Force quit

[lawrie1947]

macbook pro 2010 Mountain Lion

I upgraded to ML when it first came out with just enough RAM (4GB) to make it work OK
The past six months, however, it runs extremely slow and unless I wait for a very long time with the spinning wheel I have to force quit many programmes.
I have repaired permissions with little change. No new software.
I am happy to buy more RAM but as the machine worked fine previously on what it had I am afraid there may be another issue.
Any not too high tech help appreciated

 

[ghislain]

macbook pro 2010 Mountain Lion

I upgraded to ML when it first came out with just enough RAM (4GB) to make it work OK
The past six months, however, it runs extremely slow and unless I wait for a very long time with the spinning wheel I have to force quit many programmes.
I have repaired permissions with little change. No new software.
I am happy to buy more RAM but as the machine worked fine previously on what it had I am afraid there may be another issue.
Any not too high tech help appreciated

I have a 2010 mac pro and it is perfectly happy with ML and now with Mavericks. So, I agree that you may have another issue, unless it is simply short in RAM. Mine has 8 GB RAM....

 

[NOTNlCE]

Sounds like more RAM would help for sure. Also, reboot the machine regularly. OS X uses RAM as a file cache fairly liberally, and it fills up 4GB very quickly. I recently upgraded from 14GB to 16GB, and that's just enough for me. Rebooting the machine purges file cache and resets the kernel_cache which can often use a lot of RAM after a period of time. If you need to clear out RAM and do not have time to do a reboot, you can open a Terminal and type "sudo purge" and hit enter. This will purge your RAM of the file cache and write it all to your disk, hence freeing up memory.

 

[lawrie1947]

Sounds like more RAM would help for sure. Also, reboot the machine regularly. OS X uses RAM as a file cache fairly liberally, and it fills up 4GB very quickly. I recently upgraded from 14GB to 16GB, and that's just enough for me. Rebooting the machine purges file cache and resets the kernel_cache which can often use a lot of RAM after a period of time. If you need to clear out RAM and do not have time to do a reboot, you can open a Terminal and type "sudo purge" and hit enter. This will purge your RAM of the file cache and write it all to your disk, hence freeing up memory.

Thanks guys.

You are right about memory being eaten up quickly and I use memory clean to grab some back.

Will bite the bullet and get more ram

posted in wrong forum as this is a laptop

 

[Weaselboy]

macbook pro 2010 Mountain Lion

I upgraded to ML when it first came out with just enough RAM (4GB) to make it work OK
The past six months, however, it runs extremely slow and unless I wait for a very long time with the spinning wheel I have to force quit many programmes.
I have repaired permissions with little change. No new software.
I am happy to buy more RAM but as the machine worked fine previously on what it had I am afraid there may be another issue.
Any not too high tech help appreciated

When this is happening open Activity Monitor and go to the memory tab and look at the memory pressure bar at the bottom. If that bar is green you have plenty of memory and buying more will not help. Give this a look.

Also look in the CPU tab and sort the CPU% column and see if you have an app or process chewing up CPU cycles.

 

[casperes1996]

Wait wait wait...

Thanks guys.

You are right about memory being eaten up quickly and I use memory clean to grab some back.

Will bite the bullet and get more ram

posted in wrong forum as this is a laptop

If it used to work fine with 4, and it doesn't now, then I'm not sure you'll benefit greatly from upgrading. I'd still say 4 gigs is stretching it, and for the record, upgrading to Mavericks might be a good idea, as Mavericks is really cool with memory compression and such. I suggest you do a complete reformatting and installation of OS X though. This will make sure that you aren't suffering from any unwanted bugs or software pieces bogging you down. To do this, hold cmd+r as you boot, click disk utility, select your disk and click erase. Then go back to the previous menu and install OS X on said disk. Note that this will delete all data, so be sure to have a backup of important files.

 

[flowrider]

My machine when just surfing the web uses almost 10GB of RAM. So yes, IMO, RAM is the culprit here.

