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please help: MBP running much too slowly

luminosity

luminosity

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
1,364
0
Arizona
I've posted asking for help before and I got zero responses. Maybe some kind soul will take pity on me and help me this time around. My 17 inch MBP is running much, much too slowly. This is in spite of having not much on the desktop, repaired permissions and plenty of RAM (4 GB), along with a good processor (2.8 C2D).

I just don't know what the deal is. Any help or information would be great. Restarts do nothing to help and I'm growing increasingly frustrated.
 
It would be a lot of trouble for me to do that, as I would have to redo my Lightroom library, which is something I'd really rather avoid doing. Also, it seems to me that it shouldn't be necessary.
 
Have a look at Activity Monitor ( Applications / Utilities / ) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
4745264042_9c23afdbc9_b.jpg


How much free HDD capacity do you have?
 
I would also try to verify disk in disk utility.

My MBP all of a sudden started beachballing all over the place. (scare the crap out of me). I repaired the disk (using the osx install cd) and everything went back to normal.
 
luminosity said:
No idea where it is :(.
Click to expand...

Go to /Applications, then go to Utilities folder. You will find Disk Utility in this folder. Once you have it opened, click on Macintosh HD and then on Repair Disk Permissions. You can also access Disk Utility via Spotlight as well.

Once you have done that, I would suggest downloading OnyX to delete your computer's cache.

I do this at least once every 2-3 months and it keeps my macbook pro running smoothly.

hope it helped
 
Backup your lightroom catalog and associated images. Then whip/reinstall. I've done this before (also use lightroom) and its no big deal. Have a portable drive you can use?
 
luminosity said:
No idea where it is :(.
Click to expand...

not idea where what is? activity monitor? thats in Application -> Utilities and Verify disk is in Disk Utility which is also Applications -> Utilities

or just press cmd+space bar and type activity monitor or disk utility into spot light.

i also think you should check your processors in activity. like suggested above. Recently i had a process running about 60% CPU and a ton of RAM. I googled it and deleted the rogue library file that was the culprit and the problem was solved.
your problem sounds similar.
 
xyanide14 said:
Go to /Applications, then go to Utilities folder. You will find Disk Utility in this folder. Once you have it opened, click on Macintosh HD and then on Repair Disk Permissions. You can also access Disk Utility via Spotlight as well.

Once you have done that, I would suggest downloading OnyX to delete your computer's cache.

I do this at least once every 2-3 months and it keeps my macbook pro running smoothly.

hope it helped
Click to expand...

onyx yes i didn't think of that. brilliant app.
 
No idea where my Snow Leopard DVD is. None whatsoever.

I certainly know where Activity Monitor is and nothing seems out of order.

I've verified permissions and nothing seems to have changed. I received several warnings that stuff had been modified and would not be repaired, though. What does that mean?

Will try OnyX. Thank you.

Backup your lightroom catalog and associated images. Then whip/reinstall.

I have no idea what "whip/reinstall" means. Backing things up is far too tedious for me, and is a step by step process. I'm terrible at stuff like that.
 
borrow an SL cd from someone...or just buy another one, it's a measly $30. make a copy in case you lose that one, too.

I'm sure LR has an equivalent to vaults in Aperture. or just copy the entire library/catalog/whatever to an external. or copy your whole user folder. or just don't do anything and do an archive install, which leaves the home folder alone.
 
luminosity said:
No idea where my Snow Leopard DVD is. None whatsoever.

I certainly know where Activity Monitor is and nothing seems out of order.

I've verified permissions and nothing seems to have changed. I received several warnings that stuff had been modified and would not be repaired, though. What does that mean?

Will try OnyX. Thank you.

Backup your lightroom catalog and associated images. Then whip/reinstall.

I have no idea what "whip/reinstall" means. Backing things up is far too tedious for me, and is a step by step process. I'm terrible at stuff like that.
Click to expand...

Backing up isn't all that hard. if you have a external hard drive, time machine detects it almost instantly and will do the back up for you (roughly 1-2 hours). If you don't have external hard drive, maybe you can burn your stuff onto a disk.
 
luminosity said:
I've verified permissions and nothing seems to have changed. I received several warnings that stuff had been modified and would not be repaired, though. What does that mean?
I have no idea what "whip/reinstall" means. Backing things up is far too tedious for me, and is a step by step process. I'm terrible at stuff like that.
Click to expand...
You can ignore the "warnings that stuff had been modified and would not be repaired," - Apple has a note to that effect somewhere on their support HP (sorry no link right now).
"whip/reinstall" :eek: Anything but the Whip! :eek: probably means "Wipe" the hard disk drive, as in repartition or erase it and then reinstall the OS. This a common and often very effective method to restore system stability and maybe some speed, as it does away with junk that may slow down the system.
As for your "Backing things up is far too tedious for me," well, if you have ever lost valuable data, then you wouldn't have that attitude. I do hope that doesn't happen to you but, with that attitude, it probably will, sooner or later. HDs die you know, and other stuff can happen that make having a good backup essential. Well, you have been forewarned... the rest is up to you.:cool:
 
I have never ever seen a thread full of this much fail on macrumors.

