New Year's edition of "my macbook pro is suddenly slow"...
[Yes I'm seeing that there are a million posts tagged "macbook" - but maybe the specific story needs a specific answer.]
When I was a-travel in November, at home with friends and trying to hook up to their wireless network with a wrongly transferred password (and trying a gazillion other popping-up networks as well in the process), my 15-inch Macbook pro (some extra memory installed...) got sluggish, as in:
- takes much longer to open any application.
- often, after launching an application, menu functions don't work properly until I've used a few of them, then everything gets more or less normal.
- system tools and things open especially slowly (it seems).
- all these things are accompanied by lots of random beechballing.
- Right-click usually doesn't work at first tries, but hackles and hangs; after waiting a bit, everything usually does work.
- Doing system-related stuff in the background and other work in the foreground tends to freeze applications, and sometimes even the entire machine.
- The Dashboard usually needs two tries to display properly.
After returning home, I put the computer on my desk and hooked it up to the power line for a few days, working away with Word, Scrivener and a few other applications, and after a few days it apparently self-healed to its usual performance.
Come next trip now in December, the problems come back. Back at home, this time, they stay.
To be sure, work is (or seems now) entirely possible, that is, after I've clicked around a bit and used some functions. But, for example, re-awaking from sleep and any new application-launch usually leave me waiting, clicking around in frustration, closing and re-trying stuff and so on. As an ex-windows person, I certainly can live with this; good. But perhaps this behavior could be improved; better.
What I did:
Changing to a brand-new battery. The old one wasn't great from the start, I was actually needing external power all the time...
Checking the activity monitor: while I type this, it shows 86-95% idle so that's likely not it.
Repairing permissions (may have helped a tiny bit).
Emptying caches in safari and firefox, re-starting.
Thinking long and hard whether there have been funny software updates or other things, I don't think there have.
The computer is not getting full: I've 98something gigs of storage left.
The drive also doesn't sound funny or anything, and I'm not getting a lot of fan-activity or anything.
So, on the off-chance that you've had the patience to wade through all this, and have an idea/had and solved a similar problem/can point to a good resource, I'd be grateful for suggestions.
What bugs me most is that I'm not a very hectic user and usually careful not to rush stuff, and I haven't changed my work pattern at all, so I keep wondering, what could have changed and how to change it back.
(Backups on external drive via time machine available...)
Thanks in advance.
posted by Namlit to computers & internet (12 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
I think in my case it's a combination of a lot of things. Mostly OS and application upgrades from Apple and bug fixes from my existing software (firefox in particular, and adobe crap). I also switched over to using IMAP for work email, and IMAP can be pretty slow when you have a few gigs worth of folders on line. These things have been accumulating, and I think some sort of critical mass was hit, and it's just knocked the computer for a loop. I'm saving for a new computer.
Can you check your RAM? Maybe a SIMM got knocked off line or is sporadically working, and the OS is more or less graceful about handling it.
posted by zomg at 1:05 PM on January 7, 2012