Why did Mavericks slow down my MBP?

Hi there Bruce L.,

You may find the troubleshooting steps in the article below helpful.

OS X Mavericks: If your Mac runs slowly

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

-Griff W.

I see in your list a mention of iStat. Dump it. I had the same "sloooow" problem after I ug'd to Mav. Of course, there's Spotlight indexing to be done, so that was part of the slowdown, but that iStat I had running in my old 10.6.8 just gummed stuff up in Mav. I used AppZapper to start the iStat uninstall process, but that apparently didn't get it all as there were some post-iStat-uninstall anomalies still going on after rebooting. So I then used EasyFind to find all instances of "istat" (be sure to enable "find invisible files" & "find files & folders" [both]).
CAUTION: I got some hits that had "istat" in filenames which I was about to dump, but upon closer look I saw that there was an "l" to the left of the "i" in istat, & that "l" was nearly invisible right next to the "i". Be very careful to dump ONLY istat stuff! Some istat things in your "found" list you can't dump right from EasyFind either; instead, you'll have to right-click those & choose "Show In Finder." Then you can dump them in the Finder window, with your system password.

Long story short, there was one particular iStat folder, forgot its name, that AppZapper left behind, but when I found it in EasyFind, I had to go to the Finder to dump that one, dumped it, emptied Trash, rebooted, & that fixed the iStat slowing things down problem.

Another Problem Child for Mav.... I had Avast! running in 10.6.8. Had it still when I started the UG to Mav. Wrong move.... Dump that too, before or after upgrading to Mav. Mav doesn't like it, at all, or any other virus program besides, from what I've read, Clam xAV, which happens to still be in my new Mav & doesn't seem to be the cause of any probs whatsoever, so far. But again, use EasyFind to dump all other instances of Avast.

Mav doesn't like Little Snitch either btw..... bummer.... someday I'll look into that one....

It amazes me how much junk gets left behind after a normal OSX App "uninstall," which is usually accomplished by dumping just the .app itself, its pref(s) file(s), and maybe 1 or 2 Application Support, etc folders. Many times however, I've found that LOTS of stuff gets left behind with some higher-end, more system-oriented apps. Gives me bad memories of Windows uninstalls, which 99.9% of the time (i.e., ALWAYS) leave behind junkfiles herethere&everywhere (that's Windoze for ya, in a nutshell) & junk entries, especially in the Registry. Give those 2 iStat & anti-virus uninstall suggestions of mine a try if you haven't already done those things, see if those 2 uninstalls help you out.

KK

Another one, Bruce, that I forgot about that helped me out, too: Upgrade your MB's firmware to the highest level. For my MB, there was one firmware version higher than the one I had it upgraded to, but I could install that very highest firmware version not in 10.6.8 (wouldn't let me), but only AFTER I had completed the Mav upgrade/installation. Though not likely, you could possibly have that same situation with your MBP.

FYI......

KK

Firmware Updates - about

Bruce L. wrote:

Startup Items:

CiscoVPN: Path: /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN

AdobeVersionCue: Path: /Library/StartupItems/AdobeVersionCue

KeyAccess: Path: /Library/StartupItems/KeyAccess

Anything in Startup Items could be a problem. Apple declared Startup Items to be obsolete in 2006 so this is software that hasn't been updated since before then or they are following the doing the don't-update-until-it-breaks plan.

I suggest uninstalling these problems to see if that fixes things. Always use the vendor-provided uninstaller or uninstallation instructions. Never try to do it manually. That could only make things worse. You may need to download a new installer that may come with an uninstaller. Unfortunately, installers, and especially uninstallers, are a weak point of OS X compared to Windows.

Launch Daemons:

[System] com.adobe.versioncueCS3.plist 3rd-Party support link

[invalid] com.bjango.istatlocaldaemon.plist

[System] com.sassafras.KeyAccess.plist 3rd-Party support link

Remove these too. iStat seems to have an invalid plist file. KeyAccess has a support link that may eventually lead you to an uninstaller.

Launch Agents:

[System] com.bjango.istatlocal.plist 3rd-Party support link

Notice a trend? This is why I say to use vendor-provided uninstallers.

User Login Items:

Microsoft Database Daemon

Google Drive

Dropbox

KeyAccess

Director Docker

HP Product Research

HP Scheduler

Some of the same software is here. At least with Login Items, you can remove items very easily and put them back later if they prove innocent.

You have also a mac killer on the list:

Akamai: uninstall it, I mean really uninstall it. Here a piece of text about it:

Uninstall Akamai Download Manager and com.akamai.client.plist

If you’ve downloaded something from Adobe recently you may have unintentionally installed Akamai Download Manager. Akamai is a helpful content delivery network (at least for the web), but for whatever reason the Akamai Download Manager that is used and packaged with Adobe software often goes haywire on a Mac with usage spikes and random internet connection attempts that can really slow things down.

You can typically identify this by looking in the Console log for things like:
9/30/10 6:24:03 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.50186 (com.akamai.client.plist) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
9/30/10 6:24:13 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.50186 (com.akamai.client.plist12013) Bug: launchd_core_logic.c:4103 (23932):13
9/30/10 6:24:13 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.50186 (com.akamai.client.plist12013) posix_spawn("/Applications/Akamai/loader.pl", ...): No such file or directory
9/30/10 6:24:13 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.50186 (com.akamai.client.plist12013) Exited with exit code: 1

The simplest way to stop Akamai Download Manager and anything labeled as ‘com.akamai.client.plist’ in your Console logs is to remove the plist file and application. The application can be installed in different places, so try running this command in the Terminal first:
/Applications/Akamai/admintool uninstall -force
Hopefully this will uninstall everything. If that doesn’t work, get rid of the plist files and applications yourself.

The plist file is located at:

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.akamai.client.plist
and the application is usually located at:
/Applications/Akamai Download Manager
I deleted both of these and haven’t had any problems since. Remember, if you just delete the Akamai Download Manager application, you did not remove the plist file and it will probably still load and give you headaches.

If you’re hesitant to delete the files, you can also just prevent the plist file from loading on your Mac by entering the following into the command line:
launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.akamai.client.plist

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m always annoyed when I want to install one application and 15 additional packages come with it, which then go haywire. I remember the good old days when you’d install one application, and you’d only get one application.

Adobe has become a repeat offender with installing random nonsense along with their products lately and it’s quite frustrating, I hope they adjust this policy soon.

Very interesting.

Yet another reason to choose great, inexpensive software like Pixelmator and/or iDraw.

You know all about Akamai, John, it is always one of the culprits here 👿.

Lex

That is strange: did you download by clicking SoftwareUpdate in the AppleMenu?