Lion with very poor performance

[jt.tarigan]

Hi,

I'm a new OSX Lion user, Im using Mac Mini i5 2.5GHz 4 GB RAM with AMD Radeon. I notice that the OS is extremely laggy occasionally. Sometimes the performance dropped randomly. When i try to switch window/program, it does not switch directly. there's a half a second delay. and when i click on something (probably the menu) it does not respond immidiately.

It got worse when I try quicktime and garage band. Quicktime failed to play ANY movie smoothly, even .mov's file. And garageband cant play my track. Even a single track will pop up a window saying 'there are too many instrument playing'.

I've googled around, and I found someone said to repair my disk. I did that but not much has changed. For comparison, my 2.0 GHz Core Duo 2 GB RAM Snow Leopard Macbookpro perform MUCH BETTER than this on.

Its extremely iritating, can anyone help me on this? It this common for Lion user for lagging?


ps: i also posted this on apple support forum

 

[GGJstudios]

Some of these may help: Performance Tips For Mac OS X

 

[jt.tarigan]

Some of these may help: Performance Tips For Mac OS X

hi GGJstudios

Thanks but I don't think any of that can solve my problem. I just bought my mac mini about 3-4 weeks ago. I only install Xcode, vlc, pixelmator, keyboard remap and optimal layout. none of this affect the performance that much. even when everting is turned off, i can still feel the input lag.

Its just confuse me a lot when my 6 years old mbp with SL (also installed the same program, and more other programs) perform much better than my brand new mac mini with Lion.

I noticed from some websites, reinstalling EVERYTHING (including osx) might help. Should I try this? I mean migrating my system is kinda hard (will accounts and project all around). Any other option?

 

[GGJstudios]

Thanks but I don't think any of that can solve my problem.

Did you go through all the items on the list?

 

[sjinsjca]

Lagging is unusual. I'm using Lion on an aging early-2010 MBP and it's delightfully responsive.

First thought: Are you using an antivirus program? I tried the free Sophos and occasionally it would bog the system down. Got rid of it-- it's not needed, if you're moderately careful about what you download and install.

Second thought: open Activity Monitor.app, and press cmd-1. Click the top column header that says "CPU %", maybe twice, so it ranks your running processes in descending order of processor usage. (The little arrowhead will be pointing down.) What do you see? I'm particularly curious if you "mds" chewing up a lot of processor usage, which would indicate a Spotlight indexing is either ongoing or (small chance) stuck). Indexing should only take a few hours but it starts over again if you do a reinstall or other big changes to your system.

 

[GGJstudios]

First thought: Are you using an antivirus program?

Which is #7 on the list I posted.

Second thought: open Activity Monitor.app, and press cmd-1. Click the top column header that says "CPU %", maybe twice, so it ranks your running processes in descending order of processor usage. (The little arrowhead will be pointing down.)

Which is #5 on the list I posted.

I'm particularly curious if you "mds" chewing up a lot of processor usage, which would indicate a Spotlight indexing

Certainly a possibility. I get the impression the OP didn't really go through the list of suggestions, but just brushed them off, assuming they wouldn't help.

 

[jt.tarigan]

Certainly a possibility. I get the impression the OP didn't really go through the list of suggestions, but just brushed them off, assuming they wouldn't help.

hi GGJStudios,

I did go through the list and none of them fit my condition or solve the problem. as i mentioned before, I only have 5 program installed on my osx: Xcode, vlc, pixelmator, keyboard remap and optimal layout. And also my flash is the latest version (checked). My mac mini is brand new (4-5 weeks), so I think i can remember every single thing i installed on my mac mini. there is no CPU spike and memory usage is low (not even reach 1G of my 4G)

anyway, I googled around and notice someone have the same problem and solved it by clean installing the whole os (format the hd, reinstall lion and every program). I think I'll spend the day trying that. One question though: I'm going to back up my files by creating a different partition and move it there. does formatting my main partition going to affect the other partition during Lion clean install?


thanks in advance

 

[sjinsjca]

I'm going to back up my files by creating a different partition and move it there. does formatting my main partition going to affect the other partition during Lion clean install?

Strikes me as potentially risky. Best to move your files to an external USB disk or maybe Dropbox or SugarSync. (If your files are sensitive, then you might want to leverage the privacy tricks documented at http://unvexed.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-keep-things-secure-in-your.html).

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

If it's any consolation, the whole process shouldn't eat up more than a couple of hours, since you only have a few programs.