Finder Lag Problem

[CheMillan]

Finder lag is an ongoing problem I haven't been able to fix on my Mac Pro 2010. As you can see in the screenshot, it takes files 5 to 7 seconds to appear when added to a folder and 5 seconds before files are moved to the Trash when deleted. My Mac Pro does not have Dropbox or any other app that requires constant access. The App Store and Software Update is enabled. FileVault, iCloud, Notifications, Bluetooth, File Sharing, Remote Login, Remote Events, Internet Sharing, and Time Machine are all disabled. I have performed the following diagnostics with no fix:

Recovery HD
Disk Utility - Permissions Repair and Repair Disk
Apple Hardware Test - 4 times, no issues found
S.M.A.R.T Utility - verified, no errors
EtreCheck - no issues reported
Deleted com.apple.finder.plist
Reset SMC and PRAM
Safe Mode startup
Reduce Transparency enabled
Switched Startup disk to a different internal boot drive - same problem
Reinstalled Yosemite 10.10.5 - same problem

My Mac Pro specs:

MacPro 5,1 2010 Quad Core
Nvidia GeForce GT 120 512mb
24GB of memory - Triple Channel configuration - 3 x 8GB modules - Slot 1-2-3
2 internal hard drives
Wired Apple USB Keyboard
Wired Apple USB Mouse
Yosemite 10.10.5

 

[chown33]

Create a new user account.
Log into that account.
Try the move/trash tests there.
What are the results? Same as original user? Faster? Slower?


Regarding Safe Mode startup:
Are you saying the problem occurs only in Safe Mode?
Or it occurs after a Safe Mode startup, when you restart in normal mode?

Do you have any external disks?
What kind? What bus?
Have you tried booting from an external disk?

 

[CheMillan]

Thanks,

The problem only occurs when I'm on the desktop logged in as Me, the only user. I will create a new user Test account and see what happens. There are no external hard drives attached. I've booted the Mac Pro from different internal drives and external drives and done several move/copy/trash tests and Finder still has the same lag problem. The only thing I haven't done is upgrade the operating system to El Capitan 10.11 which I would rather avoid.

 

[CheMillan]

Update:

I installed El Capitan 10.11 on an empty G-Drive mini external disk, booted my Mac Pro from the mini and once it got to the desktop I conducted several move/copy/delete tests and to my surprise the Finder lag problem was gone. Copy/move/delete was instant with no lag at all. The good news: there's absolutely nothing wrong with my Mac Pro. I was worried the Finder lag was due to a hardware problem. The bad news: I somehow caused the problem in 10.10.5 by installing one or several of my apps and modifying or hacking systems files through the command line. I will have to start over and install Yosemite 10.10.5 from scratch or just upgrade to El Capitan. It's going to take me about a week but I will keep a log and isolate which of my apps or systems modification caused the problem. Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[chown33]

Update:

I installed El Capitan 10.11 on an empty G-Drive mini external disk, booted my Mac Pro from the mini and once it got to the desktop I conducted several move/copy/delete tests and to my surprise the Finder lag problem was gone. Copy/move/delete was instant with no lag at all. The good news: there's absolutely nothing wrong with my Mac Pro. I was worried the Finder lag was due to a hardware problem. The bad news: I somehow caused the problem in 10.10.5 by installing one or several of my apps and modifying or hacking systems files through the command line. I will have to start over and install Yosemite 10.10.5 from scratch or just upgrade to El Capitan. It's going to take me about a week but I will keep a log and isolate which of my apps or systems modification caused the problem. Thanks for your suggestion.

I recommend doing the revisions to a version of the system installed on the external drive. When you get done, and it seems to be working, then and only then copy it to a partition on an internal drive. Then test it from the internal drive before fully committing to it. I like to do test runs for at least a full day, maybe even a few days.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a nice simple way of replicating entire partitions, and by default it will clean out caches on bootable system duplicates. It also has some other nice features, and is free to use for 30 days.

 

[CheMillan]

Update #2

Problem fixed. I went ahead and upgraded the internal hard drive to El Capitan 10.11 then installed the 10.11.6 combo update and all other updates through the App Store Software Update. I tested the upgrade by running some tests and opening a few processor and RAM intensive apps and so far so good. The Finder lag problem is gone. I then cloned the hard drive to an internal Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD and did the cloning the Apple way: using the Disk Utility Restore function. Thanks for your help and suggestions.