8

I installed Yosemite today on a 2010 MBP, 8GB RAM, 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.

Its awful, its so slow, everything seems to hang, even simple things like Finder. Chrome is going as a snails pace and Mail is struggling too. Its nearly, very nearly unusable.

My attempts to optimize the Mac for speed are as follows:

  • I have disabled all extensions in Chrome, turned off a whole host of stuff from 3rd parties in OSX that I thought might be giving me issues.

I can see CPU usage is high for a variety of tasks every now and again, including;

  • md_worker
  • Setup
  • WindowServer

Any ideas anyone to speed up my Mac or diagnose what is causing the slowness?

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10
  • 3
    Whenever you install a major OS X upgrade, Spotlight has to reindex everything, which takes a long time and causes disk activity and slowdowns while it's in progress. You have to leave your Mac turned on for at least a week before you can judge Yosemite's performance.
    – Mike Scott
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:25
  • Nice one Apple! I bet that isn't in the T&Cs!
    – Jake N
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:26
  • I also do not think its true in my case, disk activity is practically none existent at the moment. cl.ly/image/0u3M2i280X2M/…
    – Jake N
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:27
  • 3
    Honestly, it's reindexing. That's what the md_worker process does. Give it some time.
    – Mike Scott
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:34
  • 1
    I upgraded to Yosemite and it did not "reindex everything". I have 13TB of data spread across four internal and five external drives. If it actually reindexed everything after an upgrade, I would still be waiting for it to finish. It probably reindexes files that changed in the upgrade, but since it excludes /System by default and that's where the majority of changes are going to be, it really should not need "a week" to reindex, even on an older Mac.
    – tubedogg
    Oct 21, 2014 at 18:08

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
2

Troubleshooting a slow mac is fairly easy, but sometimes tedious.

You will want to and quit all apps.

You might even go to the Users & Groups preference and remove all applications that start when you log in to your Mac.

Turn off WiFi and then shut down the Mac so you can start isolating it. Remove all peripherals except the keyboard, display and power cord. Power on and then log in and let it run for 5 minutes and then take a snapshot of the Activity Monitor. Look and see what CPU usage is and if the background tasks are taking any CPU time.

If so, dig deeper - open terminal and run "sudo sysdiagnose"

If not, go ahead and connect your peripherals one at a time.

Check the CPU/Activity Monitor and watch both the Memory Pressure graph and the CPU. If you want, you can also look at energy, but that's better for half hour snapshots for me.

At this point, you should know the OS is fine and all of your peripherals and hard drives are not causing the slowness.

Now go ahead and start the apps you choose to run when it's slow. Again, you are still disconnected from any network - just checking the OS and the CPU.

When that's fine, you can conclude that the data coming in from the network was causing a load the OS wasn't handling.

If you can narrow things down, get a sysdiagnose from a clean start and again when it is "slow" and post a second question with details of what your initial troubleshooting has shown.

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4
  • 1
    I think its Chrome. Everything seemed OK, Chrome was fine without network. But with network its CPU went way up. Even when it was literally doing nothing. cl.ly/image/0c3t1D1n1o1P/… That screenshot was taken a minute or so after launch. It seems to have calmed down now though. Chrome peaks when I use it, but now its been on for a while and idle its calmed now.
    – Jake N
    Oct 25, 2014 at 10:28
  • WindowServer is taking up a lot of CPU. Moving between apps/windows is very sluggish. cl.ly/image/2o0k1m173C0E/…
    – Jake N
    Oct 28, 2014 at 9:15
  • +1 for looking in Activity Monitor. I found four bzgrep processes, allocating 10GB of ram each (that I started by accident).
    – alexyorke
    Nov 10, 2014 at 19:33
  • Closing Chrome fixed the CPU problem for me. Especially with Google Docs open. It seems to take some time for Chrome to exhibit the problem though - I've just re-opened Chrome and the CPU is back at normal levels.
    – Snowcrash
    Feb 22, 2015 at 16:03
2

I have a MBP mid 2012, 16G RAM, 256G SSD which is also on OS X Yosemite, I found after each restart, there is about an hour "smooth time", then the task switcher starts panic, and after a few days the whole machine is slow.

I started investigate this two weeks before, now seems it is all due to the Google Chrome. After uninstalling chrome, everything gets fine. I checked the Google help forum, and they said the "not responding" process in the activity monitor is only "cosmetic problem", but in my case it is certainly not.

Even I restart the system without start the Google Chrome at all, seems it can still triggers update in the background, and then makes my machine extremely slow.

After being a five years Chrome user, really regret I have to ditch it like ditching Opera five years ago.

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1

Check out Console.app.

