2010 MacBook Pro uselessly slow after El Capitan 10.11.1 Upgrade

Question

Level 1

64 points

2010 MacBook Pro uselessly slow after El Capitan 10.11.1 Upgrade

My MacBook Pro is running so slowly now after upgrading from Yosemite, with frequent beachball “please wait” cursors, so as to be sometimes useless. The problem is especially pronounced in Microsoft OneNote and PowerPoint, where almost every action triggers the beachball cursor for multiple seconds.

What is the problem? Apple stated this .1 upgrade included improvements for Microsoft Office compatibility; was it really even worse before this? I upgraded Friday night.

Some details from About This Mac are attached.

Perhaps I should note that the battery says 'Service Battery' when clicking its drop-down menu (perhaps I get a bit more than 3 hours from a 'full charge'), and that the only maintenance done on this computer in 5 years (to my knowledge) has been replacing the trackpad. I would like to send it in to be refurbished -- the user 'Branes' on a Freenode IRC room told me it likely needed 'a fresh application of thermal paste' -- but I am in Japan (this laptop was purchased in Tennessee, USA) and excessively busy, and this is my only laptop, and I am not sure it is a good idea to mail it to the Tokyo Apple store, or if they are even able to do anything with it, since it is an American product (e.g. Japanese keyboards are different, including Apple laptops, I think).

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), 2.4GHzIntelCore2Duo;4GB 1067MHzDDR3

Posted on Oct 25, 2015 8:54 PM

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Answer 1

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Oct 25, 2015 9:39 PM in response to ethereality

Items that trigger the beachball 'please wait' cursor include (with Microsoft PowerPoint, Safari, and Google Chrome open):

Copy-pasting text in Google Chrome.
Opening a new Safari window (no others were already open).
Waiting for results to be loaded after searching 'notes' in Spotlight.
Opening Notes (not yet upgraded).

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Answer 2

Nov 22, 2015 6:38 PM in response to ethereality

I have the same Mac, just installed El Capitan, and it's just impossible to use. Takes minuted to do anything. Extremely slow and unresponsive. I think if you don't have an SSD and and more Ram with that model you're damned. Did you fix the problem at all? I want to know if my hard drive is failing or if it's normal that this Mac can't run El Capitan half decently.

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Answer 3

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 23, 2015 5:54 PM in response to purpleduck

I cleared more space on my 249 GB hard drive (from 5-10 GB free to ~35 GB free) and that has helped, I think. I feel I need to keep at least 35 GB free. However, trying to type in Japanese is still maddening, as the new Japanese kanji-conversion system will freeze my computer for several moments. Such update flaws have made me reconsider Microsoft. My other main problem is slow startup (even from a fully-shutdown computer) and slow resume-from-sleep.

The status of my computer is unclear, though. Weeks ago, I ran Disk Utility's First Aid, and again in Recovery Mode, and both times it found a disk error that it was unable to repair. I just ran it again, while drafting this post (not in Recovery Mode), and now it's saying the disk is fine.

It's also not clear to me what's taking up 130 GB of space ... Perhaps it really is five years' of documents (e.g. graduate school) ...

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Answer 4

Mar 16, 2016 6:03 AM in response to ethereality

You simply need to do a clean install, ethereality. I'm confident your Mac will work well after that. If that doesn't work, then your computer simply isn't fact enough for the OS and you should revert to an older one, or go Windows as you say...

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Answer 5

Nov 23, 2015 5:59 PM in response to ethereality

Please download and install EtreCheck from http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Run it and post the report here.

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Answer 6

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 23, 2015 5:59 PM in response to purpleduck

Thank you for the advice. If I ever get the chance, it does seem worth backing everything up and doing a factory reset-reinstall to see what happens, before sending it off to be refurbished.

However, don't I still need to send it in to be refurbished, e.g. cleaned? It's five years old and the crap that falls into the keyboard has never been cleaned, for example. Someone on IRC also said "the CPU needs a fresh application of thermal paste", that "it's probably freezing momentarily to prevent itself from overheating".

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Answer 7

Nov 23, 2015 6:01 PM in response to ethereality

Have you upgraded your ram?

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Answer 8

Nov 23, 2015 6:06 PM in response to ethereality

I don't know if it's in this thread or another, that many people had positive stories of their Mac flying after the clean install. If you have a 2010 Macbook Pro, you're having my same problem - it's unusable on the update, there can be million reasons, it's just simpler in most cases to do the clean install (which I'm doing right now). But well I'm talking about the computer actually being unusable as others are doing, not just the japanese keyboard problem. Safari takes a minute to boot, and so on.

