Q: Unbearably slow Mavericks performance

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

Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.

Step 1

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.

Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the timestamps of those log messages, which refer to the times when the system was booted. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time when you had the problem. Select the messages logged after the boot, during the time something abnormal was happening. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

For example, if the problem is a slow startup taking three minutes, post the messages timestamped within three minutesafter the boot time, not before. Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the beginning of the log extract.

If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Step 2

Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post any other kind of diagnostic report, such as hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.

Follow the instructions on Adobe's website to remove Flash:

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html

• I use google drive etc for work so I need to keep that. Also, I hate Firefox since it's a bloated piece of junk now (or it was the several years ago when I last used it)

As opposed to Google highly efficient code?

If you must use Google Drive for work, then you must, but you must also accept its detrimental effect on system performance, to say nothing of its intrusion upon your private activities. Ask Google to buy you a faster Mac, they seem to have had no objection to subsidizing the sale of Chromebooks.

My apologies, I was not aware you work for Google.

I'm being facetious. Google is incredibly good at what they do, and it's not as though they keep that a secret. Whether it's beneficial for the user is for the user to decide. In any event, that's a subject for another day.

Spinfaster wrote:

 

• I use google drive etc for work so I need to keep that.

I have not yet found a need for Google Drive, which you probably noted from my previous discussion with MichelPM, but I do know that there were serious issues that were well documented with it back in November. I haven't been able to locate any discussion of it having been fixed, probably becuase most users abandoned it's use. Are you aware of it's status now? Obviously it's working again for you, but does that mean it's completely functioning without impact now?

Spinfaster wrote:

 

I think my next stop will be a wipe and install.

Wait! I don't see where you tried Kappy's Step 4. That's going to be much easier than a wipe, gives you a totally clean System and won't disturb any of your User data or third party apps. I'd be more comfortable about this fixing things if I understood exactly what permission(s) can't be repaired, but it's still worth the hour or less that will take.

Be sure you have a current bootable backup before you do either of those things.

Spinfaster wrote:

 

I tried redoing the Mavericks update installer as per Kappy's Step 4 and it failed, reporting over 500 lines of errors. I would paste them into here but a. I have no way to do that and b. I'm not sure anyone would want to look through 500 lines of install errors!

I don't think I've ever heard of something like that happening, but without knowing even the general nature of the errors the only thing I can offer is that is sounds a lot like hard drive failure to me.

Spinfaster wrote:

 

I'm thinking possible HDD failure too, but running the Disk Utility shows a verified disc.

Disk Utility only checks the directory and S.M.A.R.T. data. It does not do a surface scan of any type.

I'd also consider downloading the installer again if you have time & the bandwidth. I think it's possible the errors may come from the installers.

You may want to make a USB bootable stick if you want to erase the HD completely, otherwise you can't wipe out the partition table when booted from the installer on the boot HD.

Madmacs0 doesn't doing a 'zero data' erase effectivly do a surface scan + mark bad blocks? It will map out any blocks that cannot be zero'd.