Mavericks Problems on late '08 MacBook

[HIMAN1998]

Ok, I am having a couple little problems with Mavericks. Nothing to serious, but it bugs me. First is, when I close the lid, it takes 30 seconds to a minute to go into sleep mode. Second, I randomly see the beach ball pop up for a split second at random times. Third, sometimes the laptop won't let me scroll. Haven't had that in the past 12 hours or so, but it has happened since I installed. My specs are 8GB RAM, 320GB 7200RPM HDD, 2GHz C2D.

 

[parsu538]

Did you do an upgrade or clean install?

I'm sensing loads of recommendations to do a clean install especially on the older devices around the 2007 - 2009 mark. You can imagine after all those years, there's loads of clutter on the system.

Hopefully you end up doing that & it goes brilliantly well for you. Many with the same year spec as your MB more or less are having great a time with Mavericks.

Check onto my post towards the last few comments. Cheers!

 

[HIMAN1998]

I did an upgrade, but the last time I did a clean install was with Mountain Lion, since that's when I got the laptop. I put a new hard drive in around early-mid September and did a clean install. I just have so much software that I use on a daily basis that it would hurt me in school to do a clean install.

 

[brdeveloper]

Ok, I am having a couple little problems with Mavericks. Nothing to serious, but it bugs me. First is, when I close the lid, it takes 30 seconds to a minute to go into sleep mode. Second, I randomly see the beach ball pop up for a split second at random times. Third, sometimes the laptop won't let me scroll. Haven't had that in the past 12 hours or so, but it has happened since I installed. My specs are 8GB RAM, 320GB 7200RPM HDD, 2GHz C2D.

That blazing-fast beach ball happens to me too. I noted it mainly inside Preview app. The other problems I didn't noted. Maybe it's because of the responsiveness from the SSD I have installed instead of an HDD. Battery life seems noticeable improved, like from 3h-3h15 to 3h30-4h.

 

[BrettApple]

The slow sleep issue isn't really an issue exactly, it's just what OS X does, it's writing the contents of your RAM to your HDD before it goes to sleep so if the battery dies while in sleep mode you can recover what is open.
This is fixable though, if you don't want it doing that you can run "sudo pmset -a hibernate mode 0" in the terminal and it will be almost instantaneous. Mine was doing that even with an SSD, but I figured they were unnecessary writes to my SSD multiple times a day so i disabled it.

I may have seen a quick beach ball, but nothing serious. I've upgraded from ML and from all the previous DP's of Mavericks. I plan on doing a clean install when I have some time some day. It's been running great on my '08 MacBook, '07 iMac, and '07 MacBook Pro. All with SSD's installed. Great to see 6 1/2 year old Mac's performing so good.

As for the scrolling, I have never seen that issue, even in the early previews. Trackpad all clean? And is it only in certain apps or system wide?

 

[HIMAN1998]

The slow sleep issue isn't really an issue exactly, it's just what OS X does, it's writing the contents of your RAM to your HDD before it goes to sleep so if the battery dies while in sleep mode you can recover what is open.
This is fixable though, if you don't want it doing that you can run "sudo pmset -a hibernate mode 0" in the terminal and it will be almost instantaneous. Mine was doing that even with an SSD, but I figured they were unnecessary writes to my SSD multiple times a day so i disabled it.

I may have seen a quick beach ball, but nothing serious. I've upgraded from ML and from all the previous DP's of Mavericks. I plan on doing a clean install when I have some time some day. It's been running great on my '08 MacBook, '07 iMac, and '07 MacBook Pro. All with SSD's installed. Great to see 6 1/2 year old Mac's performing so good.

As for the scrolling, I have never seen that issue, even in the early previews. Trackpad all clean? And is it only in certain apps or system wide?

First time the scrolling thing happened was first day I installed. It was only in Finder. The other day, second day it was installed, it was in Chrome. No more issues recently.

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That blazing-fast beach ball happens to me too. I noted it mainly inside Preview app. The other problems I didn't noted. Maybe it's because of the responsiveness from the SSD I have installed instead of an HDD. Battery life seems noticeable improved, like from 3h-3h15 to 3h30-4h.

My battery already needs to be replaced, it dies at between 85% and 75%. Can anyone point me to why that happens? I'm already gonna try to get a new battery for Christmas, I'm saving up all my money to go to Spain on a mission trip, and I want to use the laptop on the plane. I'm also gonna get an SSD when I can.

