Anyone running El Capitan on Mid 2010 Macbook?

[Eligos]

El Capitan installed on a late 2008 iMac upgraded from Yosemite.
My experience so far is positive, more smoothness with scrolling and moving windows.
Mail took a very long time to download all my messages but in the end it all fixed itself.
Startup and shutdown are swift, the ssd I installed 6 months ago to replace the aging stock HD
is mostly responsible for that...

 

[TimKenyon]

I'm running OSX Mavericks on a stock Mid2010 MBP. Upgraded to Yosemite and had some serious performance problems - lagging, slow running, etc.

Anyone tried the Mid 2010 stock config with El Capitan? Is it worth upgrading?

 

[Eldeo]

On the topic of hardware issues and old laptops, I have the 2011 MBP that is known to have hardware issues with the discrete AMD graphics card.

I'm still running Snow Leopard and very interested in upgrading to El Capitan from all I've read, but I feel like I need to keep my laptop running on the Intel graphics, which I do with gfxCardStatus.

Does anyone know if gfxCardStatus works with El Capitan? (Or else that the OS can natively restrict the graphics to the Intel chip?)

I don't like the chances of burning out my logic board otherwise, and I want to keep going with this laptop until the Skylake release!

Try installing the Nvidia Cuda driver for your macbook's Nvidia card. I tried it on my Macbook mid 2010 15" i7 8GB RAM GT330M. Since installing for like a month now only one GPU Panic but that was because I was playing a graphic intense game. Before that, it freaked out a lot on GPU Panic's. Been grafting on ZBrush and Blender & not one freak out. So try it, it might work. Here's the website -
http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html

 

[Eldeo]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html

For Macbook Pro user's on mid 2010 15" GPU Panic's

 

[sananda]

Yes, I have just put El Capitan on my mid 2010 MacBook. It was running very slowly on Yosemite (loads of beachballs) so I did a clean install of El Capitan. So far, everything is good. Much faster.

 

[BroCraig]

Read my thread about my mid 2007 iMac for more details, however its seriously impressive with a 320GB spinning hard drive and only 3GB of RAM.

I have a late 2010 MacBook Pro and it is VERY slow. I have tried everything I can find to do to speed it up, but the finder is just slooooow. Any ideas?

 

[wirk137]

I have a late 2010 MacBook Pro and it is VERY slow. I have tried everything I can find to do to speed it up, but the finder is just slooooow. Any ideas?

Have you checked to see if the both RAM modules are functioning? Click the apple, click About this Mac. I imagine you probably have 4gb of ram. If it shows only 2gb; one of the ram cards may not be seated correctly. If that's not an issue; you should upgrade to 8gb ram.

 

[rbrian]

I like it on my 2011 mini, but when my friend asked for help installing it on his 2010 MacBook, after failing multiple times, I started tearing my hair out. Somehow he'd managed to wipe his hard drive, so I made a USB stick on my mini, which just fails again and again. Thinking maybe the hard drive was faulty (I've replaced it twice before) I bought an SSD, which has made no difference whatsoever. "An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again". After running it ten times, I'm looking for an alternative solution. Maybe I'll try Yosemite, but with my slow internet, it'll take all day to download.

 

[BroCraig]

Have you checked to see if the both RAM modules are functioning? Click the apple, click About this Mac. I imagine you probably have 4gb of ram. If it shows only 2gb; one of the ram cards may not be seated correctly. If that's not an issue; you should upgrade to 8gb ram.

I have 8gb. It shows 8. I'll check again. The RAM should not be the issue. Others I read about have theirs running fine and even say it is quicker. Not for me!!!!

 

[flyer22]

I'm running OSX Mavericks on a stock Mid2010 MBP. Upgraded to Yosemite and had some serious performance problems - lagging, slow running, etc.

Anyone tried the Mid 2010 stock config with El Capitan? Is it worth upgrading?

Tim - did you upgrade in the end? Am in the same boat and just wondered what your experience was? Thanks, flyer

 

[Fishrrman]

BroCraig wrote above:
"I have a late 2010 MacBook Pro and it is VERY slow. I have tried everything I can find to do to speed it up, but the finder is just slooooow. Any ideas?"

Put an SSD into it.

That will SOLVE the problems.

 

[Ebenezum]

BroCraig wrote above:
"I have a late 2010 MacBook Pro and it is VERY slow. I have tried everything I can find to do to speed it up, but the finder is just slooooow. Any ideas?"

Put an SSD into it.

That will SOLVE the problems.

Yes it will help but I am not impressed that latest OS X versions practically demand SSD to be usable. I wonder why Apple still list hard drive instead of SSD as the minimum requirement?

 

[Rusty33]

BroCraig wrote above:
"I have a late 2010 MacBook Pro and it is VERY slow. I have tried everything I can find to do to speed it up, but the finder is just slooooow. Any ideas?"

Put an SSD into it.

That will SOLVE the problems.

Agreed - i've put an el cheapo samsung SSD (coupled with 8gb ram) in my 2010MBP and she is ticking along nicely. No real need for an upgrade in the near future.

 

[rbrian]

I like it on my 2011 mini, but when my friend asked for help installing it on his 2010 MacBook, after failing multiple times, I started tearing my hair out. Somehow he'd managed to wipe his hard drive, so I made a USB stick on my mini, which just fails again and again. Thinking maybe the hard drive was faulty (I've replaced it twice before) I bought an SSD, which has made no difference whatsoever. "An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again". After running it ten times, I'm looking for an alternative solution. Maybe I'll try Yosemite, but with my slow internet, it'll take all day to download.

