM: 1024 MB

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0

AirPlay: Version: 1.9

AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0

iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3

System Software:

OS X 10.9 (13A603) - Uptime: 0 days 0:59:16

Disk Information:

APPLE HDD ST1000DM003 disk0 : (1 TB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 999.35 GB (741.14 GB free)

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

USB Information:

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Apple Inc. MacBook Air SuperDrive

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Kernel Extensions:

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.epson.ecpd.launcher.plist

User Launch Agents:

User Login Items:

iTunesHelper

SpeechSynthesisServer

Dropbox

BetterSnapTool

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Flash Player

Flip4Mac WMV

Internet Plug-ins:

Default Browser.plugin

Flash Player.plugin

FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin

QuickTime Plugin.plugin

Silverlight.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Bad Fonts:

None

Time Machine:

Skip System Files: NO

Auto backup: YES

Volumes being backed up:

Macintosh HD: Disk size: 999.35 GB Disk used: 258.2 GB

Destinations:

Data [Network] (Last used)

Total size: 2 TB

Total number of backups: 20

Oldest backup: 2013-10-01 15:39:47 +0000

Last backup: 2013-11-15 01:39:17 +0000

Size of backup disk: Adequate

Backup size 2 TB > (Disk used 258.2 GB X 3)

Time Machine details may not be accurate.

All volumes being backed up may not be listed.

Top Processes by CPU:

2% EtreCheck

1% WindowServer

1% fontd

1% iTunes

0% coreaudiod

0% hidd

0% dpd

Top Processes by Memory:

377 MB QuickLookUIHelper

295 MB WindowServer

213 MB Finder

213 MB iTunes

164 MB Mail

131 MB mds_stores

115 MB com.apple.IconServicesAgent

115 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

115 MB Safari

98 MB com.apple.quicklook.satellite

Virtual Memory Statistics:

8.30 GB Free RAM

4.30 GB Active RAM

2.30 GB Inactive RAM

1.10 GB Wired RAM

1.31 GB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs

I can't see anything that looks bad in your report jdfurny.

The only item I wonder about is…

[loaded] com.epson.ecpd.launcher.plist

Just update or ininstall whatever the Epson software is.

I wonder if the next step is to backup & reinstall?

The default installer will restore files in place, so all your apps & user data will remain on the disk, but the OS files will be replaced.

CCAPPL would you create a report with EtreCheck & compare to jdfurny's. Look for common software.

Safe mode will disable it without uninstalling. Have you tried that yet CCAPPL?

I'd just look for an updated version on Epsons site, I really don't think this is 'the culprit', but there is nothing else I can see in jdfurny's report either!

CCAPPL, since you don't post an EtreCheck report I really can't say if Epson is the issue, it could be any of the other items, is Epson the only common software? What about the kernel extensions & other items are there any that are not in jdfurny's report?

MackGuyFlorida,

I could not agree more. With over 30 years in IT I am well positioned to say that Mavericks is the first time I can ever recall Apple releasing not only a bug-ridden O/S but one that is worse than Microsoft's Vista, which previously was as bad as they came.

I am plagued with numeruous issues as well, including though not limited to Finder being painfully slow, data vanishing from drives (as many others have reported), iMovie-10 just plain not functioning (the fix in many posts is "Go to the saved copy of iMovie 9 in your Applications folder."), so forth and so on.

About two weeks ago I expressed similar sentiments but the post was purged by Apple. I suspect this will in like manner disappear.

Lastly, I will state the obvious: do not expect Apple to admit to any flaws in this O/S, it's not going to happen.

Mavericks...truly a travesty and a gross disappointment from Apple who should have kept this in Alpha.

Best of luck. And again, you are not alone.

Well markras, that is not encouraging. I just made the switch after 30+ years with CP/M, then MS. Let's hope these are corrected.

Since I had only had this a few weeks and all was wonderful until Mavericks, I have to think it is the cuprit.

Could someone offer or point me to a primer on "default install" mentioned above? Do some of you other Mac pros agree this may help?