Q: I frequently get a spinning wheel, so much so I can hardly get work don.   Was wondering if someone is able to help also.

Activity Monitor - Mavericks  also Yosemite

Activity Monitor in Mavericks has significant changes

Performance Guide

Why is my computer slow

Why your Mac runs slower than it should

Things you can do to resolve slowdowns  see post by Kappy

When you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.  

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the 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.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

          View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

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

(335.68 GB free)

I suggest you partition your drive and install Yosemite on the new partition. You can test Yosemite in a clean environment. If you don't see slowdowns then you can move your data to the new install. This way the old crud you have on your drive will be left behind.

How do I partition it? I wanna do a clean install

Use Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities to partition your drive. See steps here. The example was for Mavericks but it's the same for Yosemite.

http://www.needhelp4mac.com/2014/06/create-an-os-x-mavericks-partition/

(Fair disclosure: Needhelp4Mac is my site. I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from links on my site..)

mdworker is a Spotlight process. Linc should be around soon to instruct you. However, in the mean time you can try the following.

Boot into the Recovery Drive by holding down Command R when restarting.

Run Repair Drive and Repair Permissions using Disk Utility in Recovery.

Next while in Recovery....

In the menu bar, select Utilities -> Terminal.

Type resetpassword in the Terminal and press Enter.

1 Select your main hard drive.

2 In the dropdown box under "Select the user account" make sure to select your username.

3 Select the option: "Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs", click the Reset button. It's not obvious when it's complete.

4 Quit the Reset Password application.

5 Quit the Terminal.

Restart and your Mac will reindex your drive.

You might need to reinstall OS X Yosemite. This process should not damage your data but it's always advised that you backup first.

Select Reinstall Mac OS X while in Recovery to run Yosemite installer over your install.

Have you recently deleted a user? If so, have you restarted the computer since then?

Problems such as yours are sometimes caused by files that should belong to you but are locked or have wrong permissions. This procedure will check for such files. It makes no changes and therefore is not, in itself, a solution.

First, empty the Trash, if possible.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:

find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 \) 2>&- | wc -l | pbcopy

Launch the built-in Terminal 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 Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run.

Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear.

The output of the command will be a number. It's automatically copied to the Clipboard. Please paste it into a reply.

The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.

Hi Linc:

I'm having similar issues with my MacBook Pro and you seem to be a go-to person on this.  Here's my thread:

  extremely slow mac all of a sudden, Frequent SPOD

Any thoughts?  I tried the script you recommended in another thread and am not getting I/O errors ("I think"), so maybe this isn't a hardware issue?   But there are other issues.

Some of your user files (not system files) have incorrect permissions or are locked. This procedure will unlock those files and reset their ownership, permissions, and access controls to the default. If you've intentionally set special values for those attributes, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it, but you do need to follow the instructions below.

Back up all data before proceeding.

Step 1

If you have more than one user, and the one in question is not an administrator, then go to Step 2.

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):

sudo find ~ $TMPDIR.. -exec chflags -h nouchg,nouappnd,noschg,nosappnd {} + -exec chown -h $UID {} + -exec chmod +rw {} + -exec chmod -h -N {} + -type d -exec chmod -h +x {} + 2>&-

You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The command may take several minutes to run, depending on how many files you have. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear, then quit Terminal.

Step 2 (optional)

Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1, if you prefer not to take it, or if it doesn't solve the problem.

Start up in Recovery mode. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select

          Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open. In that window, type this:

res

Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:

resetpassword

Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.

Select your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button

Select

           ▹ Restart

from the menu bar.