Q: Clean up hard drive
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May 15, 2014 6:43 AMby Carolyn Samit,Macs run maintenance in the background for you. Third party Mac cleaning utilities can cause far more harm than good. Do not use them.
But for the Safari browser cache ..
Safari > Preferences > Advanced tab.
Select: Show Develop menu in menu bar
Now click Develop from the menu bar. From the drop down menu click Empty Caches.
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May 15, 2014 6:44 AMby Barry Hemphill,Forget the Windows world stuff....
There is no need to perform "routine maintenance" on a Mac, HD, or anything else running OS X.
OS X "defrags" files of less than 20 MB automatically.
It is hard to believe, I know, but all of the "routine" stuff Windows users need to do is completely unnecessary on a Mac running OS X.
Barry
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May 15, 2014 6:47 AMby Allan Eckert,You are not in Kansas anymore.
Since you left Windows, the best way to take care of your Mac is to forget about Windows. The vast majority of the stuff that you had to do tio keep Windows running is not need on the Mac. The "Windows" programs that have been brought over to the Mac are worthless and usually dangerous.
Allan
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May 15, 2014 6:55 AMby macnerd48,Wow, that was a quick reply!
My mini has gotten really slow lately. i'm tired of watching the spinning beach ball & having Firefox lock up. It used to boot up pretty quickly. It originally had Mountain Lion & I upgraded to Mavericks. So, how do I speed up Mavericks without formatting the hard drive & doing a clean install of Mavericks?
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May 15, 2014 7:00 AMby Allan Eckert,I suggest you download and install EtreCheck from http://etresoft.com/etrecheck
Run EtreCheck and publish report here. It will give us the information we need to help you.
Allan
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May 15, 2014 2:40 PMby macnerd48,I'll have to download the software & run it.
Both my mini & my MacBook Pro originally came with Mountain Lion. I upgraded both of them to Mavericks. I recently "reinstalled" Mavericks on the mini hoping that it would speed up. It didn't. I've downloaded Diskmaker X. I haven't installed it. I do have a 16 GB flash drive that I'll use to install Mavericks.
OK, some more questions. I know that my mini & MBP have a restore partition on the drive. I suppose that I can use that to wipe the hard drive & reinstall Mavericks, right? I want a clean install. I know that with Diskmaker X I can wipe the hard drive & reinstall Mavericks. But, it seems to me that Diskmaker X would be used primarily to reinstall Mavericks if the hard drive crashes & has to be replaced, right?
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May 15, 2014 2:51 PMby greg sahli,I "think" you have it right - the purpose of Diskmaker X is to create a USB flash drive that is bootable, just like the old Install CDs were bootable. Then you won't have to rely on your Recovery partition anymore.
And I agree with Barry. It doesn't seem like you've made any effort at troubleshooting what the cause of the issue is.
If you don't try troubleshooting - it's a complete "black box crapshoot." Mac users don't have to live in that Windows world.
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May 16, 2014 6:37 AMby macnerd48,OK.
I ran the EtreCheck report.
