My Apple Macbook late 2009 has been upgraded to 4 GB and Mountain Lion but runs very slowly. When I check the memory system activity monitor, I see that there are 1.6 GB inactive. Is this the cause of the slowness and what I can do?

My Apple Macbook late 2009 has been upgraded to 4 GB and Mountain Lion but runs very slowly. When I check the memory system activity monitor, I see that there are 1.6 GB inactive. Is this the cause of the slowness and what I can do?

Reinstall OS X from scratch and add more RAM.

Ways to help make a slow Mac faster

17 reasons why your Mac runs slower than expected

Slow performance of Mac? This Article addresses!

Difficulty of slow start in OS X | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

6 easy tips to speed up OS X Yosemite on your Mac.

Avoid using third-party software that claims to clean your computer. This software does more harm than good. In addition, you don't need it. Note that all computers become slower over time even in the normal conditions of use. Generally, the experienced users erasing the hard drive and do a clean install from scratch at least once a year or every time that the installation of a major upgrade of the OS. Well sure doing so also means that you need to maintain regular and several backups.

Add more RAM or reduce the number of simultaneously executed from applications and utilities. Remove unnecessary software such as anti-malware and that promises to clean your Mac. Look for the runaway process: Runaway applications can shorten the battery life, affect performance and increase the heat and fan acti... See also:

Before Mavericks

Open the activity monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select all processes in the drop process .  Click the % CPU column heading twice to display in descending order.  If find you a process that uses a large amount of time processor (> = 70,) then select the process, and then click the quit icon in the toolbar.  Click the force quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Don't forget to mention the name of the runaway process, so you can find the cause of the problem.

Mavericks and later versions

Open the activity monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select all processes in the menu display .  Click the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click the % CPU column heading twice to display in descending order.  If you find a process that uses a large amount of CPU %, then select the process, then click on the quit icon in the toolbar.  Click the force quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Don't forget to mention the name of the runaway process, so you can find the cause of the problem.

Things you can do to solve the slow Downs

If your computer seems to run slower, here are some things you can do:

Start with tours: OS X maintenance - MacAttorney;

The X Lab: the X-frequently asked questions.

" Safe mac" Mac Performance Guide;

" Safe mac" the myth of the dirty Mac;

Maintenance fast Mac Help.

Start in Safe Mode , and then repair your hard disk and permissions:

Fix the hard disk and permissions before Lion

Boot from your OS X install disk. After the installer loads, choose your language and click on the button continue. When the menu bar appears select utility drive in the Utilities menu. After that the charges of THE select your entry from hard drive (mfgr. ID and car size) in the list on the left.  In the status area, you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is faulty or has failed. (State SMART is not reported on external drives Firewire or USB). If the drive is "verified", then select your OS X volume in the list on the left (subentries under the entry for the road), click the first aid tab, then click the repair disk button. If THE reports any errors that have been corrected, and then run repair disk again until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, click repair permissions. Wait until the operation is complete, then exit FROM and return to the installer.

Repair the hard drive - Lion-Lion/mountain/Mavericks

HD recovery start:

Restart the computer and after the buzzer, press on and hold down the COMMAND and R until it appears the screen of Menu utilities. Otherwise, restart the computer and after the buzzer, press on and hold down the OPTION key until the Boot Manager screen. Select recovery HD disk icon and click on the button below.

When the recovery menu appears, select disk utility. After that the charges of THE select your entry from hard drive (mfgr. ID and car size) in the list on the left.  In the status area, you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is faulty or has failed. (State SMART is not reported on external drives Firewire or USB). If the drive is "verified", then select your OS X volume in the list on the left (subentries under the entry for the road), click the first aid tab, then click the repair disk button. If THE reports any errors that have been corrected, and then run repair disk again until no errors are reported. If no error is not reported, then click repair permissions. Wait until the operation is complete, then exit FROM and return to the main menu. Select restart from the Apple menu.

Restart your computer normally and see if it helped at all. Then do little maintenance:

For disk utility can't handle situations, the best third party is Disk Warriorutility;  Fixed DW only for problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by the corruption of directory; Warrior drive 4.x is now compatible with Intel Mac.

Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will boot Mac running Snow Leopard or earlier. He cannot start Mac that came with Lion or later preinstalled, however, DW will work on these models.

Suggestions for OS X maintenance

OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are supposed to take place on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. Maintenance scripts that are run at the beginning AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep). If this isn't the case, then a great solution is to download and install a shareware like Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacronor Anacron utility that will automate the maintenance regardless of whether activity if the computer is off or asleep.  Dependence on third-party utilities to run periodic maintenance scripts has been significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have little or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later version, and must not be installed.

OS X automatically defrags files smaller than 20 MB in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files it little need to defragment the hard drive.

Under no circumstances should you install operating MacPaw or ZeoBit software (CleanMyMac/CleanMyDrive or Mac Keeper, respectively.) You don't need special software to keep your computer.

Useful links about malware Protection

"If you have an immediate problem with ads popping up see the Mac without danger" Adware removal Guide and AdwareMedic.

Open Safari, select Preferences from the Safari menu. Click the Extensions icon in the toolbar. Disable all Extensions. If it stops your problem, then re-enable one by one until the problem returns. Now remove this extension as it is the origin of the problem.

The following comes from user stevejobsfan0123. I made minor changes to adapt to this presentation.

