Macbook pro is incredibly slow

[jeanpaulb90]

Hi, I'm hoping someone might be able to help me on here.

I have a 2012 macbook pro which I use mainly for graphic design...I havent had any problems until recently, I installed mavericks when the update came in and all was fine apart from the headphone input doesnt work anymore (im not too fussed with this), I then installed the Yosmite update and this is where most of my problems began.

I first noticed how much my laptop has slowed down in terms of opening and closing apps. When logging in as a user this takes forever as well...Sometimes I will get just a black screen for up to 5 minutes and then log in screen will freeze for a bit as well. Then with Chrome and Safari it started intermittently freezing or the spinning wheel would come up for up to 2 minutes and the latest is that even though I would put my laptop in sleep with 80% battery, when I turn it back on it has completely drained.
When using indesign/illustrator/photoshop or any adobe software it just doesnt want to, it takes me around an hour to type a sentence..I feel like im using a pentium 2 over here. :/

I havent tried anything to sort this out, because I primarily use my laptop for work and uni and dont want to mess it up any further.

Hope theres someone on here that could help me out.
(preferably i'd just like to go back t mavericks or anything pre Yosomite

Thanks in advance

 

[maflynn]

Well if its tied to your upgrading to Mavericks, have you thought about downgrading?

How much ram do you have in your computer? Is it a retina MBP, or classic?

 

[jeanpaulb90]

Well if its tied to your upgrading to Mavericks, have you thought about downgrading?

How much ram do you have in your computer? Is it a retina MBP, or classic?

Thanks for the reply

I should of probably given the specs in my first post oops.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
2.5GHz Intel Core i5
4GB 1600 MHZ DDR
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024MB

I have thought of downgrading but didn't really see it as an option, will it affect compatibility with anything ?

 

[simonsi]

Use the CPU tab in the Activity Monitor to see what is using lots of CPU, computers don't run slow as such, they are just running other stuff than what you want.

 

[maflynn]

Thanks for the reply

I should of probably given the specs in my first post oops.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
2.5GHz Intel Core i5
4GB 1600 MHZ DDR
Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024MB

I have thought of downgrading but didn't really see it as an option, will it affect compatibility with anything ?

You may have apps that require the newer version of OS X, so that's a possibility. I have seen various threads about Mavericks being slow on some Macs with 4GB of ram.

Along with the CPU activity being recommend above, check the memory pressure in that app as well.

 

[jeanpaulb90]

Use the CPU tab in the Activity Monitor to see what is using lots of CPU, computers don't run slow as such, they are just running other stuff than what you want.

Thanks

I've screen grabbed CPU usage and the Memory usage...I'm not too sure what I'm looking for though. :/

 

[Baron015]

Try running diskutil, verify/repair disk.

I ad this symptom on one mbp and turned out to be some bad blocks on the disk.

 

[simonsi]

Main app you have running is Chrome, try another browser as Chrome on Macs isn't very efficient, it burns cpu and hence battery life is shorter.

Other than that your cpu load is low according to the monitor, memory is in the green.

 

[jeanpaulb90]

Main app you have running is Chrome, try another browser as Chrome on Macs isn't very efficient, it burns cpu and hence battery life is shorter.

Other than that your cpu load is low according to the monitor, memory is in the green.

But I like Chrome , might just have to stick to Safari then. Is it worth running a system diagnostics, to see if anything gets picked up ?

 

[simonsi]

But I like Chrome , might just have to stick to Safari then. Is it worth running a system diagnostics, to see if anything gets picked up ?

You only need to run Safari long enough to know whether Chrome is the cause. You can also boot in Safe Mode, that will tell you whether one of your login items is perhaps not playing nice.

 

[jeanpaulb90]

You only need to run Safari long enough to know whether Chrome is the cause. You can also boot in Safe Mode, that will tell you whether one of your login items is perhaps not playing nice.

Closed down chrome and running safari now and no change...I also booted in safe made and everything seemed normal.

 

[tschunde]

Listen: The only way to get your 2012 MBP working again with acceptable speed is to install Mavericks again. Yosemite is known to be slow especially on non 2014 machines.

 

[fisherking]

Listen: The only way to get your 2012 MBP working again with acceptable speed is to install Mavericks again. Yosemite is known to be slow especially on non 2014 machines.

really? so all of us who run yosemite without issue on non-2014 machines are..imagining things?

meanwhile, back in the real world:
try backing up everything, doing a clean install of yosemite. run all apple updates. see how that goes...

and/or search this forum (and/or google) for tips about re-installing the OS.

am on a 2011 13" and am loving my experience in 10.10. fast, stable...

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
Is your MacBook Pro a non-retina model with a platter-based hard disk drive?

If so, I offer two recommendations:

1. Install an SSD. This seems to be THE essential piece of equipment to yield a level of performance using either Mavericks or Yosemite that does not seem sluggish -- i.e., "beachball city".
(Note: I would recommend that if you do install an SSD, to pick one other than a Samsung. Other users of these drives are reporting problems in which the drive "sends the Macbook CPU into overdrive" and overheats it. May be firmware-related.)

2. Revert back to OS 10.8.5 Mountain Lion. ML uses the earlier Apple paradigm of RAM management. This was completely turned around in Mavericks and Yosemite. But the "new way" makes things much slower on HDD-based Macs.

