Beach Ball, Sluggish & Typing Lag

[bbecksoon]

I have a 15" MacBook Pro mid-2010, running Sierra 10.12.1. I use Safari and Mail.

Processor:
2.53 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory:
4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics:
Intel HD Graphics 288 MB

Recently I've experienced more and more beach ball spinning, sluggish behavior (slow to open programs, windows, etc.), and lagging in typing when other apps are running. For instance, in typing an email, it takes a while to "catch up" with my typing.

I've done a bit of web research, and ran the Disk Utility to check the system for errors. It told me I had errors, and needed to run the Repair using Command/R at startup, I believe. I backed everything up to my external hard drive using Time Machine last night, but I am a big chicken, and don't want to run into problems doing this repair. I've read things on various forums about partitions, drives, etc., and I am so confused. I am a basic user, and don't talk the talk like some know how to do, so excuse my basic questions:

Is running the repair safe? Is there a chance it will wipe everything from my computer? If it were to wipe data, is running a restore from Time Machine difficult to do? Is anything going to happen during this repair that I need to be aware of? (prompts/choices?)

Any advice is much appreciated!

 

[u297]

I'm having this same problem with Sierra + Mail.

Long visible delays (perhaps 4 secs) when typing or changing from one message to another.

I'm using a 2012 MBA i7 8GB, previous version of Mail / OS worked fine. Delays only started after upgrade to Sierra.

I ran the "Disk Utility" you mentioned but mine found no problems, so not sure if your original guess was correct.

Here are some of the things I've tried / noticed (posting them to help others in troubleshooting).

• I have Little Snitch Installed - interesting it shows no network activity during these delays so I don't think that the delays are network bound.
• A different thread suggested it was spellcheck causing the delay and suggested setting explicitly to "English" instead of "Automatic", I've tried that to no avail.
• Another thread suggested turning off "Exchange" mail service, which I did to no avail (NOTE: I also have the Exchange bug where it continually says "Downloading Messages" until quit / restart mail).
• Another thread suggested "Rebuilding" all mailboxes which I did to no avail.

In short, this bug has really impacted my daily use - I send and receive sometimes 100 emails a day, its gotten so bad that I often will type responses in Notes then cut / paste into Mail Compose windows to avoid the ridiculous delays.

 

[bcave098]

I have a 15" MacBook Pro mid-2010, running Sierra 10.12.1. I use Safari and Mail.

Processor:
2.53 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory:
4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics:
Intel HD Graphics 288 MB

Recently I've experienced more and more beach ball spinning, sluggish behavior (slow to open programs, windows, etc.), and lagging in typing when other apps are running. For instance, in typing an email, it takes a while to "catch up" with my typing.

I've done a bit of web research, and ran the Disk Utility to check the system for errors. It told me I had errors, and needed to run the Repair using Command/R at startup, I believe. I backed everything up to my external hard drive using Time Machine last night, but I am a big chicken, and don't want to run into problems doing this repair. I've read things on various forums about partitions, drives, etc., and I am so confused. I am a basic user, and don't talk the talk like some know how to do, so excuse my basic questions:

Is running the repair safe? Is there a chance it will wipe everything from my computer? If it were to wipe data, is running a restore from Time Machine difficult to do? Is anything going to happen during this repair that I need to be aware of? (prompts/choices?)

Any advice is much appreciated!

This sounds like it's what's causing your issue. Hard drive problems cause computers to act sluggish. The repair process will try to resolve the problem, if it fails it will warn you to back up data and erase the drive. It's unlikely the repair itself will cause data loss. Restoring from Time Machine is easy (cmd-r on boot then choose Restore).

 

[CTHarrryH]

I have that problem occasionally and when it happens you can hear the fan in my mid-2012 MBP running constantly. I have to shut it down completely, let it sit for a few minutes and then power it back on to get normal behavior and performance.

 

[JohnDS]

U297, you really should start your own thread rather than hijacking someone else's. It is confusing trying to resolve two different problems in one thread.

Open Activity Monitor and set it to sort by the %CPU column, with the largest number at the top. When you get beach balling check Activity monitor to see if one process is hogging your CPU time.