Mid-2010 15inch MacBook Pro Etre report - slow performance all the sudden

[zacmarkey]

Hi all,

Thought I'd give a shot at posting the results of my Etre report to see if anyone had any tips.

Got this laptop from a friend, reformatted/wiped the drive and did a fresh install of 10.12.5. Using it for recording music.

It's been working great since we've had it (few weeks), but over the last couple days, it has slowed down tremendously. From start up to loading programs to playback in Ableton Live - it's clearly behaving differently.

I'm not an expert but I'm definitely no beginner. Could have been a plug-in I downloaded, or honestly, it seemed to really slow down after I downloaded iMovie.

From reading the report, nothing stood out to me as glaringly wrong. Is there something I'm missing?

Thank you so much and apologies if this isn't the most kosher way to do this.

EtreCheck version: 3.4.2 (436)

Report generated 2017-07-30 13:17:44

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 3:49

Performance: Good



Click the [Lookup] links for more information from Apple Support Communities.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.



Problem: Computer is too slow



Hardware Information: ⓘ

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro6,2

1 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5) CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Upgradeable - [Instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1067 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 69


Video Information: ⓘ

Intel HD Graphics - VRAM: 288 MB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M - VRAM: 256 MB

Color LCD 1280 x 720

SAMSUNG DLP 1280 x 720


Disk Information: ⓘ

Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02 disk0: (500.11 GB) (Rotational)

[Show SMART report]

EFI (disk0s1 - MS-DOS FAT32) <not mounted> [EFI]: 210 MB

(disk0s2) <not mounted> [CoreStorage Container]: 499.25 GB

Recovery HD (disk0s3 - Journaled HFS+) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB


MATSHITADVD-R UJ-898 ()


USB Information: ⓘ

USB20Bus

hub_device

USB2.0 Hub

Mitsumi Electric Hub in Apple Extended USB Keyboard

Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse

Mitsumi Electric Apple Extended USB Keyboard

Apple Card Reader

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

USB20Bus

hub_device

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Apple Inc. Built-in iSight


Firewire Information: ⓘ

0x1F2 Vendor 0x1F2 Device 0x107800 400mbit - 400mbit max


Virtual disks: ⓘ

Macintosh HD (disk1 - Journaled HFS+) / [Startup]: 498.88 GB (394.70 GB free)

Physical disk: disk0s2 499.25 GB Online



System Software: ⓘ

macOS Sierra 10.12.5 (16F73) - Time since boot: less than an hour


Gatekeeper: ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers


Kernel Extensions: ⓘ

/Library/Extensions

[loaded] com.motu.driver.FireWireAudio (1.6 71459 - SDK 10.6) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.motu.driver.MicroBookAudio (1.6 71459 - SDK 10.6) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.motu.driver.PCIAudio (1.6 71459 - SDK 10.6) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.motu.driver.USBMidiKext (1.6 71459 - SDK 10.6) [Lookup]



System Launch Agents: ⓘ

[not loaded] 7 Apple tasks

[loaded] 185 Apple tasks

[running] 90 Apple tasks


System Launch Daemons: ⓘ

[not loaded] 42 Apple tasks

[loaded] 180 Apple tasks

[running] 94 Apple tasks


Launch Agents: ⓘ

[running] com.motu.MOTULauncher.plist (? ? ? - installed 2016-10-26) [Lookup]


User Login Items: ⓘ

iTunesHelper Application (Apple, Inc. - installed 2017-07-17)

(/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)


Internet Plug-ins: ⓘ

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2017-04-28)



3rd Party Preference Panes: ⓘ

None


Time Machine: ⓘ

Time Machine not configured!



Top Processes by CPU: ⓘ

12% mds

5% WindowServer

3% kernel_task

1% mdworker

1% Finder


Top Processes by Memory: ⓘ

510 MB kernel_task

112 MB Spotlight

109 MB mds_stores

107 MB Finder

106 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent


Top Processes by Network Use: ⓘ

Input Output Process name

240 KB 15 KB mDNSResponder

7 KB 8 KB CalendarAgent

8 KB 4 KB apsd

4 KB 2 KB com.apple.geod

5 KB 558 B netbiosd


Top Processes by Energy Use: ⓘ

17.52 WindowServer

15.46 Safari

12.26 com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

3.34 com.apple.WebKit.Networking


Virtual Memory Information: ⓘ

1.71 GB Available RAM

27 MB Free RAM

2.29 GB Used RAM

1.69 GB Cached files

14 MB Swap Used


Software installs: ⓘ

Ultra Analog Session v1.1.5: 1.1.5 (installed 2017-07-17)

Lounge Lizard Session 4 v4.1.1: 4.1.1 (installed 2017-07-17)

BIAS AMP Plugin: (installed 2017-07-17)

BIAS FX Plugin: (installed 2017-07-17)

MOTU Audio: (installed 2017-07-17)

eaReckon FREE87 FR-COMP 1.1.3: (installed 2017-07-17)

eaReckon FREE87 FR-EQUA 1.1.3: (installed 2017-07-17)

eaReckon FREE87 FR-GATE 1.1.3: (installed 2017-07-17)

eaReckon FREE87 FR-LIMIT 1.1.3: (installed 2017-07-17)

Kontakt 5: (installed 2017-07-20)



Install information may not be complete.


Diagnostics Information: ⓘ

2017-07-30 01:48:12 Ableton Live 9 Lite.app High CPU use [Open] [Details]

2017-07-29 22:07:46 Software Update.app Crash [Open]

Cause: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSXMLChildren name]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fcb5796bd90'

abort() called

terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

2017-07-20 17:18:59 Kernel Panic [Open] [Details]

3rd Party Kernel Extensions:

com.motu.driver.FireWireAudio 1.6 71459

 

[Audit13]

Could be a bad sata hard drive cable.

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes, nothing says "slow down" better than a flaky SATA cable. Worth swapping out.
But, then if you go inside, your 2010 MBPro is a great candidate for an SSD, or at least maxing out the RAM to 8GB.
Your combination of 4GB, with a spinning hard drive, and Sierra, can be a patience killer on many Macs.
Audio recording would get a noticeable improvement by swapping in an SSD.

 

[treekram]

As mentioned by DeltaMac, the 4GB memory could be an issue. If you started to need more than 4GB where you didn't before, it will need to swap to the HDD and the HDD is much, much slower than RAM so that could be an issue. Also, sometimes HDD's will develop areas where response time is much slower that it should be. This happened to one of my disks, which I believe it was also a Hitachi. This issue isn't typically logged as a S.M.A.R.T. incident so software that looks at the S.M.A.R.T. data won't find this. You need software which does a full scan of the disk to tell you that this is occurring and where it's occurring but for most people, if the HDD is old, they should just buy a new HDD or SSD because the software isn't free. If this is the problem, it could go away once you are no longer actively using that area of the disk. You could also have some fragmentation on the disk. You also had a failed software update - that *could* be an issue but we'd have to know more about what was being updated.

It could be other software as well. But it would be difficult to know because your hardware makes it prone to a slowdown even if there are no other problems.

 

[Fishrrman]

Put an SSD into it.
Problems... solved.