MacBook runs like mud

RanzB

RanzB

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Need some help please.

I bought a Mac a couple of years ago, 15" 2Ghz Core i7
4GB 1333 MHz DD3

I use it primarily for editing and retouching pics, so mostly Lightroom and Photoshop with some addon software for those. For a while now, the laptop runs really slow. Currently exporting around 250 jpegs has taken around 45 minutes. If I use it for a high-end beauty retouch I have to restart after every pic.

Is there any way I can find out what's making it run so slow? Or does anyone know of any reputable Mac experts around Durban who'll be able to check it out and maybe upgrade the machine for me if it needs it?

Oh and pertinent to this: I'm not tech savvy, so most basic suggestions would most likely be over my head.
 
Check for filesystem corruption. If you can, boot into the recovery mode and run disk utility on your main disk.
 
Boot up. Hold CMD+r until the apple sound and logo. Release. It should load recovery mode. Select disk utilities Run disk repair. Run permission repair

Also. Clean up your hard drive. Mac are notorious to become slow when there is less than 10% free space left

Also download Onyx. Nice maintenance tool.

Remember. Always run a backup before continuing.
 
Thanks guys. Will try it out.

creeper said:
Also. Clean up your hard drive. Mac are notorious to become slow when there is less than 10% free space left
Click to expand...

Wonder if this is the problem. I've got a couple backups, but I keep a lot of RAW files on the HD. Not a lot of space left.
 
If you are in a position to do so, get another 4GB of RAM, and an SSD. It will feel like a new laptop.
 
You can also try boot them machine into safe mode, basically reboot, hold down the shift key after you hear the "bong" sound, when the apple logo appears, you can let go.
This will disable a lot of additional loaded extensions etc, and will do some housekeeping.
If the machine is still slow after this, then there might be something wrong with it.

Also, you are working on editing images with lightroom and photoshop?
Upgrade your RAM ASAP.
That particular machine can have up to 16GB (2 x 8GB), I would slap as much as you can into it.
You can basically purchase any good quality DDR3 Notebook RAM, the upgrade is quite easy for anyone that knows the business end of a screwdriver.

See here: (this says mavericks, but it will work on ANY OS X mac)
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14204?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
 
Before you upgrade RAM or SSD do the following:
- Boot into recovery and run a Disk Permission and Disk Repair
- Download http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck to check what is actually starting on your Mac (I had a similar issue, where an old Logitech Harmony Remote kernel extension caused slow boot time)
- As a last step run "sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel" and "sudo kextcache -system-caches" (this clears kernel extension caches)
 
ozziej said:
Also, you are working on editing images with lightroom and photoshop?
Upgrade your RAM ASAP.
That particular machine can have up to 16GB (2 x 8GB), I would slap as much as you can into it.
You can basically purchase any good quality DDR3 Notebook RAM, the upgrade is quite easy for anyone that knows the business end of a screwdriver.
Click to expand...

About to get this, will it be fine?
http://www.takealot.com/patriot-ddr3-1333-4gb-so-dimm-notebook-memory/PLID28006231

MagicDude4Eva said:
- Download http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck to check what is actually starting on your Mac (I had a similar issue, where an old Logitech Harmony Remote kernel extension caused slow boot time)
- As a last step run "sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel" and "sudo kextcache -system-caches" (this clears kernel extension caches)
Click to expand...

How do I use these? As I said, I'm not that savvy when it comes to this stuff.
 
Randhir said:
Need some help please.

I bought a Mac a couple of years ago, 15" 2Ghz Core i7
4GB 1333 MHz DD3

I use it primarily for editing and retouching pics, so mostly Lightroom and Photoshop with some addon software for those. For a while now, the laptop runs really slow. Currently exporting around 250 jpegs has taken around 45 minutes. If I use it for a high-end beauty retouch I have to restart after every pic.

Is there any way I can find out what's making it run so slow? Or does anyone know of any reputable Mac experts around Durban who'll be able to check it out and maybe upgrade the machine for me if it needs it?

Oh and pertinent to this: I'm not tech savvy, so most basic suggestions would most likely be over my head.
Click to expand...
How much free space do you have on your drive?
 
bwana said:
How much free space do you have on your drive?
Click to expand...

After clearing out some RAW's, around 100GB on a 500GB Hard drive. Have done some of the suggested above, and have seen a slight improvement. But would still like it to be better.
 
You could create a new user account and see if that's quicker. While you're in the preference pane have a look at what apps are listed as startup apps.
 
Another possibility is that your drive could be on it's last legs.

In my experience OSX performance gets really crappy before the HDD truly packs up. If you have a spare drive try to swap it out. Ps. In all my drive crashes; no utility apps ever helped to diagnose the problem.
 
Click the Apple logo -> About this Mac ->System Report
Check under Hardware -> Storage. See if the S.M.A.R.T status is verified.
 
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