 

[cskalash]

My recommendations:
Do a fresh install, I have the same mackbook, did a fresh install, no problems at all. Do buy a ssd, but be carefull with the negotiating link speed, not all sata3 ssd negotiate at sata2 (your macbook speed) problem free. Bought a samsung evo, but any samsung would be ok I guess since it has something to do with the controller. Since your updating, try to maximize the speed. I was getting around 50 MB/s r/w on hdd, now I'm getting 265/200 with ssd. Do your search.
btw, could you please tell me what memories do you have on your macbook? I want 8gb too, but bought some valueram Corsair and they don't work, Don't want to pay the 100$ for the "mac compatible ones"...

 

[HIMAN1998]

I bought whatever comes when you get a newer macbook with 8GB. The guy who sold it to me went up to 16GB and sold 8GB on Craigslist for $50. 1333MHz works perfectly fine for me.

 

[cskalash]

I bought whatever comes when you get a newer macbook with 8GB. The guy who sold it to me went up to 16GB and sold 8GB on Craigslist for $50. 1333MHz works perfectly fine for me.

but it doesn't wort at 1333Mhz speed right? it works at 1066...?

 

[BrettApple]

but it doesn't wort at 1333Mhz speed right? it works at 1066...?

Right, the RAM will just down clock to meet the speed that is supported by the motherboard.

As for your battery, the NewerTech ones from OWC seem to be just fine, I replaced mine with one (though I had to send the first one back) and it lasts around 3 hours or so. I don't use it a lot off the charger, but the original one was bulging and causing issues with the trackpad. Now I make sure to do a full cycle every other week or at least once a month to try and maintain it better than the original one. It didn't have a lot of cycles, but it was almost 5 years old after all.

I have 8GB RAM in mine from OWC that works great, I got it Nov. 2011 for $52, it's PC8500 DDR3 1066MHz. It is back up to $110 though. Just how things go.

My SSD is also an OWC 3G SSD working at SATA 2 in the optical bay, I wanted to make sure I got a good drive that would work at the highest speed supported by my Mac. If it's in the HDD bay though, most will revert back to SATA 2 just fine.

 

[HIMAN1998]

Right, the RAM will just down clock to meet the speed that is supported by the motherboard.

As for your battery, the NewerTech ones from OWC seem to be just fine, I replaced mine with one (though I had to send the first one back) and it lasts around 3 hours or so. I don't use it a lot off the charger, but the original one was bulging and causing issues with the trackpad. Now I make sure to do a full cycle every other week or at least once a month to try and maintain it better than the original one. It didn't have a lot of cycles, but it was almost 5 years old after all.

I have 8GB RAM in mine from OWC that works great, I got it Nov. 2011 for $52, it's PC8500 DDR3 1066MHz. It is back up to $110 though. Just how things go.

My SSD is also an OWC 3G SSD working at SATA 2 in the optical bay, I wanted to make sure I got a good drive that would work at the highest speed supported by my Mac. If it's in the HDD bay though, most will revert back to SATA 2 just fine.

My 1333MHz doesn't even underclock. It works fine at 1333MHz. I might just not put my HDD or SSD in the Optibay, just use my old HDD as an external if I need it.

 

[cskalash]

My 1333MHz doesn't even underclock. It works fine at 1333MHz. I might just not put my HDD or SSD in the Optibay, just use my old HDD as an external if I need it.

I think it must underclock, because your CPU only supports 1066 Mhz, but I agree that in some cases it displays 1333 Mhz. In any case that's not important, you won't really notice a diference in performance. I will put the hdd in the optic bay, since it is broken, and I didn't use it anyway, but you buy a 240 sdd (around 150€ /180 usd) it's mostly fine for normal users. The thing about bigger ssds is that in most cases: the bigger the ssd the bigger the speed it allows. Not very important, since we have sata2 speed, and almost all ssds go above 250 mb/s, but you may want to swap that to a newer computer eventually, so go for fast, and compatible, that's important

 

[HIMAN1998]

I think it must underclock, because your CPU only supports 1066 Mhz, but I agree that in some cases it displays 1333 Mhz. In any case that's not important, you won't really notice a diference in performance. I will put the hdd in the optic bay, since it is broken, and I didn't use it anyway, but you buy a 240 sdd (around 150€ /180 usd) it's mostly fine for normal users. The thing about bigger ssds is that in most cases: the bigger the ssd the bigger the speed it allows. Not very important, since we have sata2 speed, and almost all ssds go above 250 mb/s, but you may want to swap that to a newer computer eventually, so go for fast, and compatible, that's important

I thought this gen C2D supported 1333MHz, because it even shows that speed in Windows. I would only be getting a 120GB SSD, maybe a 250, since I use about 75-80GB in OS X. I'm trying to decide if I will still use Windows or not, since that would put me at right about 120GB used space.