Late to the El Capitan Bandwagon
July 4, 2016 11:17 AM Subscribe
El Capitan download problems: estimated download time goes from 1 hour to 2 days as soon as I hit 100 MB. Is this just how it goes?
Hi all, I'm trying to update a mid-2011 MBA with 4 GB RAM to El Capitan from Yosemite. I have tried to download the update several times. Each time, just as I hit 100 MB (out of 6 GB...), download speed drops precipitously. My wifi seems to be doing just fine - DL speeds are 25MB/s. I poked around on apple support forums (and have also viewed the 'should I upgrade my old machine to El Capitan' questions on ask.me) and tried many of the suggestions I found there (quit app store and try again; boot in safe mode; reset PRAM and SMC; reset DNS), but each time the result is the same. Is there anything obvious I should try or is this just the way it goes? Thanks for your help, as always.
Hi all, I'm trying to update a mid-2011 MBA with 4 GB RAM to El Capitan from Yosemite. I have tried to download the update several times. Each time, just as I hit 100 MB (out of 6 GB...), download speed drops precipitously. My wifi seems to be doing just fine - DL speeds are 25MB/s. I poked around on apple support forums (and have also viewed the 'should I upgrade my old machine to El Capitan' questions on ask.me) and tried many of the suggestions I found there (quit app store and try again; boot in safe mode; reset PRAM and SMC; reset DNS), but each time the result is the same. Is there anything obvious I should try or is this just the way it goes? Thanks for your help, as always.
It could be your ISP cached the first 100mb.
You can take it to an Apple Store and they'll run the upgrade for you off a USB stick which may be more expeditious for you.
posted by jeffamaphone at 11:44 AM on July 4, 2016
You can take it to an Apple Store and they'll run the upgrade for you off a USB stick which may be more expeditious for you.
posted by jeffamaphone at 11:44 AM on July 4, 2016
Or at an Apple Store if there's one in your area.
posted by rodlymight at 11:45 AM on July 4, 2016
posted by rodlymight at 11:45 AM on July 4, 2016
Try it at a coffee shop. I've upgraded a bunch of machines to El Capitan, and haven't seen this.
posted by gregr at 11:52 AM on July 4, 2016
posted by gregr at 11:52 AM on July 4, 2016
Response by poster: I forgot to mention that I also suspected it might be ISP issues. I have had the same result on three different networks. Thanks for the tip about going to the Apple Store!
posted by mustard seeds at 11:53 AM on July 4, 2016
posted by mustard seeds at 11:53 AM on July 4, 2016
Response by poster: Not trying to threadsit, but wanted to note one more thing I noticed -- when I look at Activity Monitor, the data received appears in regular, tiny spikes, averaging 300 bytes (not kb) per second.
posted by mustard seeds at 12:00 PM on July 4, 2016
posted by mustard seeds at 12:00 PM on July 4, 2016
This is a common problem. The standard advice is, weirdly enough, to temporarily switch your DNS to one in Australia, e.g. 203.122.233.11. See this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/3n0aj9/el_capitan_is_downloading_very_slow/
posted by crazy with stars at 2:44 PM on July 4, 2016
posted by crazy with stars at 2:44 PM on July 4, 2016
Best answer: Ah I see you already tried changing DNSes. When I tried the above advice, the suggested DNS didn't speed things up, but when I pulled a random Australian one from a DNS list it did substantially speed things up (e.g. 2 days to 40 minutes).
posted by crazy with stars at 2:45 PM on July 4, 2016
posted by crazy with stars at 2:45 PM on July 4, 2016
Response by poster: Thank you, crazy with stars! It worked with the second DNS I tried from the list.
posted by mustard seeds at 8:19 AM on July 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mustard seeds at 8:19 AM on July 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by rodlymight at 11:39 AM on July 4, 2016