Incredibly slow MacBook Pro

Claymore

Claymore

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I'm helping someone with a really slow MacBook Pro, and I've run out of things to try.

It's a late 2011 13" MBP, i5 with 4GB RAM, 500GB drive with about 280GB free, running El Capitan. Starts slowly, apps take ages to start (Word, for example, can take a couple of minutes to start. Mail seems OK. Safari is sluggish. Office is just painful - once Word 2008 has started, you can start typing, and the words appears on screen only a sentence or two later.

I have:
Run CCleaner, and emptied Trash.
Run updates.
Does the reset thing with Cmd/Option/Shift/Power (or whatever the combination is), and another one with Cmd/Alt/R/ (or something similar).

Any ideas? This is slower than some of the slowest 128MB RAM Windows XP PCs I've worked on.
 
Have you;

1. Gone to Disk Utility, clicked on the disk and selected "First Aid"?
2. 4GB RAM is not a lot, and 500GB disk is IDE i'm guessing - so if the machine is using the swap file a lot its going to die a slow death. Open up Activity Monitor, Click CPU and note the top 5 processes (reply with them) then also switch to the Memory tab and so the same.
3. As a last resort, you might need to re-install El Capitan cleanly because something installed could be causing this. Avoid 3rd party apps claiming to clean your mac, speed up your mac or bring world peace. Most of them are trash.
 
I would suggest you go to Activity monitor and check Kernel usage under CPU..have seen MacBooks with the same issue that seems to be the culprit most times.
 
I did check Activity Monitor, and mtmd and cloudd were the top CPU users. Turned Time Machine off, and turned iCloud Drive off. Seemed to help a little, but not enough.

There was an option to update to Sierra - worth it?
 
neoprema said:
Have you;

1. Gone to Disk Utility, clicked on the disk and selected "First Aid"?
2. 4GB RAM is not a lot, and 500GB disk is IDE i'm guessing - so if the machine is using the swap file a lot its going to die a slow death. Open up Activity Monitor, Click CPU and note the top 5 processes (reply with them) then also switch to the Memory tab and so the same.
3. As a last resort, you might need to re-install El Capitan cleanly because something installed could be causing this. Avoid 3rd party apps claiming to clean your mac, speed up your mac or bring world peace. Most of them are trash.
Click to expand...

Possible to upgrade RAM on these?

I tried the First Aid, just in case, didn't seem to help.
 
neoprema said:
Have you;

1. Gone to Disk Utility, clicked on the disk and selected "First Aid"?
2. 4GB RAM is not a lot, and 500GB disk is IDE i'm guessing - so if the machine is using the swap file a lot its going to die a slow death. Open up Activity Monitor, Click CPU and note the top 5 processes (reply with them) then also switch to the Memory tab and so the same.
3. As a last resort, you might need to re-install El Capitan cleanly because something installed could be causing this. Avoid 3rd party apps claiming to clean your mac, speed up your mac or bring world peace. Most of them are trash.
Click to expand...

IDE in 2011? ROFL.


@OP, Check out the hard drive smart status.
 
neoprema said:
Have you;

1. Gone to Disk Utility, clicked on the disk and selected "First Aid"?
2. 4GB RAM is not a lot, and 500GB disk is IDE i'm guessing - so if the machine is using the swap file a lot its going to die a slow death. Open up Activity Monitor, Click CPU and note the top 5 processes (reply with them) then also switch to the Memory tab and so the same.
3. As a last resort, you might need to re-install El Capitan cleanly because something installed could be causing this. Avoid 3rd party apps claiming to clean your mac, speed up your mac or bring world peace. Most of them are trash.
Click to expand...
You need quite a few heavy apps open to cause such a slow down with 4GB Ram. On Linux I have Firefox (with max 3 tabs), Inkscape (logo editing) and Thunar (file browser) open on a 1,25GB ram system. All at decent enough speed/reaction time.
Also, this system is from 2005 and Sata harddisks.
 
I'm guessing your hard drive is starting to act up as the computer being very slow is one side effect of that. It's would be a good idea to replace it with an SSD anyway, they're quite cheap and the upgrade is very simple. The speed difference is night and day. Yes you can upgrade the ram too but the SSD will make a huge difference.
 
Synaesthesia said:
I'm guessing your hard drive is starting to act up as the computer being very slow is one side effect of that. It's would be a good idea to replace it with an SSD anyway, they're quite cheap and the upgrade is very simple. The speed difference is night and day. Yes you can upgrade the ram too but the SSD will make a huge difference.
Click to expand...

^^This.
 
I suspect you have a dying hard drive.

Best to run Disk Utility from Recovery or Single User mode so it's unmounted.

If it's on an older OS X version you can also use Applejack.
 
Chances are you're using 100% of your RAM. Had the same issue, upgraded my 2012 MB Pro to 16GB and haven't seen an issue since.
 
Claymore said:
I'm helping someone with a really slow MacBook Pro, and I've run out of things to try.

It's a late 2011 13" MBP, i5 with 4GB RAM, 500GB drive with about 280GB free, running El Capitan. Starts slowly, apps take ages to start (Word, for example, can take a couple of minutes to start. Mail seems OK. Safari is sluggish. Office is just painful - once Word 2008 has started, you can start typing, and the words appears on screen only a sentence or two later.
Click to expand...

Had exactly the same thing.

Once you hit that ram capacity CPU usage goes up exponentially as OSX tries to keep everything alive by compressing things to virtual memory.
Only way off the ride is a ram upgrade.

Funny every person I know who praises how fast OSX is, is running it on a computer with 16GB of memory.
 
konfab said:
Had exactly the same thing.

Once you hit that ram capacity CPU usage goes up exponentially as OSX tries to keep everything alive by compressing things to virtual memory.
Only way off the ride is a ram upgrade.

Funny every person I know who praises how fast OSX is, is running it on a computer with 16GB of memory.
Click to expand...

He should check out the smart status first to be sure.
 
Must say I had a similar issue I typed in github apple diagnostic software and it took me to a page where you can set up a memory stick to test your Mac, after I did that ran it and everything passed but after that my PC was a lot faster and everthing. The main thing it seemed to fix was the ram issue in that it was running out for nothing. But if you need more details on this just pm me and I will hell you out
 
under_sky said:
Must say I had a similar issue I typed in github apple diagnostic software and it took me to a page where you can set up a memory stick to test your Mac, after I did that ran it and everything passed but after that my PC was a lot faster and everthing. The main thing it seemed to fix was the ram issue in that it was running out for nothing. But if you need more details on this just pm me and I will hell you out
Click to expand...

Can do this with the build in Apple Hardware Test, no need for flash drive.

Just hold down the D button while restarting or booting.
 
Why r u running CC Cleaner. That won't remedy anything and in the wrong hands, can make problems worse.
First check your permissions and do a permission and disk repair on the drive via Disk Utility.
Next, get Blackmagic Disk Speedtest and post your numbers here.
4 Gig RAM is insufficient for most OS's these days.
El Kapitan is GUI intensive and you should seriously (and immediately) throw the 4 gig away and put in 2x4gig sticks.
Once RAM has been upgraded do a backup and then a fresh OS install to 10.10.5 (Yosemite). See if u can get your hands on an installer file.
Snow Leopard and Yosemite are from my years of experience the 2 most stable operating systems.

Best of luck. Its not a difficult fix. The RAM is your bottleneck currently. And it wouldn't hurt to drop in something like a Samsung EVO 750 or 850 SSD if its within budget.
 
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