Mac is running slow! Help!

If you have special network settings like older DSL that doesn't have internal PPPoE settings, or some weird company and don't know how to replace your settings, don't try this. Your fine with basic Comcast cable and Yahoo DSL.

One thing to look at are your ports. Have you enabled the Firewall in the System Preferences (enter Firewall in the search field on the upper right hand side of the Sys Prefs window)? If so, you need to open the ports or otherwise disable the firewall. Have you added hardware to your network such as a router? Those have built in firewalls and may be blocking ports as well, slowing down your network or even killing off certain innternet functions completely.

Not relating to the firewall, but rather the basic settings for your connection, try heading into your System Preferences into Network, and in the Location pull-down menu near the top of that window, create a new location, give it a name, don't change any of the settings (or enter ones if your connection requires) and then restart the machine.


I would also try to power cycle the network. That pretty much involves unplugging any modems/routers you have set up for a few minutes, and then reconnecting 'em. That's pretty much the universal attempt to fix any network.

Or, you can try to create a new user with fresh settings, while power cycling your network hardware and that will take care of all of those suggestions in one.

Is everything else running slow? Do you think it's the network because you're on WoW or Vent and Safari. Maybe all of the apps are running slow because of a defect in the hard drive or or permissions or something. Check out the performance of other non net-based apps as well.

Just depends on how you approach problems, I suppose.