Difficulty a few pop ups browser that supported Safari

Common pop - ups include a message saying that the Government has taken over your computer and you pay release (often called "Moneypak"), or a false message saying that your computer has been infected and you need to call a number of tech support (sometimes claiming to be Apple) to get it to be resolved. First of all, understand that these pop-ups are not caused by a virus and that your computer has not been assigned. This "hack" is limited to your web browser. Also understand that these messages are scams, so don't pay not money, call number, or provide personal information. This article will give an overview of the solution to remove the pop-up window.

Quit Safari

Usually, these pop-ups will not go by clicking 'OK' or 'Cancel '. In addition, several menus in the menu bar may become disabled and show in grey, including the option to leave Safari. You'll probably force quit Safari. To do this, press command + option + ESC, select Safari, press on force quit.

Relaunch Safari

If you restart Safari, the page will reopen. To avoid this, hold the "Shift" key when opening Safari. This will prevent windows since the last time that Safari was running since the reopening.

It will not work in all cases. The SHIFT key must be maintained at the right time, and in some cases, even if done correctly, the window is displayed again. In these circumstances, after force quit Safari, turn off Wi - Fi or disconnect Ethernet, depending on how you connect to the Internet. Then restart Safari normally. He'll try to reload the malicious Web page, but without a connection, it will not be able to. Leave this page by entering a different URL, i.e. www.apple.com and try to load it. Now you can reconnect to the Internet and the page that you entered is displayed rather than the malicious.

An excellent link to read is Tom Reed Mac Guide of malicious programs.

Also, visit the FAQ XLab and read of detection and avoid malicious software and spyware.

Check out these articles from Apple:

Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection

OS X Lion-Protect your Mac against malicious software

OS X Lion mountain - protect your Mac against malicious software

OS X Mavericks-Protect your Mac against malicious software

On the quarantine of file under OS X

If you need antivirus protection Thomas Reed recommends to use ClamXAV. (Thanks to Thomas Reed to this recommendation.)

The user Joe Bailey comes this equally useful advice:

The facts are:

1. There is no anti-malware software can detect 100% of malware out there.

2. There is no anti-malware that can detect all targeting the Mac.

3. the best way to prevent breaches the most is for you as the user is aware that

the most successful malware attacks rely on sophisticated social engineering

techniques preying on human greed, * and fear.

4 Internet pop-up windows telling the FBI, NSA, Microsoft, your ISP has detected malware on

your computer is designed to trick you into installing their malware thinking it's a

protection against malware.

5. some of the anti-malware market products are worse than malware

go where they are supposed to protect you.

6. be careful where you go on the internet.

7. don't download anything from sites, you know are safe.

8 avoid links that you receive in email, always be wary, even if you get something

you think a friend is, but that you did not expect.

9. If there is any question in your mind, then assume that it is malware.

Troubleshooting Applications

I recommend that you download a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaneror hiding a Cocktail that you can use to delete the former newspapers and archives, cleaning, etc. Corrupted cache, logs or temporary files can slow down the application or OS X crashes and panics of the kernel.

If you have leopard snow or leopard, then for similar repairs install Applejackfreeware utility.  If you do not start in OS X, you can boot into single-user mode , where you can run Applejack to make a set of routines for repair and maintenance of the command line.  Note that it takes 1.5 AppleJack for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later versions.

Basic backup

For some people, Time Machine will be more than enough. Time Machine is part of Mac OS X. There are two components:

1. a panel of Time Machine preferences as part of the system of preferences;

2. a request for Time Machine, located in the Applications folder. It's

used to manage backups and restore backups. Time Machine

requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the

drive being backed up.

You can also get an external drive at least equal to the size hard disk internal and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the disk utility's restore option. You can also create and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (the order is not significant):

1 Carbon Copy clone

2. get backup

3 already seen

4 superDuper!

5. Synk Pro

6. Tri-Backup

Visit The FAQ XLab and read the FAQ on the backup and restore.  Also read How to back up and restore your files. For using Time Machine, visit FAQ Time Machine of Pondini for help with all this time Machine.

Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate .

Additional tips

Make sure you have a sufficient amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run simultaneously. Make sure to leave a minimum of 10% of the capacity of the hard disk as free space.

Add more RAM. If your computer less than 2 GB of RAM and you use OS X Leopard or later, then you can do it with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion works much better with 4 GB of RAM that is their system. Most concurrent applications, that you tend to use the more RAM you should have.

Always have at least 15 GB, or 10% of the capacity of your hard disk as free space, the largest. OS X frequently accesses your hard disk, so offering enough free space will keep things slow down.

Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:

Before Mavericks

Open the activity monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select all processes in the drop process .  Click the % CPU column heading twice to display in descending order.  If find you a process that uses a large amount of time processor (> = 70,) then select the process, and then click the quit icon in the toolbar.  Click the force quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Don't forget to mention the name of the runaway process, so you can find the cause of the problem.

Mavericks and later versions

Open the activity monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select all processes in the menu display .  Click the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click the % CPU column heading twice to display in descending order.  If find you a process that uses a large amount of time processor (> = 70,) then select the process, and then click the quit icon in the toolbar.  Click the force quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Don't forget to mention the name of the runaway process, so you can find the cause of the problem.

This problem occurs often because of a corrupted cache or the preferences file or an attempt to write in a corrupted log file.

Tags: Mac OS & System Software

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