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'09 Core 2 Duo MBP slowed to a crawl with Mavericks

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Drewski

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 6, 2011
161
28
Somewhere else
My wife's 13" MBP sees pretty light duty - mostly just surfing, iphoto, and office apps. I helped her upgrade to Mavericks, and now it is more beach balls than Spring break. I mean, the beach balls are constantly spinning when you open any app, even Finder, Preview, whatever. Everything still works, but it is all slowed way down.

This started immediately after the Mavericks install. It ran fine previous to this install, fast startup, fast shutdown, and no real delays in opening apps.

I've read many folks having success getting rid of the beach balls by doing a "fresh install." I make sure she runs Time Machine and CCC (separate external drives) on a weekly basis, so I'm pretty confident all data is backed up.

Pardon the ignorance, but will a HD format followed by a clone reinstall suffice as a "fresh install"?
 
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phositadc

macrumors 6502
Dec 9, 2012
489
50
I think the answer is no. I think you'd need to boot to mavericks installer using a USB key, erase the drive using disk utility, then do a fresh install from the USB key installer. Restoring from a clone would presumably restore whatever it is that's slowing it down now.
 
thekev

thekev

macrumors 604
Aug 5, 2010
7,005
3,343
A clone install wouldn't count. If there are problems with some file settings or something, they will be copied as they were. After upgrading, did it leave an adequate amount of hard drive space? That kind of behavior can be caused by a very full drive.
 
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Drewski

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 6, 2011
161
28
Somewhere else
thekev said:
A clone install wouldn't count. If there are problems with some file settings or something, they will be copied as they were. After upgrading, did it leave an adequate amount of hard drive space? That kind of behavior can be caused by a very full drive.
Click to expand...

There is plenty of space on the HD - more than half of the stock 250GB drive is unoccupied. I've decided though that I will extend the useful life of this MBP with the popular RAM/SSD upgrade. Now the question becomes which migration method to use.

I see many threads discussing the best methods including migration assistant, Time Machine, CCC, USB key OS install with plain old copy and paste of data. I have all these options, but I'm looking to find out which one works the best, i.e., essentially starts the machine "as new" but still saves all of the important user data (docs, itunes/iphoto data, browser favorites, mail...)
 
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ha1o2surfer

macrumors 6502
Sep 24, 2013
425
46
You may have to give it some time and upon a fresh install/upgrade of Mavericks, it needs to index the entire disk. This shouldn't take longer than a few hours on your size disk.

Just a little bit of info, not sure if that helps.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
Drewski said:
There is plenty of space on the HD - more than half of the stock 250GB drive is unoccupied. I've decided though that I will extend the useful life of this MBP with the popular RAM/SSD upgrade. Now the question becomes which migration method to use.

I see many threads discussing the best methods including migration assistant, Time Machine, CCC, USB key OS install with plain old copy and paste of data. I have all these options, but I'm looking to find out which one works the best, i.e., essentially starts the machine "as new" but still saves all of the important user data (docs, itunes/iphoto data, browser favorites, mail...)
Click to expand...

Even with a HDD, that machine should run Mavs just fine without those beach balls you are seeing. I suspect what is going on is there is some utility or something you have installed causing a conflict.

A "clean install" is the nuclear option that would very likely fix it. Things is the only real way to benefit from a clean install is to manually reinstall and configure apps and manually move data back after the clean install. Any other clone/restore/migrate method runs the risk of moving the problem right back onto the machine.

Before you go to all that trouble, you might want to try a coupe things to see if we can fix this.

First, make a new, temp account then login the that account. Do the beach balls persist? If the problem is gone, then that tells us there is something about your account causing the issue.

Also, try a safe boot to your account and see if that fixes things. A safe boot bypasses any login/startup items and will tell you if that is the issue.

Also, start Disk Util and do a verify disk to see if that reports any errors.
 
Graeme43

Graeme43

macrumors 6502a
Sep 11, 2006
519
5
Great Britain (Glasgow)
I have a 2.4 Core 2 Duo with Mavericks and it runs smooth :D

Ran it for a few weeks then upgraded ram from 2 to 4GB and the old 200gb 5400rpm to a 1TB 5400rpm SSHD with 8gb flash

I was running windows xp (embedded 2009) and windows 7 on parallels at the same time and everything was still smooth
 
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