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debengele

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2014
2
0
Virginia Beach
My MBP (early 2011, 2.3 GHz, i7, 16 GB RAM, 500 GB HD) had been intermittently running slow on Lion and Mavericks (lots of beach balls and occasional freezes in MS Office and Safari). I ran utilities and repaired disk permissions, but could never isolate the issue. Then, I made the brilliant decision to upgrade to Yosemite. What a nightmare. Now, my MBP freezes up constantly, especially if left idle. My only option to get it running once frozen has been to force quit via power button. Then when trying to reboot/restart, the system repeatedly restarts itself 4-5 times. Eventually, it gets back to my home screen and works fine...until left idle or turned off. The question is, since I was already having issues before installing Yosemite, should I restore to factory settings (OS 10.6.6 Snow Leopard) and then do a clean install of Yosemite? (I've got my data backed up via Time Machine on an external drive)
 
The try to boot into Recovery Mode and in it run Disk Utilty to repair the disk. Also you can Internet restore to fresh boot if your hard drive is good and you want to start over from Recovery Mode.


Lastly try running the free EtreCheck because it will show you what I'd not compatible in Red to manually delete it, then restart after deleting things. This should help any upgrade.
 
My advice:
Swap out the old internal HDD for an SSD.

Do a clean OS install, then use Migration Assistant to restore from your backup.

You will enjoy the speed increase!
 
The try to boot into Recovery Mode and in it run Disk Utilty to repair the disk. Also you can Internet restore to fresh boot if your hard drive is good and you want to start over from Recovery Mode.


Lastly try running the free EtreCheck because it will show you what I'd not compatible in Red to manually delete it, then restart after deleting things. This should help any upgrade.

I followed your advice and have successfully restarted the MBP a few times without a hitch. I'm averaging about a minute for start up and under 3 to open an app and get to work. I really appreciate the link you suggested to Etrecheck! What a great program! It was an eyeopener to see the results it summarized.

Thanks so much for the help!

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My advice:
Swap out the old internal HDD for an SSD.

Do a clean OS install, then use Migration Assistant to restore from your backup.

You will enjoy the speed increase!

I'd love to buy a SSD...but they are a little pricey. Which one would you recommend? Any particular source for a good deal? Thanks for the feedback and support!
 
I'd love to buy a SSD...but they are a little pricey. Which one would you recommend? Any particular source for a good deal? Thanks for the feedback and support!

The Samsung 840 Evo 250gb is only about $135 on Amazon. If you need 500gb then that's going to almost double. Best performance upgrade you can make. Very easy to change yourself.

Due to the age of your system your existing drive may be showing early signs of its demise. Failing hard drives often show the symptoms mentioned.
 
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