After much mucking about, I managed to fix it. The El Cap logs weren't any help, all the errors were about fonts, but when Yosemite also failed, the logs showed that it couldn't bless the drive. Some Googling found the answer, and after resetting the NVRAM Yosemite installed OK, and then several hours later El Cap downloaded and installed. With the new SSD it starts up in under 20 seconds, and seems to work fine in the little time I played with it before returning it to the owner. I used the original drive to make a time machine backup, so if he manages to kill it again, it shouldn't take quite so long to fix.

 

[oneshotpro]

On first install was great, months later after the last few updates...nearly awful. Spotlight stops showing results for apps, slow boot up, slow login, adobe cc is borderline unusable. This past weekend I was working on some psd website updates, copy and pasting text from a pages document into a 60mb PSD and had 5-6 complete computer crashes, not the program crashing....the whole system goes to black screen and a "You're computer was restarted due to a problem." Never had that happen in 14 years of owning a Mac...

own a 15" MBP mid-2010 btw, 8GB ram.

 

[chrfr]

...had 5-6 complete computer crashes, not the program crashing....the whole system goes to black screen and a "You're computer was restarted due to a problem." Never had that happen in 14 years of owning a Mac...

own a 15" MBP mid-2010 btw, 8GB ram.

Sounds like your computer is having a hardware problem. That definitely is not typical behavior in 10.11.x, and repeated kernel panics like those would point to hardware problems. Given the model of computer you have, it's most likely a graphics failure, but that's not guaranteed.

 

[jwolf6589]

Hey guys. Wanted to ask you about your Mid 2010 Macbook and El Capitan impressions. Anyone of you have tried this config? Is it useable?

Thanks in advance.

My mom is running it on a mid 2008 MacBook with 4GB of RAM and it works great.

 

[kaiju_wars]

Honestly, runs great. Battery life took a hit, though it's usable.

I do feel that Yosemite was actually a bit better though... after all the updates of course.

 

[firelighter487]

i'm running it on a early 2009 macbook with 4 gb of ram and a 120gb kingston ssd. it's really fast and stable, for me anyway.

 

[saudor]

On first install was great, months later after the last few updates...nearly awful. Spotlight stops showing results for apps, slow boot up, slow login, adobe cc is borderline unusable. This past weekend I was working on some psd website updates, copy and pasting text from a pages document into a 60mb PSD and had 5-6 complete computer crashes, not the program crashing....the whole system goes to black screen and a "You're computer was restarted due to a problem." Never had that happen in 14 years of owning a Mac...

own a 15" MBP mid-2010 btw, 8GB ram.

Definitely sounds like a GPU issue. Take it in and ask them to do a VST. They replaced my Logic board for free in December so worth a shot

 

[oneshotpro]

Definitely sounds like a GPU issue. Take it in and ask them to do a VST. They replaced my Logic board for free in December so worth a shot

I swapped the HDD to a SSD, and seems to have fixed the issue. Will see if it happens anymore.

 

[dogslobber]

On first install was great, months later after the last few updates...nearly awful. Spotlight stops showing results for apps, slow boot up, slow login, adobe cc is borderline unusable. This past weekend I was working on some psd website updates, copy and pasting text from a pages document into a 60mb PSD and had 5-6 complete computer crashes, not the program crashing....the whole system goes to black screen and a "You're computer was restarted due to a problem." Never had that happen in 14 years of owning a Mac...

own a 15" MBP mid-2010 btw, 8GB ram.

Did you enable Trim? trim force enable from term.

 

[Abdulhaq]

I have a mid-2010 unibody Macbook with 1 TB Seagate hybrid hard disk (seems to be pretty fast). I have 4 GB of ram. Will El Kapitan run as fast as Mountain Lion with this configuration or do I have to upgrade to 8 GB Ram. I do not intend to buy a SSD.

 

[saudor]

Mavericks and later pretty much required a SSD to run decently well from my experience. El Cap is even worse in terms of speed so i reckon without a SSD, there will be a noticeable drop from ML.

It is also more memory heavy (mavericks wasnt too bad however) However i have friends on 4gb RAM and they seem to be surviving so if your needs are low, you should be OK

 

[deedubfly]

Hey guys. Wanted to ask you about your Mid 2010 Macbook and El Capitan impressions. Anyone of you have tried this config? Is it useable?

Thanks in advance.

I've got a 15" mid-2010 with 8GB RAM and the 2.8 GHz i7. I upgraded it with an SSD shortly after I bought it in 2011. A few years back I had the GPU panic problem and had Apple fix it. It's been fine ever since until recently. I started getting GPU panic reboots again sometime shortly after I upgraded to El Capitan. Last week, the panics became more frequent until I had 4 in one day. Since I'm almost always docked using external display and keyboard I didn't notice that my battery was swollen and pressing the trackpad out of the chassis. Optimistically, I hoped that replacing the battery might fix the panics. While they are less frequent now, they still occur. I've disabled automatic graphics switching and installed gfxCardStatus. Unfortunately, you can't use the integrated graphics if you use an external display. Also some apps require use of discrete graphics, so you still run the risk of panics. It's not worth paying to fix the GPU again since the machine is so old at this point. I can't be sure another OS will reduce or eliminate the panics. Also, I need to be on the same OS as the rest of my dev team, so downgrading to Yosemite or Mavericks is not an option. I was hoping to limp along until the 2016 Macbook Pros came out, but I don't think I can wait until Q4.