Q: I'm having trouble with my Macbook Pro running slow and getting the rainbow whirling ball.
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Sep 9, 2015 4:39 PMby Allan Jones,HelpfulMac OS version?
The two most common causes of slow-downs are third-party anti-virus software and so-called "cleaning/optimization/tune-up" utilities. Do you have any such dreck installed?
Also please this helpful Apple article:
Apps can affect Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity - Apple Support
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Sep 9, 2015 7:21 AMby NanaCA,Thanks so much for replying! OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 As for cleaning, I have used for years ClamXav. It finds the viruses in email, but I've never had anything else. I'm easy on a computer, have no need for a lot of apps, don't do FB games, careful in web surfing. Other apps beyond Apple: Firefox browser, MS Word, Photoshop, Vellum, Scrivener.
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Sep 9, 2015 10:22 AMby Linc Davis,HelpfulWhen you see a beachball cursor or the slowness is especially bad, 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 and start typing the name.
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.
When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.
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Sep 9, 2015 10:26 AMby NanaCA,Well, my brain is not sufficiently organized to readily process all of these instructions. However, I did go places I have never been before. I got to the Activity Monitor, and after watching it some minutes, I may have ascertained why my CPU is heating up. Twitter app was burning a lot on occasion. Had no need for it to be on. I understand better now the working of my machine. I may have been overloading things with apps open while working on Photoshop. I plan to increase my RAM and see if that makes a difference. I will continue to work with your instructions, and learn. Thanks!