OP - MAN UP and stop with this 'oh woe is me i am terrible at backing up can't be arsed copying folders'.

We have a maxim here at work 'change what you cannot accept and accept what you cannot change'.

In other words, either get off your arse & backup your lightroom settings (Which as has already been mentioned will take about 3 minutes manually, or you can use time machine and have a fully backed up machine in a few hours.) and do a reinstall of SL which takes approx 16 minutes from cold.

OR

Stop whinging and accept that because you are so lazy and inattentive, is the reason that your macbook pro is running slowly.

Nawoo - thats a stupid suggestion. Although would force him to re-install snowleopard.

If you lost your original Snow Leopard DVD, go and spend the cash on a new copy.
 
moel said:
I have never ever seen a thread full of this much fail on macrumors.

OP - MAN UP and stop with this 'oh woe is me i am terrible at backing up can't be arsed copying folders'.

We have a maxim here at work 'change what you cannot accept and accept what you cannot change'.

In other words, either get off your arse & backup your lightroom settings (Which as has already been mentioned will take about 3 minutes manually, or you can use time machine and have a fully backed up machine in a few hours.) and do a reinstall of SL which takes approx 16 minutes from cold.

OR

Stop whinging and accept that because you are so lazy and inattentive, is the reason that your macbook pro is running slowly.

Nawoo - thats a stupid suggestion. Although would force him to re-install snowleopard.

If you lost your original Snow Leopard DVD, go and spend the cash on a new copy.
Click to expand...

Ha! my thoughts exactly, get off your arse and back up everything. Run every option in Onyx and if that doesn't help, partition your HDD to create 3 partitions: download Snow Leopard and create a bootable Partition with one, and transfer your Lightroom to the 3rd partition and re-install Snow Leopard on the first partition, then delete the 2nd partition, merge the 1st and 2nd and then copy Lightroom onto the 1st then merge the 1st and 3rd and viola all sorted, on a 2.8GHZ 17" MBP this should take little time, i could do that on my MBA in less than 40 minutes... one episode of Jack Bauer saving America in 24 ;)
 
I am not lazy nor am I inattentive. I am aware, however, that I struggle a great deal with complex tasks (complex to me, at least). I've already backed up the stuff in question, so that's not really an issue for me.

I've done all the things mentioned, including running Onyx (which seems identical to the Maintenance application that can be downloaded). It seemed to help the speed issue a bit, but things still don't seem right.

Run every option in Onyx and if that doesn't help, partition your HDD to create 3 partitions

That's beyond my capability to do. I'd create more problems by even attempting that. Knowing your own limits is not laziness.

The stuff you go on to say may as well be alchemy (i.e. impossible).

I'm glad it's so easy for you, but it sure isn't for me. I do appreciate the response.
 
Three stage process

1) Insert snow leopard dvd
2) Restart computer, hold down C
3) in the 'options / customization' button which will appear before you install you choose archive and install.

When the process is complete you have a fresh installation of OS X, you have a folder called previous system, that you can grab all of your stuff should you still need it. And your computer is fixed.
 
spinnerlys said:
How much free HDD capacity do you have?
Click to expand...

Have you checked how much of your hard drive is still free?

That often is the first issue - if your hard drive is full or very close to full.

Less likely options
Also have you closed Safari lately (as in completely quit and re opened) although I note you said a re start re boot hasn't helped so this one isn't likely.

Have you emptied your Trash? or much still sitting in your trash?

The next layer gets complicated...if you ware using large files with Lightroom etc... checking your Pages In / Pages Out ratio might be revealing - maybe 4GB RAM isn't enough if you are doing large photo editing with lots of different applications that you might be keeping open?
 
I still have over 300 GB free, and it's been doing this since I had closer to 400 GB free.

I've quit browsers regularly and that doesn't seem to change anything.

The trash hadn't occurred to me. I just emptied it, though I don't think that will effect much of a change. Still, something else to cross off. Thank you :).

Right now the page ins are at 764 GB for an uptime of 1 and a half days. Page outs are at about 110 MBs. Swap used is 9.5 MBs.

I don't edit that much, and certainly not compared to many people. Is Safari/Firefox (one or the other, not both) + iTunes + Lightroom/Capture NX 2 (same as the browsers) too much?
 
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