Have you tried to log in with a guest user and see if it speeds up? It definitely did in my case. Everything worked perfectly, couldn't believe it was the same computer and hard drive. 5 years of usage means we've filled our Macs with stuff and after 5 years I would do a clean install anyway. Yes, it would be nice if we didn't have to, but we do. It makes sense that an update might not work as desired, I think the clean install is recommended anyway.

Log out and log in as a guest and try to type japanese as you said. Any difference? Let me know.

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Answer 9

Nov 23, 2015 6:14 PM in response to ethereality

Please provide us a copy of the EtreCheck report before doing any so called "clean" install.

There may be far simpler solutions for you to take then doing that.

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Answer 10

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 23, 2015 9:26 PM in response to purpleduck

Now that you mention it, yes, I do still have other problems: Spotlight is uselessly slow. I had to wait some 10-15 seconds after typing 'map' for it to respond, for example. (I think after a moment I deleted it and typed 'Maps' to try to help it along.) I've quit using Spotlight because it hasn't been working lately.

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Answer 11

Nov 23, 2015 9:29 PM in response to ethereality

Did you try all of that by using a guest account?

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Answer 12

Nov 23, 2015 9:37 PM in response to ethereality

I respectfully disagree with the other guy, the simpler solution would be to put all the data in an external drive and start fresh. It's good to do that every few years anyway. Nothing better than a fresh start and a quick snappy computer. Computers accumulate so much stuff, starting fresh is GOOD for the computer and for the user.

But, to predict whether a clean install will do you good in your case, you must tell me if you see more responsiveness when logging in as a guest, which means all your main user preferences and data get ignored. It should work "as new".

The OS can work well with your Mac. The OS doesn't suck, nor does your Mac model...either there's something faulty, or you just need to get rid of years of "junk".

I am not a Mac Genius though, if I lived in the US I would simply go to the closest Apple Store with the geniuses and they might help me. If you can do that by all means do it, buying a new computer surely is the most expensive answer! If you have something "broken", it's probably repleaceable at much lower cost. It's not Mac OS's fault! You can install Windows on Macs too if you want, but that's not the problem

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Answer 13

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Feb 17, 2016 5:43 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Here is an EtreCheck report:

EtreCheck version: 2.9.4 (254)

Report generated 2016-02-18 10:28:05

Download EtreCheck from http://etrecheck.com

Runtime 11:07

Performance: Poor

Click the [Support] links for help with non-Apple products.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.

Click the [Check files] link for help with unknown files.

Problem: Beachballing

Description:

frequent beachballing waiting times

Hardware Information: ⓘ

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro7,1

1 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Upgradeable - [Instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Battery: Health = Check Battery - Cycle count = 878

Video Information: ⓘ

NVIDIA GeForce 320M - VRAM: 256 MB

Color LCD 1280 x 800

System Software: ⓘ

OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 (15D21) - Time since boot: less than an hour

Disk Information: ⓘ

Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02 disk0 : (250.06 GB) (Rotational)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / : 249.20 GB (35.97 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB

MATSHITADVD-R UJ-898 ()

USB Information: ⓘ

Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Card Reader

Apple Inc. Built-in iSight

Gatekeeper: ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers

Unknown Files: ⓘ

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.epson.epw.agent.4.plist

One unknown file found. [Check files]

Kernel Extensions: ⓘ

/System/Library/Extensions

[loaded] com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt (0.0.67 - 2016-02-15) [Support]

[not loaded] com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverVSP (0.0.67 - 2016-02-15) [Support]

System Launch Agents: ⓘ

[loaded] 163 Apple tasks

[running] 73 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[loaded] 204 Apple tasks

[running] 84 Apple tasks

Launch Agents: ⓘ

[running] com.amazon.sendtokindle.launcher.plist (2014-10-29) [Support]

[running] com.epson.epw.agent.4.plist (2009-11-16) [Support]

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (2015-12-15) [Support]

[loaded] com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist (2014-06-12) [Support]

[running] com.rim.BBLaunchAgent.plist (2011-08-10) [Support]

[failed] net.juniper.pulsetray.plist (2015-07-21) [Support] [Details]

[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist (2014-08-12) [Support]

Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (2016-01-29) [Support]

[loaded] com.cloudpath.maccmd.plist (2012-01-18) [Support]

[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist (2015-12-15) [Support]

[loaded] com.microsoft.autoupdate.helpertool.plist (2015-10-19) [Support]

[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.plist (2015-07-01) [Support]

[loaded] com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist (2014-06-12) [Support]

[running] com.rim.BBDaemon.plist (2011-08-10) [Support]

[failed] net.juniper.AccessService.plist (2015-07-21) [Support]

[loaded] net.juniper.UninstallPulse.plist (2015-07-21) [Support]