My opinion only, and others' will be different...

 

[NoBoMac]

A couple of years ago, I had my machine hang from time to time: NVRAM reset got things working properly. Don't know exactly why...

One other thing I've noticed in the past is that the automagic update process for Adobe products and Goole can bring a machine to its knees. So, I've disabled Adobe and Google updates (I read all the tech sites, so, hear about new Adobe Flash updates from there, RSS feed to Google's Chrome blog for notices of updates to Chrome).

To turn off Google updates, from a Terminal window:

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

 

[simonsi]

...I also booted in safe made and everything seemed normal.

So this indicates one or more of your login/startup items on your account may be the cause of the issue. Make a list of them, remove them all (which is effectively what Safe Mode does), then add them one at a time until you find which one is causing the issue.

----------

Listen: The only way to get your 2012 MBP working again with acceptable speed is to install Mavericks again. Yosemite is known to be slow especially on non 2014 machines.

Yosemite (& Mavericks/ML/L....) can all be slow on any machine with a app that isn't playing nice. He's identified it with Safe Mode....

 

[sarah362]

There are ample of reasons of slow Mac but the major ones are:

Applications or programs running in the background
Hidden and duplicate files
Full hard drive
Cache and log files etc.

After installing Mavericks update, there must be some files or applications which are causing slow speed to the Mac. And solving them manually will take a lot of time. So you may try the Onyx or Stellar SpeedUp Mac utility to clean up all the junk from the Macbook pro. Both are good utilities to increase the speed of the Macbook pro.

 

[Paulo Moura]

My mac's are slow after Yosemite

I have 5 mac: two mini, iMac (The first aluminium one - the first I bought after losing my patience with Windows) a macbook retina 15 and a MacPro. I' m now losing my patience with Yosemite. Open a folder is snail nightmare sometimes. Opening a program can also be a long wait not to mention switch any of the mac on (Mac pro specially). Steve Jobs is really missing. The first upgrade did things a little bit better. Yosemite is around us for more than 3 months and I don't see any improvements - it's a windows vista version apple. I tried already installing it from scratch twice with no improvements. Switching MacPro on is something to do before christmas dinner and even then it's not sure that is already ready for work. I have a drobo thunder connected to it but worked fine with Mavericks.
Have you any idea of what's going on? It's not 1 mac but 5???

 

[yjchua95]

Yosemite doesn't seem to play well with older HDDs.

Buy an SSD and you'll be amazed.

 

[randomgeeza]

(Note: I would recommend that if you do install an SSD, to pick one other than a Samsung. Other users of these drives are reporting problems in which the drive "sends the Macbook CPU into overdrive" and overheats it. May be firmware-related.)

Since when? Can you link me to any articles detailing this and it's symptoms?

Samsung Evo 1TB, running on a mid2009 uMBP 17 with 8G Ram. And all is well.

 

[Paulo Moura]

Thanks for your reply but MacBook retina hás ssd 265 and Macpro hás 1 tera of ssd

 

[simonsi]

Thanks for your reply but MacBook retina hás ssd 265 and Macpro hás 1 tera of ssd

Yosemite doesn't seem to play well with older HDDs.

Buy an SSD and you'll be amazed.

yjchua95 - Ooops! - better look for a real problem....

Paulo - the advice earlier for the OP holds for you, if you haven't already then boot in Safe Mode and see if any login items are causing CPU usage, check the activity monitor and see what is using CPU, computers don run "slow" as such (with one exception, being power-based throttling under some very special circumstances), they are just spending time running something you don't know about.

 

[satcomer]

To all that "upgraded" to Yosemite try the free program EtreCheck and when it runs it will show what is not compatible in Red and then shows you the path to file to manually delete it or update the file. Then make sure you Restart after deleting things so OS X can rebuild services with update services. Plus a lot of older programs put files all over service that can really slow down an "upgraded" version of OS X.

 

[grahamperrin]

Additional advice

HFS Plus, so see whether there's fragmentation of the catalog file or attributes file.

iDefrag (demo available) will make clear the statistics for the catalog file. The catalog file is also visible in the map, typically a purple-ish dark blue chunk near the top . For the attributes file, look for a solid mid-blue chunk near the top (if it's not obviously there and blue, it may be fragmented).

… booted in safe made and everything seemed normal.

Safe mode is good but if repairs were attempted or performed, there'll be no record.

Try running diskutil, verify/repair disk.

+1

With troubleshooting and explanations in mind, I usually say just verify (don't rush to repair). Disk Utility is most convenient.

jeanpaulb90, I'm not sure what happens with Yosemite if the fsck_hfs utility (part of the safe mode routine) fails to repair some types of inconsistency.

So, please actively use Disk Utility. Do all HFS Plus file systems appear to be OK? (Any peripheral drives?)

Is Core Storage used? (Typically for security – FileVault 2.)

I ad this symptom on one mbp and turned out to be some bad blocks on the disk.

Baron015, was that fsck_hfs with option -S and if so, do you have the output from that run of the utility?

 

[john.carter32323]

Hi tomdkat,

I suggest you to take the proper backup of your important files and folder before doing this. After taking the backups, use Migration Assistant for transferring the backup from your Snow Leopard to Mavericks.