mid 2009 Macbook Air and Mavericks

[brentg33]

My friend has an mid 2009, 2,1 Macbook Air with 2 gb of ram. he has Mavericks installed, however, its a mess.
after the 10.9.2 update, when he logs into his user account it will get past the login screen and show his desktop (w/wallpaper) and the menu bar and just beach ball forever after that. I have tried all the usual maintenance stuff and onyx. I was able to at least make it usable by logging into a guest account during a safe boot then creating a new test account. while still painfully slow, it was usable.
Checked activity monitor
2 gb of ram
1.99 used
3.xxgb virtual
3xx mb swap
im assuming that is the issue.
ive recommended a nuke and pave..
but has anyone had mavericks work well on this machine?
if so, how
I've recommended going back to MLion...

thanks

 

[chrisperro]

your problem is the ram,2 gb is not enough for Mavericks or mountain lion, your best bet is to install snow leopard.
and do you have an SSD or a spinning HD? if is the spinning HD that is the cult print too, it may be failing.