MacBook Air 2012 suddenly Super Slow/Lag

[mactreouser]

Hi, my MacBook Air 2012 suddenly fall into the situation of Super Slow like Super Lagging and it seems "Almost" would never Login after started up!

I've tried,
Reboot, Safe Mode, Recovery Mode, PRAM Reset, Disk Utility to Repair Disk, work without any connections (Bluetooth or WiFi or USB stuffs)... Same issue occured!

What's wrong? 😭

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Sunspots.

Aliens.

12-year-old hardware, something is failing.

One of those - maybe? 🤔

 

[Bigwaff]

Same issue occured!

What's wrong? 😭

Open case and blow out dust, etc.

 

[mactreouser]

Sunspots.

Aliens.

12-year-old hardware, something is failing.

One of those - maybe? 🤔

Um... Perhaps!

Open case and blow out dust, etc.

Oh? That works? 😲

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Oh? That works? 😲

Maybe. Probably won't make it any worse, unless you manage to damage something in the process. At worst, it'll be just like it was.

A 12-year-old computer doesn't owe you anything in terms of ongoing performance... might think about a replacement.

 

[mactreouser]

Maybe. Probably won't make it any worse, unless you manage to damage something in the process. At worst, it'll be just like it was.

A 12-year-old computer doesn't owe you anything in terms of ongoing performance... might think about a replacement.

You are right, it's faithful enough 😜
Just gave it a shot, unfortunately No Luck! 😩

 

[za9ra22]

You haven't actually told us what you did to troubleshoot. You mentioned 'recovery mode', but have you actually wiped it and reinstalled a fresh (original) macOS?

I did this on my 2012 iMac when it had slowed badly and a RAM upgrade made no difference. After the fresh reinstall it was back to just about as-new.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Hi, my MacBook Air 2012 suddenly fall into the situation of Super Slow like Super Lagging and it seems "Almost" would never Login after started up!

I've tried,
Reboot, Safe Mode, Recovery Mode, PRAM Reset, Disk Utility to Repair Disk, work without any connections (Bluetooth or WiFi or USB stuffs)... Same issue occured!

What's wrong? 😭

Can you show us some snapshots from Activity Monitor right after login (at least CPU, Memory, and Disk tabs and why not throw in Network)? Also knowing which OS might be helpful too -- not because the OS version is likely the culprit (since it was working well before we'll assume for now it isn't) but would help to know what tools you have to work with.

By the way does this laptop have an HDD (rotating disk hard drive)? If so and it is the original, I would replace ASAP (either the drive or just get a new laptop as others have mentioned). After 12 years, a rotating hard drive is beyond life expectency and could be holding on by a thread (leading to lots of aborted read/writes, retries, bad sector reallocations, etc which would align with the symptoms you are experiencing).

Also, even if you've already made the decision to replace the laptop, you should still ASAP make a full backup of your data if you don't have regular backups/time machine/iCloud/etc.

 

[KhunJay]

Hi, my MacBook Air 2012 suddenly fall into the situation of Super Slow like Super Lagging and it seems "Almost" would never Login after started up!

Did you, by any chance, update the OS recently?
I have a 2012 MBA i7 with 8GB RAM and I am pretty sure it would probably
behave the same if I updated it...it's running ok on El Capitan but I don't store
any critical data on it. Just surfing and playing some videos.

 

[mactreouser]

You haven't actually told us what you did to troubleshoot. You mentioned 'recovery mode', but have you actually wiped it and reinstalled a fresh (original) macOS?

I did this on my 2012 iMac when it had slowed badly and a RAM upgrade made no difference. After the fresh reinstall it was back to just about as-new.

Can you show us some snapshots from Activity Monitor right after login (at least CPU, Memory, and Disk tabs and why not throw in Network)? Also knowing which OS might be helpful too -- not because the OS version is likely the culprit (since it was working well before we'll assume for now it isn't) but would help to know what tools you have to work with.

By the way does this laptop have an HDD (rotating disk hard drive)? If so and it is the original, I would replace ASAP (either the drive or just get a new laptop as others have mentioned). After 12 years, a rotating hard drive is beyond life expectency and could be holding on by a thread (leading to lots of aborted read/writes, retries, bad sector reallocations, etc which would align with the symptoms you are experiencing).

Also, even if you've already made the decision to replace the laptop, you should still ASAP make a full backup of your data if you don't have regular backups/time machine/iCloud/etc.

Appreciate your advices and suggestions again! Surprise, my Old Mac was miraculously "recovered" with my last step of "drag all desktop files and folders into a single Folder! " I'm no so sure whether this is the solution?! And of cause, before that I keep rebooting, first aid, safe mode ...

So, it's now back to normal and I have no idea what was the solution 😅

 

[rampancy]

By the way does this laptop have an HDD (rotating disk hard drive)? If so and it is the original, I would replace ASAP (either the drive or just get a new laptop as others have mentioned).