[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist (2014-08-12) [Support]

User Launch Agents: ⓘ

[running] com.amazon.music.plist (2016-02-07) [Support]

User Login Items: ⓘ

Android File Transfer Agent Application (~/Library/Application Support/Google/Android File Transfer/Android File Transfer Agent.app)

Other Apps: ⓘ

[running] com.apple.xpc.launchd.oneshot.0x10000006.EtreCheck (2016-02-15)

[running] com.google.GoogleTalkPluginD.118752.368BD920-2673-4219-8999-34B1A1D9B656 (2015-12-21)

[running] com.google.android.mtpagent.106272 (2012-10-16)

Internet Plug-ins: ⓘ

o1dbrowserplugin: 5.41.3.0 - SDK 10.8 (2015-12-21) [Support]

Google Earth Web Plug-in: 7.1 (2013-07-13) [Support]

Default Browser: 601 - SDK 10.11 (2016-02-15)

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: 2.3.8.1 (2011-01-14) [Support]

net.juniper.DSSafariExtensions: Unknown (2012-04-10) [Support]

Unity Web Player: UnityPlayer version 4.0.0f7 (2012-12-06) [Support]

Silverlight: 5.1.10411.0 - SDK 10.6 (2012-08-11) [Support]

FlashPlayer-10.6: 20.0.0.306 - SDK 10.6 (2016-02-15) [Support]

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (2016-02-15)

Flash Player: 20.0.0.306 - SDK 10.6 (2016-02-15) [Support]

googletalkbrowserplugin: 5.41.3.0 - SDK 10.8 (2015-12-12) [Support]

iPhotoPhotocast: 7.0 (2010-08-08)

JavaAppletPlugin: Java 8 Update 65 build 17 (2015-10-25) Check version

User internet Plug-ins: ⓘ

WebEx64: 1.0 - SDK 10.5 (2012-04-28) [Support]

Picasa: 1.0 - SDK 10.4 (2012-10-09) [Support]

WebEx: 1.0 (2012-01-14) [Support]

Safari Extensions: ⓘ

AdBlock (2015-09-27)

3rd Party Preference Panes: ⓘ

Flash Player (2016-01-29) [Support]

Flip4Mac WMV (2011-01-14) [Support]

Java (2015-10-25) [Support]

TeXDistPrefPane (2015-11-03) [Support]

Time Machine: ⓘ

Skip System Files: NO

Mobile backups: OFF

Auto backup: NO - Auto backup turned off

Volumes being backed up:

Macintosh HD: Disk size: 249.20 GB Disk used: 213.22 GB

Destinations:

Seagate Expansion Drive [Local]

Total size: 999.86 GB

Total number of backups: 6

Oldest backup: 10/16/15, 14:15

Last backup: 10/28/15, 10:28

Size of backup disk: Excellent

Backup size 999.86 GB > (Disk size 249.20 GB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU: ⓘ

17% kernel_task

15% mdworker(23)

3% accountsd

2% WindowServer

1% Mail

Top Processes by Memory: ⓘ

524 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent(5)

446 MB kernel_task

291 MB mdworker(23)

254 MB Mail

94 MB suggestd

Virtual Memory Information: ⓘ

46 MB Free RAM

4.21 GB Used RAM (1.38 GB Cached)

22 MB Swap Used

Diagnostics Information: ⓘ

Feb 18, 2016, 09:41:11 AM Self test - passed

It's not clear to me how to improve my performance based on this report. The 'juniper' thing appears to be an application my university requires me to use to Remote Desktop via a virtual private network. Clicking 'details' under the failed juniper launch agent, it appears to be because I deleted the application out of my Applications folder. This computer is failing to copy text from EtreCheck and paste it into this window, however.

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Answer 14

jdsr4c

Level 1

5 points

Feb 17, 2016 7:05 PM in response to ethereality

You need more RAM. 4GB is nothing these days. Kernel can almost run up to 1 full GB alone. Also, as web browsing gets more and more enhanced, Chrome/Safari/Firefox can easily be running on over 1 GB as well. I just replaced my 4GB of RAM in my 2011 macbook pro with 16GB for like $60.

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Answer 15

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Feb 21, 2016 3:11 AM in response to jdsr4c

I don't think that's the problem: It seems more processor or OS related, given the slow behavior tends to be limited to "first time" actions, such as opening n application, starting up the computer, or beginning to type in a window.

Moreover, Microsoft recommends the Surface Pro 4 with 4 GB for office work. I generally only use this laptop for general computing (browser, email, music listening), although I do wish to use it for GarageBand in the future.

Given all this, why do you think 4 GB is insufficient for the latest Mac OS?

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