Here it is:
Hardware Information:
Mac mini (Late 2012)
Mac mini - model: Macmini6,1
1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores
16 GB RAM
Video Information:
Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: 1024 MB
System Software:
OS X 10.9.2 (13C1021) - Uptime: 0 days 2:1:24
Disk Information:
APPLE HDD ST500LM012 disk0 : (500.11 GB)
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 499.25 GB (439.39 GB free)
Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
USB Information:
PIXART USB OPTICAL MOUSE
Canon MX860 series
Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub
Apple Inc. Apple Keyboard
Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Apple, Inc. IR Receiver
Apple Inc. MacBook Air SuperDrive
Thunderbolt Information:
Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Configuration files:
/etc/sysctl.conf - Exists
Gatekeeper:
Mac App Store and identified developers
Launch Daemons:
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support
[running] com.freemacsoft.appcleanerd.plist Support
[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist Support
[loaded] com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper.plist Support
Launch Agents:
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support
User Launch Agents:
[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist Support
User Login Items:
iTunesHelper
MacLWSLauncher
SpeechSynthesisServer
MacLWSLauncher
AppCleaner Helper
AdobeResourceSynchronizer
Internet Plug-ins:
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 3.2.0.16 - SDK 10.8 Support
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 13.0.0.214 - SDK 10.6 Support
EPPEX Plugin: Version: 10.0 Support
AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 11.0.07 - SDK 10.6 Support
AdobePDFViewer: Version: 11.0.07 - SDK 10.6 Support
Flash Player: Version: 13.0.0.214 - SDK 10.6 Support
Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20513.0 - SDK 10.6 Support
JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 14.9.0 - SDK 10.7 Check version
Audio Plug-ins:
BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9
AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9
AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9
iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9
iTunes Plug-ins:
Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9
3rd Party Preference Panes:
Flash Player Support
Flip4Mac WMV Support
Time Machine:
Time Machine not configured!
Top Processes by CPU:
4% WindowServer
1% fontd
0% Google Chrome
0% SystemUIServer
0% mds
Top Processes by Memory:
246 MB Google Chrome Helper
164 MB Google Chrome
66 MB mds_stores
49 MB Finder
49 MB WindowServer
Virtual Memory Information:
10.80 GB Free RAM
2.22 GB Active RAM
1.95 GB Inactive RAM
1.03 GB Wired RAM
7.66 GB Page-ins
0 B Page-outs
What is an EFI disk? Why isn't it mounted? How do I mount it?
Why isn't the recovery disk mounted? How do I mount it?
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May 16, 2014 8:00 AMby Allan Eckert,EFI stands for Extensible Firmware Interface. It is used to start your Mac in a similar way that BIOS starts a PC.
Recovery Partition is a part of the disk that provides the functionality of boot CD that were needed with Snow Leopard and the previous version of OS X
Neither of those need to to be mounted now.
The only thing I see in the report I didn't like AppCleaner. I have seen it cause problems and suggest that you try uninstalling it as a test.
Do you see the same slowness with other browsers?
Try creating another user account on your Mac as a test. Log into this user account and seeing if that makes and difference.
Allan
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May 16, 2014 8:24 AMby John Galt,Get rid of AppCleaner. Follow its developer's instructions.
Do not use "cleaning", "optimizing", "boosting" etc, apps on a Mac. They will do nothing beneficial and will succeed only in wasting your time at best. At worst they will corrupt your Mac, resulting in lost data, money, private information or all of the above.
In the context of maintaining a Mac, purge the word "clean" from your consciousness. Apple has not used the word "clean" in any context other than its literal one for sound reasons. The concept of an "unclean" Mac is one exploited by marketing firms that seek to capitalize on Windows users inured to the need for constant attention just to keep Windows PCs at whatever minimal user-productivity level they are capable of achieving. A Mac needs no such pampering.
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May 16, 2014 8:33 AMby macnerd48,The only thing I see in the report I didn't like AppCleaner. I have seen it cause problems and suggest that you try uninstalling it as a test.
I read about it & downloaded it from the App Store. So far, I haven't had any problems with it. Do you have a recommendation for a substitute? I know a Mac isn't like Windows. Windows programs scatter files all over the place as well as the Registry. That's probably why there are cleanup programs to remove ALL traces of the program. Does dragging the app to the Trash remove ALL traces of the app?
Do you see the same slowness with other browsers?
Definitely with Safari. The bar starts to move across the browser, then pauses, then moves again. Chrome is not as slow as Firefox. I've been trying Google &, so far, it hasn't locked up like Firefox. I prefer Google, but it doesn't support 64-bit Java.
Try creating another user account on your Mac as a test. Log into this user account and see if that makes any difference.
I hadn't thought of that. I've read that anything that is created on the Guest account is deleted when the user logs off. I'm the only one that uses the mini & MBP so does it make any difference whether I choose the Standard account or the Guest account?