The OP has a 2012 Air. No MacBook Air since 2010 has shipped with a hard drive.

Appreciate your advices and suggestions again! Surprise, my Old Mac was miraculously "recovered" with my last step of "drag all desktop files and folders into a single Folder! " I'm no so sure whether this is the solution?! And of cause, before that I keep rebooting, first aid, safe mode ...

So, it's now back to normal and I have no idea what was the solution 😅

It's a not-so-well-known fact that large amounts of files on the desktop can contribute to sluggish Finder performance, so it's quite possible that organizing your desktop might have cleared up your performance issues.

 

[romeao]

I am having similar issues, and any of the previous suggestions wouldn't help me.
It's a Macbook air5,2 Mid-2012 Intel Core i5 64GB SSD (All empty and erased), 4GB RAM.
I have tried resetting PRAM, NVRAM, SMC.
Even moving the mouse is laggy and it is slow consistently no matter. It happens even when installing new OS which is taking more than 5 hours.

I will run a EtreCheck once Catalina installation finishes and will upload here.

Any ideas on what the issue could be, please let me know.

 

[bzgnyc2]

I am having similar issues, and any of the previous suggestions wouldn't help me.
It's a Macbook air5,2 Mid-2012 Intel Core i5 64GB SSD (All empty and erased), 4GB RAM.
I have tried resetting PRAM, NVRAM, SMC.
Even moving the mouse is laggy and it is slow consistently no matter. It happens even when installing new OS which is taking more than 5 hours.

I will run a EtreCheck once Catalina installation finishes and will upload here.

Any ideas on what the issue could be, please let me know.

Did you previously run Catalina on this laptop or were you on an earlier OS (Mojave, High Siera, El Capitain)?

I've found Catalina relatively inefficient. When I run it on my 2020 MacBook Air, I can still "run out of memory" (i.e. get to the point where the system feels slow) while browsing and it has 16GB. 4GB is not enough to run a recent Mac OS -- even one that looks just like the older macOS.

 

[romeao]

Did you previously run Catalina on this laptop or were you on an earlier OS (Mojave, High Siera, El Capitain)?

I've found Catalina relatively inefficient. When I run it on my 2020 MacBook Air, I can still "run out of memory" (i.e. get to the point where the system feels slow) while browsing and it has 16GB. 4GB is not enough to run a recent Mac OS -- even one that looks just like the older macOS.

I am sorry i don't know if you have watched the linked video or not.
Catalina is not the issue, I previously had Mountain Lion and it was the same when i decided to update and start fresh with a wiped SSD.If you check the video you would see the pointer teleport.

 

[MBAir2010]

Try replacing the thermal paste, I me my need to do that soon like today or this weekend.
For The Record:
Mountain Lion thrives on 2012 macs,
just not for iCloud use tho.... since they wont ya' log in anymore.
which can be a good thing!

 

[MBAir2010]

I am having similar issues, and any of the previous suggestions wouldn't help me.
It's a Macbook air5,2 Mid-2012 Intel Core i5 64GB SSD (All empty and erased), 4GB RAM.
I have tried resetting PRAM, NVRAM, SMC.
Even moving the mouse is laggy and it is slow consistently no matter. It happens even when installing new OS which is taking more than 5 hours.

I will run a EtreCheck once Catalina installation finishes and will upload here.

Any ideas on what the issue could be, please let me know.

Catalina was okay on my MacBook Pro 2012 then slow after a week or two whhilt every hot.
thankfully Mojave was better but ate up battery and slowed after a while.
now i am happy with the original OSX and everything thing is fast and smooth!

 

[romeao]

Catalina was okay on my MacBook Pro 2012 then slow after a week or two whhilt every hot.
thankfully Mojave was better but ate up battery and slowed after a while.
now i am happy with the original OSX and everything thing is fast and smooth!

I would agree with your point but i have no OS on this device yet and even then it's lagging behind on every input mouse pointer, key strokes, clicks and over all function.
OS installers don't eat all your RAM and lag your whole system, as it was similar to in the local Mac OSx recovery mode, Internet recovery mode.
Is anyone aware of any known common issues with motherboard on this model.

 

[bzgnyc2]

I am sorry i don't know if you have watched the linked video or not.
Catalina is not the issue, I previously had Mountain Lion and it was the same when i decided to update and start fresh with a wiped SSD.If you check the video you would see the pointer teleport.

All the video showed was trying to install Catalina which was my point. That system may not have the capability for that OS. Not that Catalina does so much more than the OS that came with that laptop that that makes sense. Just that's the way macOS has been going.

However, that it was lagging under Mountain Lion is a helpful bit of new information. If it was previously running well under Mountain Lion and then started to lag to the point it couldn't even keep up with mouse movements then I suspect a hardware problem.

