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Gradual Slowdown of a MBP

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  • 20-12-2012 7:01pm
    #1
    cantwellsam
    Registered Users Posts: 7 ✭


    I bought a macbook pro 13 in late 2011, and since then, it's been absolutely great! the hard drive died, however after about 10 months, and they replaced it, not a bother. So I put most of the things back on the HD, it's at about 65GB of 500GB available.

    Since about october/november, however, it's slowed right down.

    It's running lion at the moment, the OS it came with, and it's like a 4 minute startup, iTunes, iPhoto, even chrome take an age to open, then freeze instantly, before unfreezing themselves, and working.



    Am I alone in experiencing this? This is my first mac, I thought they would be smoother, like new, for longer than this. Or is what I'm seeing completely normal?


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    #2
    miralize
    Registered Users Posts: 6,207 ✭✭✭miralize


    Strange. Try doing a PRAM & SMC reset and let us know how much of a difference it makes?

    http://gigaom.com/apple/when-to-reset-your-macs-pram-and-smc/


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    #3
    mathepac
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 4,991 ✭✭✭mathepac


    How much RAM is installed?

    Do you have a zillion little apps that launch themselves at login?

    Have you cleared any caches / purged any logs lately?

    Do you have a lot of fonts installed with no font manager software?

    Have you done any hardware tests on the new HD, repaired permissions, looked for broken preference files?

    There's a million and one things could slow your system down, including TimeMachine.


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    #4
    LukeS_
    Registered Users Posts: 704 ✭✭✭LukeS_


    Had a similar problem. It ended up being a RAM issue, I just opened Activity Monitor (it's a system app), right clicked its dock icon, then highlighted the dock icon option and chose 'Show Memory Usage'. This will present you with a pie chart, you need to have have a fraction of it green, as otherwise your system has no memory to store new running programs on. Just quit all the superfluous apps that you're not using and you should be good to go.

    PS – also note that in the activity monitor, you should 'My Processes' in the top drop down bar as that'll remove all the system stuff and leave you with just your real available RAM (the system needs a good bit constantly) if you will. I like to filter mine from the apps using most RAM to the least by clicking the 'Real Mem' bar until it shows a down arrow.

    When things are starting to use over 1GB worth of RAM I usually just kill them and restart them.

    I recommend using this setup in unison with an app from the app store called 'Memory Clean', very lightweight on RAM usage (10mb) and seems to work like magic restoring that RAM you just can't seem to do.


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    #5
    cantwellsam
    Registered Users Posts: 7 ✭cantwellsam


    mathepac wrote: »
    How much RAM is installed?

    Do you have a zillion little apps that launch themselves at login?

    Have you cleared any caches / purged any logs lately?

    Do you have a lot of fonts installed with no font manager software?

    Have you done any hardware tests on the new HD, repaired permissions, looked for broken preference files?

    There's a million and one things could slow your system down, including TimeMachine.

    I have one app that launches itself, that's caffeine. It's using 20.3MB of RAM, not enough to make a huge difference.

    There's 4GB of ram installed.

    I've no fonts installed, just wanted something simple to use, haven't gone rummaging under the hood or anything!

    Repaired permissions, used the disk utility, everything is healthy. I'm going to reset the PRAM and SMC now and i'll let ye know what happens.


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