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Sluggish user account

Benbikeman

Benbikeman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 17, 2011
616
1
London, England
Running ML, but was the same on Lion.

Background: A straight disk-swap was done from a mid-2009 MBP 17 to a late-2011 MBP 17. This caused some issues with the user account which were resolved by the following steps"
- Repaired disk
- Zapped Preferences folder from Library

Since then, all was fine, but the account is sluggish compared to another account on the same machine. Eg. Select System Prefs from the Apple menu, and it takes 2-3 seconds to appear, while it's instant in the other account.

Any thoughts on what else to try? I'm very reluctant to start again with a clean install as I suspect Migration Assistant would likely bring back whatever is causing it, and starting from scratch, reinstalling all software, reconfiguring the machine, etc, would likely take more than a day's work.
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.

If you're having performance issues, this may help:
 
Last edited:
Benbikeman

Benbikeman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 17, 2011
616
1
London, England
Thanks - screengrab attached.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2012-07-26 at 15.32.32.jpg
    Screen Shot 2012-07-26 at 15.32.32.jpg
    201.7 KB · Views: 78
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
Assimilated said:
Thanks - screengrab attached.
Click to expand...
First, it looks like Spotlight may be indexing, which would account for slow performance. If that's the case, just let it finish the process and things should speed up.

If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:
attachment.php
(not indexing)
attachment.php
(indexing) (pulsing dot)​
When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor.

Also, your Garmin Map Update is using a fair amount of CPU. If that's not a necessary process, you can quit that.
 
Benbikeman

Benbikeman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 17, 2011
616
1
London, England
The Garmin map update is just a very temporary thing - the issue is present without that.

Just checked, and Spotlight isn't indexing.
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
Assimilated said:
Any other way to check if it's indexing? It shouldn't be, as the machine has been as-is for 2-3 weeks now.
Click to expand...

As I said, "When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor."

To eliminate that as a possible culprit, force it to reindex.

Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

If that fails to index, enter the following command in Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/your drive name"​
 
Benbikeman

Benbikeman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 17, 2011
616
1
London, England
No, it definitely doesn't seem to be indexing. Here's what I see now that the map update is complete:
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2012-07-26 at 16.52.02.jpg
    Screen Shot 2012-07-26 at 16.52.02.jpg
    207 KB · Views: 58
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
Assimilated said:
No, it definitely doesn't seem to be indexing. Here's what I see now that the map update is complete:
Click to expand...
What are you using Java for? Also, you may want to delete any non-essential items from the following locations:
  • System Preferences > Accounts > yourusername > Login Items
    (Lion users: System Preferences > Users & Groups > yourusername > Login Items)

  • /Library/LaunchAgents/ and ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
    (Lion users: In Finder, click Go > Go to Folder > then enter the path)

  • /Library/StartupItems/
    (Lion users: In Finder, click Go > Go to Folder > then enter the path)
 
Benbikeman

Benbikeman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 17, 2011
616
1
London, England
Java - your guess is as good as mine.

Login items are only things I use.

Launchagents had five items - I've removed those and restarted.

Startupitems doesn't exist.
 
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