how do i clean up my macbook pro

Running very slowly does not mean you have viruses. Further, there's no automated tool that will fix this problem for you, no matter how much some may lead you to believe that they can.

Take a look at my Mac Performance Guide. If the tips there don't help, post back here with additional details.

Activity Monitor – Monitor Performance Problems

Why is my computer slow

Why your Mac runs slower than it should

Back up your documents and everything else important to you, not that there is any reason to believe your hard disk may be failing, but the symptoms you describe may presage an impending disk failure, and you should have backups anyway.

To help determine the possible causes of this behaviour read the following. None of what follows is intended to fix anything, but it will provide the additional information required to advance troubleshooting:

Boot OS X Recovery by holding ⌘ and r (two fingers) while you start your Mac. At the Mac OS X Utilities screen, select Disk Utility. Select your startup volume (usually named "Macintosh HD") and click the Repair Disk button. Describe any errors it reports in red.

When it finishes restart your Mac and test again for operation. If it's still not behaving as you expect it should, please post the results of EtreCheck in accordance with the following instructions:

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” or anything else that may appear in red.

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.

After completing the above please determine if the problems also occur in "Safe Mode":

• Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode
• You must disable FileVault before you can start your Mac in Safe Mode.
• Starting your Mac in Safe Mode will take longer than usual, graphics will not render smoothly, audio is disabled on some Macs, and some programs (iTunes for example) may not work at all.
• Merely starting your Mac in Safe Mode is not intended to resolve the problem, it's to observe its performance without certain additional components.
• To end Safe Mode restart your Mac normally. Shutdown will take longer as well.

System performance problems for reasons that cannot be isolated to any other cause justify an SMC reset. Be sure to read the procedure carefully and follow all the steps exactly as written, even if they seem inapplicable or trivial.

Problem description:

My MacBook Pro runs very slowly and often locks up at random times. I have run OS X Recovery and no errors were found. I am a novice user but stumbled upon this avenue for help. Any advice you can offer is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

EtreCheck version: 2.1.8 (121)

Report generated February 13, 2015 at 1:46:36 AM CST

Download EtreCheck from http://etresoft.com/etrecheck

Click the [Click for support] links for help with non-Apple products.

Click the [Click for details] links for more information about that line.

Hardware Information: ℹ️

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) (Technical Specifications)

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro6,2

1 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Battery Health: Normal - Cycle count 193

Video Information: ℹ️

Intel HD Graphics - VRAM: 288 MB

Color LCD 1440 x 900

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M - VRAM: 512 MB

System Software: ℹ️

OS X 10.10.2 (14C109) - Time since boot: 0:25:58

Disk Information: ℹ️

ST9500325ASG disk0 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

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

Macintosh HD (disk1) / : 498.88 GB (229.32 GB free)

Encrypted AES-XTS Unlocked

Core Storage: disk0s2 499.25 GB Online

MATSHITADVD-R UJ-898

USB Information: ℹ️

Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Internal Memory Card Reader

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Apple Inc. Built-in iSight

Gatekeeper: ℹ️

Mac App Store and identified developers

Launch Agents: ℹ️

[running] com.mcafee.menulet.plist [Click for support]

[running] com.mcafee.reporter.plist [Click for support]

Launch Daemons: ℹ️

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist [Click for support]

[running] com.fitbit.galileod.plist [Click for support]

[unknown] com.mcafee.ssm.ScanFactory.plist [Click for support]

[unknown] com.mcafee.ssm.ScanManager.plist [Click for support]

[running] com.mcafee.virusscan.fmpd.plist [Click for support]

[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist [Click for support]

User Launch Agents: ℹ️

[failed] com.apple.SafariBookmarksSyncer.plist [Click for details]

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist [Click for support]

User Login Items: ℹ️

iTunesHelper UNKNOWN Hidden (missing value)

Mail Application (/Applications/Mail.app)

Fitbit Connect Menubar Helper Application (/Applications/Fitbit Connect.app/Contents/MacOS/Fitbit Connect Menubar Helper.app)

OneDrive Application (/Applications/OneDrive.app)

Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️

Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 2.3.8.1 [Click for support]

SlingPlayer: Version: Unknown [Click for support]

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 11.0.09 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 16.0.0.305 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20913.0 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

WidevineMediaOptimizer: Version: 6.0.0.12757 - SDK 10.7 [Click for support]

Flash Player: Version: 16.0.0.305 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0 - SDK 10.8

SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.2.3 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

AdobePDFViewer: Version: 11.0.09 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

SiteAdvisor: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.1 [Click for support]

User internet Plug-ins: ℹ️

Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: 7.1 [Click for support]

Safari Extensions: ℹ️

Ticker

1-ClickWeather

Breaking News

SiteAdvisor

Disconnect

Disconnect Private Search

MLB.com Toolbar

DuckDuckGo

The New York Times

WikiWand

3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️

Flash Player [Click for support]

Flip4Mac WMV [Click for support]

Time Machine: ℹ️

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️

6% AddressBookSourceSync

4% WindowServer

1% icbaccountsd

1% app_sandbox_cache_builder

1% Fitbit Connect Menubar Helper

Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️

137 MB Safari

103 MB softwareupdated

94 MB mds_stores

85 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

82 MB com.apple.WeatherKitService

Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️

217 MB Free RAM

1.61 GB Active RAM

1.41 GB Inactive RAM

858 MB Wired RAM

2.59 GB Page-ins

47 MB Page-outs

Diagnostics Information: ℹ️

Feb 13, 2015, 01:10:21 AM Self test - passed

Remove the anti-malware software. It is redundant and many times performance issues and/or kernel panics are caused by the Anti-Malware software packages (or at least that is what constantly shows up in these forums).

[running] com.mcafee.menulet.plist [Click for support]

[running] com.mcafee.reporter.plist [Click for support]

[unknown] com.mcafee.ssm.ScanFactory.plist [Click for support]

[unknown] com.mcafee.ssm.ScanManager.plist [Click for support]

[running] com.mcafee.virusscan.fmpd.plist [Click for support]

You might consider getting more RAM (Crucial.com and MacSales.com (OWC) are respected Mac RAM vendors).

If you have more problems, it would be better in the future to start your own New post and not thread-jack someone else's. As klaraedmund posted the original a year ago, and this thread is mostly dead. Also if you start your own New post, you get to control the conversation.

Many thanks for your advice. I have uninstalled the anti-malware software as you suggested. And I'm going to look into getting more RAM (but I might just call it a day and get a new macbook). Either way thanks again and lesson learned about posting on another thread - my bad.