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SuperCompu2

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 23, 2006
852
1
MA
I just received a MBA off ebay that has surprisingly high CPU activity, and as a result the computer is running very slowly. Attached is a screenshot of my activity monitor in case anyone has any suggestions.

My model is the 1.8GHz 1,1 model, with 64gb SSD.

Thanks!
 

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TouchArchive

macrumors member
Sep 24, 2012
75
3
IL
I just received a MBA off ebay that has surprisingly high CPU activity, and as a result the computer is running very slowly. Attached is a screenshot of my activity monitor in case anyone has any suggestions.

My model is the 1.8GHz 1,1 model, with 64gb SSD.

Thanks!

1.Clear you disk with CCleaner free from App Store
2.Close All Applications
3.Do not use Google Chrome.
 

SuperCompu2

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 23, 2006
852
1
MA
1.Clear you disk with CCleaner free from App Store
2.Close All Applications
3.Do not use Google Chrome.

Ran CCleaner but nothing came up. Worth noting this had a clean install of OS X on it when I started it. CPU is still going nuts.

Is there a hardware problem that could cause this? It sounds like the fan might be grinding a bit, so perhaps it's throwing up thermal errors?
 

SuperCompu2

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 23, 2006
852
1
MA
Any return policy with the seller? You may have been sold a lemon...

I bought it in knowingly slow condition, but got it for a good price, so it behooves me to want to fix it.

Its worth noting that it works perfectly for maybe 30 seconds when it first starts up, then begins to slow. This tells me it isn't hardware, but software causing the problem. Perhaps a sensor's data be misinterpreted..
 

micrors4racer

macrumors 6502
Apr 19, 2012
354
0
Have you tried a fresh install? I believe it is also a software issue and a fresh clean install of osx should fix it.
 

TouchArchive

macrumors member
Sep 24, 2012
75
3
IL
Ran CCleaner but nothing came up. Worth noting this had a clean install of OS X on it when I started it. CPU is still going nuts.

Is there a hardware problem that could cause this? It sounds like the fan might be grinding a bit, so perhaps it's throwing up thermal errors?

The fan work with high speed because you have hard use of the CPU.
I don't think that this is a hardware problem.May be only clean.

You have a problem with software,uninstall all applications and check again.
If not help do fresh OSX install
 

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,553
9,745
I'm a rolling stone.
I just received a MBA off ebay that has surprisingly high CPU activity, and as a result the computer is running very slowly. Attached is a screenshot of my activity monitor in case anyone has any suggestions.

My model is the 1.8GHz 1,1 model, with 64gb SSD.

Thanks!

Do a clean Install 10.7 on it or what the MBA came with (10.5) and you could also run AHT (Apple Hardware Test) on it to see if it has Hardware problems.
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
I just received a MBA off ebay that has surprisingly high CPU activity, and as a result the computer is running very slowly. Attached is a screenshot of my activity monitor in case anyone has any suggestions.
Follow every step of the following instructions precisely. Do not skip any steps.
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the "% CPU" column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
    (If that column isn't visible, right-click on the column headings and check it, NOT "CPU Time")
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.
1.Clear you disk with CCleaner
You don't need to "maintain" your Mac and you don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps like CCleaner to keep your Mac running well. This isn't Windows. Some of these apps can do more harm than good. Some can even degrade, rather than improve system performance.

Some remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process. These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space.

Some of these apps delete caches, which can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt. Caches exist to improve performance, so deleting them isn't advisable in most cases.

Many of the tasks performed by these apps should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention. You can use Maintidget to see the last time these scripts were run.


If you're having performance issues, this may help:
 
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