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TABLE OF
CONTENTS
1) If you recently upgraded your Macintosh
to a new major version of OS X
2) Restart your Mac
3) Routine Maintenance
4) How Full Is Your Hard Drive?
5) Anti-Virus Programs
6) Dropbox
7) Conflicting Peripherals
8) Test Your RAM
9) Test Your Hard Drive
10) If Nothing Else Works
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A very disturbing problem that (fortunately very few) Macintosh users
face is a sudden very noticeable decrease in performance of their
computer. This page is designed to help you troubleshoot and
fix the problem based on the most likely known causes for this
happening.
First, let me tell you what very likely is not
the solution to the problem. Has your Macintosh, in the past,
with its current hardware configuration, ever performed
acceptably? Is your Mac's decrease in performance a recent
fairly sudden occurrence? If it has and it is, then the
common suggestions of many well-meaning folks that your slowdown can be
resolved by either (or both) purchasing and installing more RAM, or by
purchasing and installing a solid-state hard drive (SSD) (assuming that
you don't already have the latter), is misguided. While those
things do increase a Macintosh's performance, they aren't a solution to
your underlying problem. It's like telling someone with a
Corvette that is suddenly performing poorly that the answer is to
install a turbo-charger. Sure, a turbo-charger adds
performance, but it isn't addressing the underlying problem of what is
causing your Corvette, that previously was a rocket, to now be
slow. It's the same with the suggestion that you add more RAM
or that you install an SSD. Those aren't solutions to the
specific problem of a sudden decrease in performance.
You need to figure out the source of, and fix, the underlying
problem. Once your Macintosh is back to normal you can decide
if it is worth paying for hardware upgrades that improve stock
performance.
Note that the following are the most common causes of a recent
slowdown. There are other, less common causes, but it is
worth ruling out all of the likely causes first. At the
bottom of this page, if all of the common suggestions fail, I will tell
you how to track down less common problems.
1)
If you recently upgraded your Macintosh to a new major version of OS X,
it’s going to be slow for a day or two while Spotlight re-indexes your
hard drive. This is normal. (You can verify that this is the
case by putting your drive into Privacy mode in Spotlight's System
Preferences panel. But that shouldn't be necessary.
You know if you have just upgraded your Mac's OS. You just
need to be patient for a couple of days.)
If you normally shut your Mac down at night, you may instead want to
just leave it on all night for a few days so that Spotlight can do its
thing.
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2)
Restart your Mac. Sometimes this is all it takes.
Restarting your Mac will cause all of your applications to quit and it
will clear your Mac's memory.
Click on the Finder icon in your dock, then choose: Apple menu
--> Restart.
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3)
Maybe some quick routine maintenance will help. Have a look
at this Web site and do all of the relevant routine maintenance:
Mac OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
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4) How big is your hard drive and how full is it?
Rotating Disk Hard Drives
Macs run
terribly when they don't have enough free contiguous hard drive space
to work with for caches, databases, virtual memory, etc.. If
your hard drive is approaching, or is over 80% full, this is likely the
problem. You will either need to clear a lot of
data off of it, and then defragment your hard drive, or you will need
to get a new, bigger hard drive.
See:
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
Have a look at both item #5 and Note #1
Solid State Hard Drives
"The rule of thumb to keep SSDs at top speeds is to never completely
fill them up. To avoid performance issues, you should never use more
than 70% of its total capacity."
"When you’re getting close to the 70% threshold, you should consider upgrading your computer’s SSD with a larger drive."
“It is easier for the drive to write to an empty cell when there is
free space available. When the drive is full, the SSD needs to find out
which blocks are partially filled, move that information into a cache
and then write it back to the drive. "
https://pureinfotech.com/why-solid-state-drive-ssd-performance-slows-down/
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5) Uninstall
any third party anti-virus program you have installed. It's
not uncommon for third-party anti-virus programs to cause software
conflicts which will bring your Mac to its knees. Third-party
anti-virus programs typically have to be uninstalled using either
specific instructions, or an uninstaller program that you get from the
program's developer. They can't be fully uninstalled by
dragging their program icon or folder to the Trash. I have
found that Sophos Antivirus is most often the offending program
here. Users are attracted to it because it is free.