Lou

 

[lawrie1947]

I suggest you do a complete reformatting and installation of OS X though. This will make sure that you aren't suffering from any unwanted bugs or software pieces bogging you down. To do this, hold cmd+r as you boot, click disk utility, select your disk and click erase. Then go back to the previous menu and install OS X on said disk. Note that this will delete all data, so be sure to have a backup of important files.

Only problem with that is some of my software was installed in my place of work (school) prior to retirement and I would not be able to reinstall it.

I have time machine backups but I assume this does not include software?

 

[Riwam]

Only problem with that is some of my software was installed in my place of work (school) prior to retirement and I would not be able to reinstall it.

I have time machine backups but I assume this does not include software?

...........................................
I am by no way an expert but if you set the entire boot drive for Time Machine, then everything should be there including the applications in that drive.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Time Machine will restore your system to exactly the way it was when it was backed up. System, preferences, programmes, everything. All you need is a valid install disc that will boot in your system. Even Snow Leopard discs will restore a Mavericks Time Machine backup.

 

[casperes1996]

My TM is glitches so

Only problem with that is some of my software was installed in my place of work (school) prior to retirement and I would not be able to reinstall it.

I have time machine backups but I assume this does not include software?

It does include applications, but my Time Machine never really worked properly because of a variety of reasons, so I can't tell you much on that front. Restoring an entire Time Machine backup wouldn't do you much good though, it'd just set you exactly where you already stand. Why don't you just put these programs on a disk (like the disk you use for Time Machine) manually? My Time capsule has a lot of data on it, including apps, alongside my Time Machine (that's a bit broken). This way you can reformat and install OS X, and then retrieve the data you need manually.

 

[lawrie1947]

How can I isolate the programmes and copy them to disk.

Is the data from them in different parts of the hard disk?

I have dreamweaver with all my sites data etc, for example, and I would think that all that info would be stored elsewhere.
I guess I ned to dig a bit deeper here.

 

[Macsonic]

How can I isolate the programmes and copy them to disk.

Is the data from them in different parts of the hard disk?

I have dreamweaver with all my sites data etc, for example, and I would think that all that info would be stored elsewhere.
I guess I ned to dig a bit deeper here.

In my case I clone my main boot drive with either Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner app so I have a copy of the exact apps and same settings, same fonts etc on the clone drive. The clone HD also serves as my backup in case problems arise on my main boot HD specially when upgrading to a new OS or a new software was installed that caused incompatibilities. I separate all my work files and have them stored on another physical HD. My boot drive only has the apps. I know not all users clone their main boot drive. I guess we all have our own personal work systems.

If you try to copy your apps to another HD, the copied apps may start asking for the serial number and may not run. With the cloned drive, the apps are running fine. If you get the Beach ball, try to note down what activity or what appllication were you using. Sometimes it may be certain apps. I don't get the beach ball problem except whenever I use the Firefox browser. Whenever my internet provider gets disconnected while using Firefox, loading a page hangs and causes the beach ball With Chrome or Safari or other apps, the beach ball problem does not happen.

 

[MH01]

My machine when just surfing the web uses almost 10GB of RAM. So yes, IMO, RAM is the culprit here.

Lou

Do you by champ not shutdown your machine and leave safari running?

 

[casperes1996]

Different apps handle everything differently

How can I isolate the programmes and copy them to disk.

Is the data from them in different parts of the hard disk?

I have dreamweaver with all my sites data etc, for example, and I would think that all that info would be stored elsewhere.
I guess I ned to dig a bit deeper here.

All apps handle these things differently. Most likely data is being kept in ~/library/application support\. The ~/library folder is hidden by default in Lion and up. To reveal it, type "chflags no hidden library" in the Terminal. Some apps also keep their data in the Application package itself (not a commonly used practice.). To be sure, I suggest copying the System->Library, ~/Library, and Application itself. Copying all three folders should almost certainly keep you safe. If you have another system, to test with, you could try transferring these three objects to that system to test if the application opens and runs as expected.