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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

24 replies

Feb 21, 2016 3:56 AM in response to ethereality

Hi Ethereality:

I would agree that when running El Capitan you need at least 8 GB of memory.

But your EtreCheck report shows it taking over 11 minutes to complete.

I would make a backup of you hard drive immediately as it appears as though you hard drive may be failing.

The easiest way to make a backup is by cloning your hard drive using either Carbon Copy Cloner https://bombich.com/ or Super Duper.

They will allow you to make a bootable Clone, which will come in handy when your hard drive fails.

OWC (MacSales) specializes in Mac upgrades and you can find need there. https://www.macsales.com/

They also have a lot of good installation videos. http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

You also mentioned that someone told you that you needed to replace the thermal past on your CPU. I have never heard of that being needed on a MacBook Pro. Maybe someone else may have advice about that. I think if it was a problem with the thermal paste it would show up as high CPU temps.

Maybe you could download some app from the Apple Apps store to allow you to monitor CPU temp to verify that.

Kim

jdsr4c

Level 1

5 points

Feb 21, 2016 12:59 PM in response to ethereality

Because 4GB was insufficient for my MacBook Pro. Between kernel, chrome, some open PDFs, and eclipse, I was pushing 4 GB with ease. As soon as I upgraded, I steadily run slightly over 4GB now. Web browsing nowadays eats up a lot of RAM, especially if you are like me and like to open a lot of tabs And use tools/plugins.

I also installed an SSD, so my late 2011 MacBook Pro runs as fast as ever now.

Mar 1, 2016 7:14 PM in response to jdsr4c

Just you to know...

I´d the same f%$# problem! Stayed 2 days reading forums everywhere... So I decided to Erase the HD and Reinstall, 1... 2....3.... - and at the third time... OW! It seems that El Capitan was much better! (before - at the second time.. I was trying to solve problems like internet conenctions, App Store Id and so on.... - so at the 3rd. try- almost everything was fix!).. and ate the FOURTH REINSTALL... everything OK!!

*PS- I´d made the clean install all the times!

I think this may help some people. It´s very similar with the other problem that I had before- Disk utility- trying do verify and repair de HD... after 7 times.. finaly made it too (repair). Strange facts.. but both true!

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Mar 14, 2016 6:46 AM in response to purpleduck

I'm not sure what you mean. I did not do anything using a guest account.

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Mar 14, 2016 6:57 AM in response to purpleduck

I will try using the computer as a Guest after finishing this Time Machine backup. To restate my problem: It takes several minutes for the computer to boot up, and it takes 5-60 seconds to "initiate" most things (opening a web browser, beginning to type in a field), but then it's 'normal' once it gets going. It seems like someone who "needs coffee and can't do anything until I've had my coffee"...

purpleduck wrote:

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".

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Mar 14, 2016 2:48 PM in response to purpleduck

I just logged in as guest: It took about 65 seconds to login as guest and click Safari from the horizontal dock, then about 38 seconds for Safari to open, then about 15 seconds to arrive at discussions.apple.com. Are those normal times? It did seem faster than my main account. Should I proceed with a clean install since it does seem faster?

During those first two intervals, Photos also opened automatically. (It's currently showing the "Welcome ... Take a quick tour" screen.)

purpleduck wrote:

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.

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Mar 15, 2016 10:38 AM in response to ethereality

It took about double those times on my main account.

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Mar 15, 2016 4:06 PM in response to ethereality

I created another Time Machine backup and attempted to reset to factory defaults, since the Guest account appeared twice as fast as my main account. Following the instructions provided I encountered an error telling me I was unable to do so. How do I proceed?

ethereality Author

Level 1

64 points

Mar 16, 2016 6:08 AM in response to purpleduck

I unsecurely erased the disk, reinstalled El Capitan, and restored from my latest Time Machine backup, and that has indeed helped: Both startup, wait-to-load and 'first-time' field text entries are faster now. If I'm not mistaken, I've also gained some 30 GB free hard disk space ... (After 5.5 years, might it have been so fragmented that it lost track of how much space was available?)

I will now see about servicing the battery and upgrading from 4 GB to 8 GB RAM as jdsr4c recommended.

2010 MacBook Pro uselessly slow after El Capitan 10.11.1 Upgrade