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Severe Slowdown with ML

Kashchei

Kashchei

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 26, 2002
1,160
5
Meat Space
I've noticed a lot of people inother threads saying that ML is much faster for them than Lion. I'm not having the same performance; in fact, it's quite the opposite. While Lion would boot and open all the programs from the previous session in a reasonable time, ML now takes 15 minutes. I am using the latest Mini with the 2.7 Ghz processor and 8 GB RAM. Is anyone else having this problem, and does anyone have any suggestions for a fix?
 
Kashchei said:
I've noticed a lot of people inother threads saying that ML is much faster for them than Lion. I'm not having the same performance; in fact, it's quite the opposite. While Lion would boot and open all the programs from the previous session in a reasonable time, ML now takes 15 minutes. I am using the latest Mini with the 2.7 Ghz processor and 8 GB RAM. Is anyone else having this problem, and does anyone have any suggestions for a fix?
Click to expand...
Your slow performance may have nothing to do with the update.
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.

If you're having performance issues, this may help:
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your response! Here is the photo you requested.

Screen Shot 2012-07-25 at 9.20.23 PM.png
 
I updated to ML and I fixed all necessary permissions and regardless, I truthfully will say that ML feels a LOT snappier than Lion since it felt like a slug for me after a while, and especially Safari (big update with it, IMHO).
 
OverSpun said:
I updated to ML and I fixed all necessary permissions and regardless, I truthfully will say that ML feels a LOT snappier than Lion since it felt like a slug for me after a while, and especially Safari (big update with it, IMHO).
Click to expand...

Glad to hear that, was thinking of passing on this release honestly. My old 2.6ghz c2d MBP could use a little boost and a new machine is not in the cards at this point.
 
You may want to try a clean install. I had horrible problems with Lion last year on my mid-2009 MacBook Pro. So much so they refunded me for Lion and Genius bar recommended a full clean install which helped.

Now I just did the upgrade to ML and while Spotlight is indexing I'm seeing huge speed improvements over Lion (and thats with indexing going on!). Safari is 10x faster on loading pages than on Lion, everything on screen is crisp and fast. Only issue I had was a little hang and lag on first log on after update.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Glad to hear that, was thinking of passing on this release honestly. My old 2.6ghz c2d MBP could use a little boost and a new machine is not in the cards at this point.
Click to expand...

I just feel like Safari was worth just getting mountain lion for it. I have a late '11 i7 and it hasnt felt right until now.
 
Kashchei said:
I've noticed a lot of people inother threads saying that ML is much faster for them than Lion. I'm not having the same performance; in fact, it's quite the opposite. While Lion would boot and open all the programs from the previous session in a reasonable time, ML now takes 15 minutes. I am using the latest Mini with the 2.7 Ghz processor and 8 GB RAM. Is anyone else having this problem, and does anyone have any suggestions for a fix?
Click to expand...

Try a clean install.
 
I have a 13" 2011 i7 MBA and ML has roughly equivalent, maybe worse performance on my machine. Super disappointed, it really detracts from the experience, and makes me dislike using the computer when half of the copious animations are slow and choppy. Makes me think I shelled out $1600 for an incompetent machine.

This is on a clean install, as well.
 
zbarvian said:
I have a 13" 2011 i7 MBA and ML has roughly equivalent, maybe worse performance on my machine. Super disappointed, it really detracts from the experience, and makes me dislike using the computer when half of the copious animations are slow and choppy. Makes me think I shelled out $1600 for an incompetent machine.

This is on a clean install, as well.
Click to expand...

check and repair your permissions. It should not be slow or choppy. I think most people won't agree with you.
 
I also have a mac mini and havent really noticed any "snappiness" with ML. (except safari) I get the beach ball for atleast a second or two 50% of the time opening up apps, especially at start up. Pretty annoying. it was like this in lion and didnt seem to get any better now
 
remember it also could be your mac is indexing, not sure if that would show up in process'.
 
Kashchei said:
I've noticed a lot of people inother threads saying that ML is much faster for them than Lion. I'm not having the same performance; in fact, it's quite the opposite. While Lion would boot and open all the programs from the previous session in a reasonable time, ML now takes 15 minutes. I am using the latest Mini with the 2.7 Ghz processor and 8 GB RAM. Is anyone else having this problem, and does anyone have any suggestions for a fix?
Click to expand...

Fresh install or upgrade?
 
I came to ML from SL on a mid-2007 iMac (2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM). SL was no slouch and I was always happy with it but I've noticed noticed a big improvement since upgrading to ML. I'm running more apps than usual (Reminders, Calendar) and have zero page outs and the machine is just snappier.

If I were in your position I'd do a clean install.
 
Last edited:
My update was running pretty slow on my MacBook Pro mid 2010. Then I realized that I had automatic graphic switching on in energy saver, so I unchecked it and now it's much faster than before mountain lion!
 
GGJstudios said:
It's not indexing, as evidenced in the Activity Monitor screen shot.
Click to expand...

When my macs were indexing, they didn't show any appreciable CPU usage. There was a LOT of disk activity though, and that was what was slowing things down.

Soon as it was done, things were (and are) nice and zippy.

The way to check is to look at your spotlight icon (the magnifying glass in the upper right) and see if there's a dot that's sort of blinking in the center. You can also click on the icon and it'll tell you if it's indexing (and about how long it thinks it'll take).
 
scaredpoet said:
When my macs were indexing, they didn't show any appreciable CPU usage. There was a LOT of disk activity though, and that was what was slowing things down.

Soon as it was done, things were (and are) nice and zippy.

The way to check is to look at your spotlight icon (the magnifying glass in the upper right) and see if there's a dot that's sort of blinking in the center. You can also click on the icon and it'll tell you if it's indexing (and about how long it thinks it'll take).
Click to expand...
I agree the normal way to check is by the pulsing dot. However, I've heard at least one report that the pulsing dot doesn't appear in ML.

When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor.

While the increase in CPU usage by those processes isn't enough to dominate your CPU, it's more than is shown in the screen shot that the OP posted.
 
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