I had serious battery life issues, so I left Console.app running for a couple of days, noting the major problems at the end of the day. There were some super noisy processes, and quieting them greatly improved my case. There's still this glaring problem that I haven't found out how to shut-up yet, but I know it's there because of Console.

10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::scanDone: Scheduling cache purge timer in 30 seconds.
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:00.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:01.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:02.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:02.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:02.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:03.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:03.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:03.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:03.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:03.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:03.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:04.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: pid 29 had pending scan request. Deleting.
10/21/14 12:32:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:32:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:32:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:32:30.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: clearEntries[0] Firing!
10/21/14 12:32:30.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: Rescheduling in 4 seconds.
10/21/14 12:32:34.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: clearEntries[0] Firing!
10/21/14 12:32:34.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: Rescheduling in 1 seconds.
10/21/14 12:32:35.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: clearEntries[0] Firing!
10/21/14 12:32:35.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: NOT Rescheduling.
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::scanDone: Scheduling cache purge timer in 30 seconds.
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:06.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:07.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:08.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:08.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:08.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:09.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:10.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:10.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:10.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:10.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:10.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: pid 29 had pending scan request. Deleting.
10/21/14 12:34:10.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:11.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:11.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:12.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:12.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from 'airportd' (pid 29) ().
10/21/14 12:34:12.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Initiating scan.
10/21/14 12:34:12.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for 'airportd' (pid 29).
10/21/14 12:34:35.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: clearEntries[0] Firing!
10/21/14 12:34:35.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: Rescheduling in 4 seconds.
10/21/14 12:34:39.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: clearEntries[0] Firing!
10/21/14 12:34:39.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: Rescheduling in 1 seconds.
10/21/14 12:34:40.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: clearEntries[0] Firing!
10/21/14 12:34:40.000 PM kernel[0]: IO80211ScanManager::cachePurge: NOT Rescheduling.
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5
  • how can I tell what is causing an issue from Console?
    – Jake N
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:52
  • @JakeN Unfortunately, by searching the web for the errors/warnings and hoping someone else has had the issue already.
    – Louis Waweru
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:53
  • :-) OK. I will give it a try
    – Jake N
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:58
  • I have this same airportd issue! Mine says airportd[30]: -[CWXPCConnection performScanWithChannels .. etc. I'm also experiencing intermittent wifi drops (like apparently many people) and I'm curious if there's some solution... any luck?
    – trisweb
    Oct 23, 2014 at 16:17
  • @trisweb I think these may be different issues, my messages are coming from the kernel. We should each post our own questions to at least let the search indexers gather the rest of us to a Q&A item waiting for a solution.
    – Louis Waweru
    Oct 24, 2014 at 5:11
1

For the past two weeks my MacBook Pro running Yosemite 10.10.2 was afflicted by "slow syndrome". Everything was slow: logins took up to a full minute, typing would be periodically interrupted by the spinning pizza, etc. Ouch.

FIXES THAT (FRUSTATINGLY) DIDN'T WORK

Permissions repair, safe mode boot, disconnecting from the internet, logging into a freshly created account, PRAM reset, all were unhelpful. Ouch.

DIAGNOSTICS THAT (FRUSTATINGLY) WERE UNINFORMATIVE

System logs and the system profiler were unrevealing. Ouch. Frustratingly, the "pizza" would appear even when System Profiler showed NO processes as consuming CPU cycles and/or memory. Ouch.

THE FIX THAT WORKED FOR ME:

Now described under the question "This “weird group trick” makes MacBook Pro login, apps, and systems run slow slow slow … but why? "

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3
  • 1
    Its time like this that I wish Stackexchange has a +1,000,000 button.
    – Jake N
    Feb 13, 2015 at 10:39
  • 1
    There are no correct settings as you say /usr/local is setup differently by each person. I think I recall a know issue with /usr/local with Yosemite install - search here.
    – mmmmmm
    Feb 13, 2015 at 11:59
  • A known bug associated to installing Yosemite on a machine with large /usr/local is described (with a workaround) in "tug.org/mactex/yosemite.html". In brief, the workaround is to temporarily move /usr/local into a user account, then install Yosemite, then move /usr/local back to its original location. This hides /usr/local from the Yosemite installer, which in turn speeds the Yosemite install-time by many hours.
    – John Sidles
    Feb 13, 2015 at 13:04
0

Is your Mac slow in Safe mode too? Try Safe mode - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US

If faster in safe mode, then you may try to uninstall programs which are non-Apple and run as background tasks like Anti-virus. I had installed McAfee before my upgrade to Yosemite and it slowed everything. Uninstalling McAfee in Safe mode solved it for me.

Try CCleaner to uninstall programs and disable startup items - https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

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-1

Only solution for general sluggishness was a reinstall. There is a problem with Y.

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