Is the SSD original? If so it may be failing after 12 years. SSD don't fail the same way that HDD do but they do fail.

 

[romeao]

Try replacing the thermal paste, I me my need to do that soon like today or this weekend.
For The Record:
Mountain Lion thrives on 2012 macs,
just not for iCloud use tho.... since they wont ya' log in anymore.
which can be a good thing!

Still have 3 hours and 30 mins for the installation to finish. Once it does, i will replace the thermal paste and provide information.

 

[romeao]

All the video showed was trying to install Catalina which was my point. That system may not have the capability for that OS. Not that Catalina does so much more than the OS that came with that laptop that that makes sense. Just that's the way macOS has been going.

However, that it was lagging under Mountain Lion is a helpful bit of new information. If it was previously running well under Mountain Lion and then started to lag to the point it couldn't even keep up with mouse movements then I suspect a hardware problem.

Is the SSD original? If so it may be failing after 12 years. SSD don't fail the same way that HDD do but they do fail.

SSD is original, I would have to run a health check to confirm. if it is the SSD once the OS is installed.
I do have a external backup drive i can boot from and test if it fixes it but i highly doubt it would.

 

[bzgnyc2]

SSD is original, I would have to run a health check to confirm. if it is the SSD once the OS is installed.
I do have a external backup drive i can boot from and test if it fixes it but i highly doubt it would.

Booting from a fast external SSD would help to rule that out. Then you can test I/O to the internal SSD directly. If you get sequential I/O speeds less than 200MB/sec from that drive, it would suggest to me it's close to EOL. It's hard to find benchmarks from the 64GB SSD used in that model so that's just a ROM guess of what you should get. The larger SSD used in that model got ~ 500MB/sec.

When SSD start to reach EOL, their ability to write fails first. As SSD memory cells become unreliable, the drive controller marks them as bad and then starts to move contents around to find better places to write the data. As more cells fail, more data has to be moved around to fewer and fewer remaining reliable locations and this process takes longer.

This is different than either fragmented filesystems on HDD and HDD failures. In the latter case, reads tend to fail first as the drive loses the ability to read it's own data. You tend to get lots of retries which is usually noticable both in response time and noise.

Also wiping an SSD has less impact on performance that it does on an HDD. An HDD can be working very well at the hardware level but feel slow due to fragmentation. The impact of fragmentation on HDD is much more significant due to the inherent mechanical latency of the latter. Wiping and reinstalling the data/OS/etc on an HDD is more likely to restore a system to it's former glory in those cases. With an SSD, there may be some upside but likely minimal unless the OS was corrupted/bloated. Otherwise, it just adds wear.

By the way, do you have the 11" or 13" MacBook Air? Old spec pages say the 5,2 was a 13" MacBook Air but they also say the 64GB SSD was only available on the 11" MacBook Air.

 

[MBAir2010]

By the way, do you have the 11" or 13" MacBook Air? Old spec pages say the 5,2 was a 13" MacBook Air but they also say the 64GB SSD was only available on the 11" MacBook Air.

the 2011 MBA 11" were available with 128 or 68GB while the '10 model was 68 only, but can be upgraded to 2TB now.

 

[bzgnyc2]

the 2011 MBA 11" were available with 128 or 68GB while the '10 model was 68 only, but can be upgraded to 2TB now.

I'm not following -- romeao's original post said he had a "Macbook air5,2 Mid-2012 Intel Core i5 64GB SSD". The MacBook Air 5,2 corresponds to the 13" MacBook Air Mid-2012. However, that model was supposedly not available with the 64GB drive -- only 128GB and above. The only MBA Mid-2012 model that came with 64GB of SSD was the 11" (Model 5,1):

MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2012) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

MacBook Air (Intel-based) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Then not sure how the 2011 or 2010 models fit into this discussion.

Just trying to figure out exactly which model the poster has and how it is configured. Knowing whether it is a 2010 or 2011 or 2012 and whether it's stock or been upgraded may shift suggestions based on what is most probable and what is typical for different models (e.g. a 2010's stock SSD operating normally is likely substantially slower than a 2012's).

 

[MBAir2010]

I'm not following --

i read the latest OP post as aug 9th instead of april 9th
and now wished i never commented on what i own and my experiences on drive size they were sold waaaay back then
so we are digging a hole to china and ended up on mars.....

realistically these macbooks are soooooo old why even rack our brains?

 

[bzgnyc2]

i read the latest OP post as aug 9th instead of april 9th
and now wished i never commented on what i own and my experiences on drive size they were sold waaaay back then
so we are digging a hole to china and ended up on mars.....

Haha... think that about summarizes about every comments thread given enough time...

realistically these macbooks are soooooo old why even rack our brains?

Agree the economics don't make sense in the grand scheme of things. But happy to share anything I know that might help someone. Plus it's like a little real life puzzle.