But this is one of those cases where "free" may not be a good deal.
How to uninstall Sophos Antivirus Home Edition:
http://help.bol.ucla.edu/app/answers/detail/a_id/879
http://support.uidaho.edu/2011/05/20/sophos-antivirus-mac-uninstall/
After you uninstall your anti-virus program, restart your Mac and see
if things are better.
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6)
If you use Dropbox, quit the program:
Go to the Dropbox menu --> choose the gear icon on lower right
--> choose Quit.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Dropbox-slow-down-my-Mac
If this solves the problem, you may be able to work around it by
limiting the bandwidth Dropbox uses when it is enabled. Go
into Dropbox Preferences (in the Dropbox menu, choose the little gear
icon in the lower right) and Network.
https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/26
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7) Disconnect
all peripherals (especially USB hubs) other than the Apple-supplied
keyboard and mouse and restart. If you are using a third
party keyboard and/or mouse, temporarily replace them with the original
Apple-supplied ones. See if that fixes things. If
it does, you can reattach one peripheral at a time and restart your
Macintosh after attaching each one to see which peripheral is causing
the problem.
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To Table of Contents If none of the above is the problem, it’s time to rule
out bad RAM or a failing hard drive.
8)
Test your RAM with:
Apple's Hardware Test/Apple Diagnostics:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18765?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Hardware Test is for June 2013 and earlier Macs; Apple Diagnostics is
for more recent Macs.
Apple's Hardware Test (AHT):
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257
Apple Diagnostics
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731
However, Hardware Test and Apple Diagnostics don't do as thorough job
as they could with respect to testing your RAM. (However, they
are worth running for other reasons.) A "failing RAM" report
will be accurate, but a passing result may not be. More
thorough would be:
Rember (free)
http://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/
Run it and see what it says. Typically the problem will be
due to non-Apple RAM. Remove bad RAM and return it to the
supplier for replacement.
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9)
Test your hard drive with:
The free demo version of the following will comprehensively tell you
how well your hard drive is doing (though I don't know how well it
works with SSD's):
DriveDX - free demo
http://binaryfruit.com/drivedx
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Still no joy after trying all of the above?
Try this diagnostic procedure to see if you can zero in on the
offending application.
10) Launch
Activity Monitor (in your Applications/Utilities folder), and click on
the "%CPU" header.
Then click on the triangle in the %CPU header so that things are
ordered in that column from most to
least. See if anything is running that is using an inordinate
amount of CPU time. If something
has a really high number, this is likely to be what is causing your
slowdown.
Finally...
Unlike a Windows PC, it’s highly unlikely that any sort of malware is
causing your slowdown. However, there has been a rash of
adware lately. You may want to download and run this for
peace of mind:
DetectX Swift (currently free, Version 2 will be commercial)
https://sqwarq.com/detectx/
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If you have any additions to this Web site to suggest
I would very much appreciate hearing your suggestions.
Send them to:
Randy B. Singer
randy@macattorney.com
Other Web pages by Randy B. Singer that might be of interest to Macintosh users:
• Macintosh Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
• Macintosh Beachballs!
http://www.macattorney.com/rbb.html
• Macintosh Email Software
http://www.macattorney.com/mail.html
• Macintosh Word Processors
http://www.macattorney.com/wp.html
• Macintosh Accounting Programs
http://www.macattorney.com/accounting.html
• Upgrading To The Latest Macintosh OS
http://www.macattorney.com/upos.html
• Free Or Inexpensive Macintosh Software
http://www.macattorney.com/free.html
About The Author Of This Web Site
Randy B. Singer is:
- The head of the MacAttorney User Group
http://www.macattorney.com
with, at this writing, close to 10,000 members!
- A co-author of The
Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions);
- Author of the ABA
publication:
The Macintosh Software Guide for the Law Office
If you are a Macintosh-using
attorney or legal professional (including law students)
for a FREE e-mail subscription to
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MacAttorney
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send an e-mail to: randy@macattorney.com
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