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This can't be right?
- Thread starter AFPoster
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Had it run for over an hour before I took a screen shot. I don't know what's good results so if you could explain that would be great. I have the 750gb HD that came with the 2011 15" MacBook Pro.
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I've had similar problems to yours, and I later found out that it was my HDD.
One way to test this is, try opening the Excel file you mentioned from a USB drive or external HDD.
When I had problems like this I couldn't play video files (avi, mp4) normally, every video I played was choppy in both quicktime and VLC. But when I played it from an external HDD it played just fine.
Your results seem average, not great, but not terrible.
There's definitely a hardware problem, likely still the hard drive.
I would say there is something not quite right with your hard drive. Run verify disk and verify disk permissions in the disk utility. Also run a full hardware test by following these instructions.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4510
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4510
Depends on who's holding it and why. If your browser is holding a ton of inactive RAM to cache webpages that you're not going to visit again, it's more efficient to just not cache and leave that memory free.
Why? Well, when you need memory and it's all inactive, the OS needs to ask those programs to release the memory, and then reallocate it. Often that results in paging the contents of the inactive memory to hard disk. I also find that the most frequent reason my MBP beachballs is that there's no free memory left; even if a quarter of my memory is listed as inactive... it takes a while to reallocate it.
I put the Excel file on an external HDD and it opened about 5 minutes faster but still a big delay. If I'm on parallels it opens in like 45 seconds through excel on the pc side. So very strange that the mac is slower, in SL it was immediate.
Also anytime I open any application or browser there is a 1-2 minute delay before I even see it on the screen.
I have an Apple appointment tonight at 5pm
Was Excel already running before you opened this file from the external drive? If not, that would explain your delay. Open Excel first and see how long that takes to open, then open the file from the external drive - to the bulk of the time should be due to the Excel application starting up before you access your file. This would indicate it is your internal drive with the issue. You could also try using disk utility to clone your internal drive to an external drive and then boot from the external drive. In general, this will be slower than an internal drive as you you are running the OS over USB but once everything is up and running, if file access etc. feels quicker from the external drive than the internal drive currently is then again that confirms the issue is your internal drive.
Check the drive's S.M.A.R.T. status
Since no one seems to have mentioned this yet, every hard drive keeps a log of diagnostic information about it's performance and problems, called S.M.A.R.T. If you feel up to it, download smartmontools through Brew or macports, or get this (free trial).
If you look at the SMART status for the drive and there's a whole bunch of errors, your drive is probably near death and should be replaced.
Since no one seems to have mentioned this yet, every hard drive keeps a log of diagnostic information about it's performance and problems, called S.M.A.R.T. If you feel up to it, download smartmontools through Brew or macports, or get this (free trial).
If you look at the SMART status for the drive and there's a whole bunch of errors, your drive is probably near death and should be replaced.
Try a few utilities before replacing hardware.
I use Drive Genius to maintain and diagnose my HDDs: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
It has plenty of good things to use. $99 to buy though.
I use CCleaner for my permissions and garbage collection duties: http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER It is free.
If they don't help ask Apple to swap out your drive to prove it isn't faulty.
I use Drive Genius to maintain and diagnose my HDDs: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
It has plenty of good things to use. $99 to buy though.
I use CCleaner for my permissions and garbage collection duties: http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER It is free.
If they don't help ask Apple to swap out your drive to prove it isn't faulty.
No, that's not how memory allocation works at all. Read Apple's official article. It's always more efficient to just leave the RAM contents alone instead of wasting clock cycles dumping it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342?viewlocale=en_US
iOS will give programs low-memory warnings, along with warnings that the app will be purged. Not so on desktop OS', like OS X. If your web browser is holding a ton of physical memory and the kernel can't find new physical memory for something (maybe another application), the web browser's memory pages will get pushed to the page file on disk.
There's certainly nothing in the C/C++ standard libraries that would facilitate low-memory warnings, and I don't think Cocoa/Foundation/Core Foundation have anything like that either. It's just a non-issue when you have virtual memory.
Right. Which is why you get paging and slow performance when you have no free memory but a ton of inactive memory held by something coded without taking that into account (like some web browsers).
Here's a thought ...
If you use an external drive to do backups, hopefully it's a bootable clone. Try booting from the clone and see how it performs. Now since the external clone is running at USB2 (or better yet Firewire 800) speed rather than SATA2 speed, it should be slower than a properly running internal drive. If the clone appears faster, then your hard disk is at fault and should be replaced as soon as possible.
If you don't use a bootable clone, I'd highly recommend you get one. Relatively inexpensive.
If you use an external drive to do backups, hopefully it's a bootable clone. Try booting from the clone and see how it performs. Now since the external clone is running at USB2 (or better yet Firewire 800) speed rather than SATA2 speed, it should be slower than a properly running internal drive. If the clone appears faster, then your hard disk is at fault and should be replaced as soon as possible.
If you don't use a bootable clone, I'd highly recommend you get one. Relatively inexpensive.
Have you reinstalled OS X? You said earlier you had done something 3 times but wasn't clear whether you meant you've taken it to the genius bar 3 times.
If you reinstall OS X and it is still slow on a fresh install then it's obviously a hardware problem and Apple will have to sort it.
If you reinstall OS X and it is still slow on a fresh install then it's obviously a hardware problem and Apple will have to sort it.
Seemed perfectly clear to me that he had reinstalled OS X three times, which has left me wondering about the reading comprehension/IQ of many of those who posted suggestions here.
If the personnel at the Apple store think it's normal for a file to take seven minutes to open then the name "Genius Bar" is meant to be taken as dripping sarcasm.
This may be very obvious, but is Lion completely up to date? When you reinstalled, was the whole process slow, or did it become slow right after the install finished? Since you said that windows in parallels is fine, that leads me to believe there's some serious OSX issue, perhaps even to do with the hardware.
I should have made clear I meant a fresh reinstall, which would mean reformatting the drive before installing obviously.