Mac running slow after mountain lion upgrade

A good rule of thumb is to keep at least three times the amount of installed RAM free. To free up space, delete unneeded files, old downloads and installer files ending in. Movies, TV shows, music and pictures can also take up lots of room.

You can copy some of these files to an external hard drive, then delete the originals to make more room. Remember to empty the trash after deleting to actually free up the space.

4 things to check if your Mac runs slow

The disk directory is the list of files stored on your hard disk along with their locations. Sometimes this can get out of sync with the actual files on disk. Cache files are temporary holding places for constantly changing information, such as installed fonts, graphics from web pages, Spotlight indexing, etc.

As above, program errors and crashes can corrupt cache files, making them fully or partially unreadable. This, in turn, causes individual programs or the OS itself to misbehave. There are a number of utilities on the market to help with these problems, but a very simple solution is built right into your Mac: Among other things, a Safe Boot runs a full scan on the hard drive sector by sector and fixes problems found in the disk directory.

It also clears cache files of old data, so you get a clean start on your next reboot. To perform a Safe Boot, restart the computer and hold down the Shift key until you reach the desktop. This may take a few minutes, and depending on your OS X version you may see a progress bar onscreen for part of the process. For more advanced disk directory repairs, I highly recommend DiskWarrior. One common step people take to try and solve disk problems is to repair permissions using Disk Utility. Back in the early days of Mac OS X this was helpful, but it has become much less necessary in current versions.

Speed and performance issues

When your Mac starts up, programs you use frequently can be set to automatically launch at startup: Safari, Mail, Dropbox, etc. And some programs may have configured themselves to launch at startup whether you want them or not — Skype, anyone? You may have extraneous items or out-of-date tasks vying for attention. Some of these items may no longer be needed or current. For example, if you used to run Symantec AntiVirus on your iMac in and have just migrated things along ever since, there may be one or two Symantec programs still set to launch at startup.

A long delay at startup could be a sign of a missing shared network drive. The next few steps are a bit more advanced. You need to be familiar with locating and deleting configuration files on your hard drive. If you are not comfortable with these steps, skip down to the section on RAM. These folders contain. An Administrator password will be required.

Not all of these folders may exist on your system. Note that in OS X Internet plug-ins can also cause problems, especially older plug-ins with newer web browsers. Plug-ins tend to get installed automatically as you visit websites over the years, but rarely get uninstalled. Do you really need the RealPlayer plug-in from any longer? Check the following two folders and as above, prune out anything you recognize as unneeded or more than three years out of date:.

Your Mac uses RAM to store data that the computer is actively using. The more RAM you have, the more programs you can run simultaneously with less need to cache and store data on the much-slower disk storage. Doubling or quadrupling the amount of installed RAM if possible will make a noticeable difference in how smoothly the computer functions. You can see how much memory is installed in your system under the Apple menu by choosing About This Mac. For systems running OS X Lion Quitting unused applications can also improve performance.

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Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered. Will Mountain Lion make an older computer run faster or slower? Ask Question. I'm especially interested in what people using a retina Macbook Pro have to say! Posting what your Mac's model is, how much RAM it has etc.

16 GB, clean install, and running slow with El Capitan | MacRumors Forums

As the OP I approve all edits that have been made. Truthfully it's not actually my computer that I'm asking about, but "my" in the sense of "someone who may be using an older machine and is concerned about updating to Mountain Lion". We have a few questions about performance with Lion , I see no reason to close or delete a question about performance with older, lower end computers running Mountain Lion.

Safari stands out the most in terms of noticeable speed improvements. Bryan Luby Bryan Luby 4, 1 17 Start-up time for all applications has improved by a factor of 10, especially for Safari and iTunes. I used to click an application icon and wait for 10 to 30 seconds, now it opens immediately. Obviously, Apple OS X engineers have worked hard to tune and optimise Please, what model?

RAM and other specifications? I'm also running it on my MacBook Air 1. Thanks, both models seem relatively high end. Please don't be offended by the vote down, I think people have simply overlooked the low end point of the question. Just wondering, are you some type of moderator? These answers about newer hardware could be useful to others. Therefore, I have up voted this answer. All users are some kind of moderator — that's what keeps the site working.

Why Is My Mac Running Slow? 5 Quick Tips to Speed Up Your Mac!

Everyone is invited to comment, vote, suggest edits, etc. CajunLuke Jackel Jackel 41 1. Safari is a lot faster, especially with the scrolling. I was also worried that Mountain Lion would slow up my computer, but it didn't. Nathan Nathan 4 11 GrahamPerrin Um, ok. I didn't see that the OP wanted to know for the lowest end of the requirements.

Maybe if the OP posted what type of hardware they have, they'd get a better answer instead of just saying the lowest end of the requirements. I agree with Nathan the original title and question didn't really exclude newer hardware. It requested info "especially" on older hardware, but not ONLY. So I don't think the downvotes are acceptable.

Chrome likes memory, lots of it. How much memory does your Air have? Royce Ruiz Royce Ruiz 31 1. JamiePatt JamiePatt 3, 2 13 Maverik 4, 4 39 Gayle Gayle 21 1. Photoshop CS6 screams on this thing.