Early 2011 MacBook Pro slowdown

[nmonti]

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I have an early 2011 15" MacBook Pro, Core i7 2.0Ghz, 4GB memory. Lately it's been running super slow. Adobe programs lock up left and right, the browsers lock up, music skips, YouTube freezes, flash barely runs. Even keynote has been locking up lately.

I've run the Apple Memory test off the boot CD as well as various HD tests, everything passes with no issues. Anyone have any idea what this could be? I'd go to my local Apple store, but I have a week of finals left and being a design student can't be without my machine.

 

[GGJstudios]

For performance issues, there are a few things you can check:

• Check your Login Items under System Preferences > Accounts to see what you have automatically launching.
• Also check /Library/LaunchAgents/ and /Users/yourusername/Library/LaunchAgents/ for items launching at startup
• Look at what widgets you may have running.
• Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
• Take a look at the System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor to see if you have excessive "page outs", a sign that you may benefit from more RAM.
• Make sure you're not running any 3rd party antivirus app, as many of those will drain resources, reducing performance. They're not needed to protect your Mac.

 

[nmonti]

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I removed my login items and iAntivirus. Still seeing super long boot times though. Thoughts?

 

[GGJstudios]

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I removed my login items and iAntivirus. Still seeing super long boot times though. Thoughts?

Did you check the 2nd item I mentioned? Also, make sure you removed all of iAntiVirus. The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:

Best way to FULLY DELETE a program​

 

[thekev]

This sounds like it could be hard drive related. It might not be the physical drive but rather that it's getting slammed with requests. What are you running? At 4GB of ram, Adobe programs will make heavy use of scratch disks. This means without an SSD it can be slow. If your drive is mostly full it'll be worse. It can get worse over time too. It's a file system thing, that can lead to a lot of spinning wheels. There are a few things you can try if it ends up being that.

Someone mentioned an issue with itunes and spotlight just a day or two ago. If you can look at activity monitor with it set to all processes when things are bogging down, that would help. GGJstudios basically mentioned it too.

 

[thundersteele]

• Look at what widgets you may have running.
• Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
• Take a look at the System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor to see if you have excessive "page outs", a sign that you may benefit from more RAM.

Go through the rest of the list.

If you're unsure, post screenshots of the activity monitor, if possible one ordered by %CPU and one ordered by "Real Mem"

Also, I wouldn't care too much about boot times, since rebooting can be avoided. Don't do anything crazy (e.g. reinstalling the OS) while you're still busy with the finals and keep backups of your HD. Let apple check it when you are less dependent on the macbook.

 

[nmonti]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. iAntivirus definitely increased the speed and lowered the rate of beach balls. It was still running slow though so I took it into the Apple Store. They ran some diagnostics and saw that a lot of my core processes were crashing on a consistent basis.

They ran an archive and install for me in about an hour and its been running pretty consistently since then.