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My mac is pretty much useless now on Sierra. Help!

C

ceezy

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 30, 2011
94
8
Older stock mid2010 mbp so I know it's getting on a bit, but it has always worked well up until Sierra. Now it is just constant beachballs and slow response. Really just use Safari and it has been really bad, seems like anything else I try to use is also really poor perfromance now as well.

Is there anything I can do at all to help? Please, really need some help!

For instance posting this topic probably took 5+ minutes because of beachballs.
 
Did you try a clean install? My iMac 2010 with i3 !(!) holds up nicely with Sierra, despite it having an old style spinning HD - 12 GB RAM however.
 
Just stick a cheap SSD in there and chances are you'll be fine for a couple of more years. I just did this with a friend's 2010 MBP and it's very much OK. Also, make sure you disable transparency. The weak geforce with 256 MB VRAM can't handle it properly.
 
ceezy said:
Older stock mid2010 mbp so I know it's getting on a bit, but it has always worked well up until Sierra. Now it is just constant beachballs and slow response. Really just use Safari and it has been really bad, seems like anything else I try to use is also really poor perfromance now as well.

Is there anything I can do at all to help? Please, really need some help!

For instance posting this topic probably took 5+ minutes because of beachballs.
Click to expand...
Did this all start the exact time you installed Sierra? If so, it sounds like you may have some app or utility running that is incompatible with Sierra.

Just as a test try holding the shift key at startup to boot to safe mode. That will stop all startup and launch items from running. Come back and tell us if that helps then we can walk you through what to do next.
 
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Also leave it on overnight, and disable auto sleep so it can do all the maintenance, indexing AND photo recognition (that could be a culprit, recognition is automatic, cannot be disabled and I can't imagine how much stress it must put on the poor Core 2 Duo CPU in your MBP). You can see photo recognition in Activity monitor, it's a "photoanalysisd" process).
 
OP wrote:
"Is there anything I can do at all to help? Please, really need some help!
For instance posting this topic probably took 5+ minutes because of beachballs."

Are you still using the original platter-based hard drive?

If so, put an SSD into it.
Doing so will SOLVE the beachball problems.
Nothing else you do will achieve performance anywhere close.

Any SSD will do, I'd recommend either Sandisk Plus or Crucial, about 240gb in size.

Use the right tools (Phillips #00 driver and TORX T-6 driver).

See ifixit.com for the installation guide.
It's a "screwdriver simple" job.
ANYONE can do it.

(I did the same with my own 2010 MBPro)
 
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Before you do an hardware upgrade I would recommand you to create a new user account to see if the performance is as bad as on your main account. If not you can install Sierra on an USB drive. If it does not run any better then now I guess you should upgrade to an SSD. But before that just make sure it isn't software related.
 
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