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CNX Grinder

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2016
12
3
hey all,

Is there a way I could like do a reset of my MacBook so its fast again? It doesn't run as fast as it used to. Its about 3-4 years old. Sometimes when it starts up, it freezes for like 4-5 seconds.

I know its not hardware but most likely tons of apps installed and more apps opening up on startup.

What would be the easiest way for me to get it back to fast performance again?

I have iCloud and a ton of old photos. But I also have a MacBook Pro 15" I use for photo and video editing. So most likely my cloud stuff won't be affected.

Could I wipe my MacBook so it gets back to its former glory and just install stuff that I need?

My daily driver is the MBP 15", where I run my business and do media work.
 

Mike Boreham

macrumors 68040
Aug 10, 2006
3,904
1,894
UK
Well you could of course erase and reinstall which would be be pretty certain to get back to original performance. The popular wisdom is that Windows machines need this occasionally but Macs don’t, and you should be able to recover performance by a careful pruning of start-up apps and background processes, unwanted apps etc

Etrecheck is a great tool for revealing these and a health check of anything else that might be amiss.

Also look in Activity Monitor at CPU and Memory pressure when it feels slow.

https://www.etrecheck.com/
 
Last edited:

CNX Grinder

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 9, 2016
12
3
Well you could of course erase and reinstall which would be be pretty certain to get back to original performance. But you could also have a careful pruning of start-up apps and background processes.

Etrecheck is a great tool for revealing these and a health check of anything else that might be amiss.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

And iCloud would just redownload all my photos onto the device after reinstall anyway right?

I don't really use any apps on the MacBook anymore as I do all work on my MBP 15 such as apps like Lightroom and Premiere.
 

casperes1996

macrumors 604
Jan 26, 2014
7,593
5,764
Horsens, Denmark
And iCloud would just redownload all my photos onto the device after reinstall anyway right?

I don't really use any apps on the MacBook anymore as I do all work on my MBP 15 such as apps like Lightroom and Premiere.


If they are on iCloud, yes. Of course anything not on iCloud or backed up is lost, but anything in iCloud will just be there.

To do it, either download the installer for the OS and make a USB installer of it to boot from, or boot into Internet Recovery.
Use Disk Utility to erase the main drive
And use the installer to reinstall macOS
 

pippox0

macrumors regular
Jan 23, 2014
134
93
Backup everything,
Wipe harddisk or better substitute with SSD
Reinstall OS
Copy only the needed apps and data.

Voilà your MacBook shines and runs faster
 

Plutonius

macrumors G3
Feb 22, 2003
9,216
8,846
New Hampshire, USA
hey all,

Is there a way I could like do a reset of my MacBook so its fast again? It doesn't run as fast as it used to. Its about 3-4 years old. Sometimes when it starts up, it freezes for like 4-5 seconds.

I know its not hardware but most likely tons of apps installed and more apps opening up on startup.

What would be the easiest way for me to get it back to fast performance again?

I have iCloud and a ton of old photos. But I also have a MacBook Pro 15" I use for photo and video editing. So most likely my cloud stuff won't be affected.

Could I wipe my MacBook so it gets back to its former glory and just install stuff that I need?

My daily driver is the MBP 15", where I run my business and do media work.

You should specify the year, RAM, drive space, what version of MacOS are you running, etc.
 

phpmaven

macrumors 68040
Jun 12, 2009
3,466
523
San Clemente, CA USA
Thanks guys will just reinstall everything.
That will likely not make much of a difference. The best thing you can do is put an SSD in there. They’re cheap and that will revolutionize that machine. I’ve done that many times and it never ceases to amaze me how much of an performance improvement it makes.
 
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