2010 MBP apps very slow

[ghanwani]

I have a 2010 MBP with 4 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD running El Capitan. When I load any app, Word, Skype, etc., it takes several seconds for the app to start during which I see the beach ball spinning, and the app icon bouncing up and down (I counted 47 bounces before Word started). Is something corrupted, or should this be expected? Once the app starts, then using the app is no problem. When I quit the app (right click -> quit), that takes a few seconds as well.

Some apps like the new Turbotax take 10's of seconds, and this is even before it tries to update.

Any ideas?

 

[JohnDS]

Open Disk Utility and run First Aid.

Also, how much free space do you have on your drive? You will have problems like this if you are running out of space on your drive.

 

[ghanwani]

Thanks for the suggestion. I ran First Aid and it completed without any errors.

I have just under 120 GB free. I used to have a 128 GB SSD which had < 10 GB free. I bought a 240 GB Intel SSD and used Disk Utility to clone the disk. I was expecting to see a speedup in performance, but have been surprised that instead some apps are taking even longer than before to load.

 

[treekram]

You likely have the Nvidia MCP79 SATA chipset and the Intel SSD likely has a Sandforce controller. The main issue with that combination seems to be that it uses SATA1, not SATA2, which your previous SSD probably was capable of. SATA1 speed would probably be faster than an HDD, but just by just a little bit.

To see if you have the Nvidia chipset, press the Apple logo in the top left, press "About This Mac", press the "System Report" button, on the window that comes up, on the left side, under Hardware, click on the "SATA"... item and in the right side should be a list of the SATA controller(s). If you have it, search for "Nvidia MCP79" and add whatever model of Intel SSD you have. If there's a problem, there will be a bunch of results returned.

 

[ghanwani]

This is what I have under the SATA/SATA Express tab. Do you see a problem?

Thanks.

 

[treekram]

You have the MCP89 and your negotiated link speed is 3Gb. So that looks fine. There was a suggestion on the Internet that it could be a cable issue - but if your other SSD worked OK, that is likely to be an issue although in switching the SSD again, who knows. You may want to try your older SSD. There was another suggestion that it would work slowly coming out of hiberation. You can see if that's an issue. Others suggest the typical SMC and NVRAM resets, but I didn't see that anybody tried that and it worked.

 

[ghanwani]

Thanks. I don't really use hibernate, just use suspend. But even after I have been using it for a while, I notice the slowness when starting up an app. Once the app is up, everything is fine.

 

[treekram]

Try a cold reboot and see if the applications start up better right after it finishes booting.

You may want to download the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (available at the App Store and other places) and run the default benchmark. Typical speed for a SATA2 SSD would be in the mid-200MB/sec. See what the speed is before you launch a program and then after.

 

[ghanwani]

Thanks. A cold reboot appears to have improved things significantly.