Very slow macbook pro

smr · 7 Jan 2019 at 10:44

Hi all,

I'm looking at fixing a macbook pro for someone at the moment. It is very slow. 99 percent of the time I fix windows computers so I'm not as confident with macs, but fairly adept.

Things I have tried are removing any unneccessary software. I removed chrome and firefox, and noticed that they had malware extensions, well Chrome did.

It's almost the barebones apps installed now, and still really slow. If I try and open Outlook it takes about 10-15 seconds with the icon bouncing before it does.

I've reset the pram and that other option, I forget what its called now. Ran ccleaner, malwarebyes, and now onyx, it's still dead slow, the hdd is half full so plenty of free space left. Also ran first aid on the disk.

Running out of ideas as to why its still slow. It's a 2012 i5 4gb macbook pro, running mojave.

It is quicker than what it was before I started working on it but it's still not very responsive.

Would appreciate any help.

MrRockliffe · 7 Jan 2019 at 10:53

Could just be the hard drive - my fathers MBP also suffers with the same issue; really slow after last few updates. Have put an SSD in which has helped a fair little, but think combination of Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM makes it sluggish when a few programs + tabs open.

Have you tried a full virus scan?

smr · 7 Jan 2019 at 10:55

MrRockliffe said:
Could just be the hard drive - my fathers MBP also suffers with the same issue; really slow after last few updates. Have put an SSD in which has helped a fair little, but think combination of Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM makes it sluggish when a few programs + tabs open.

Have you tried a full virus scan?

Thanks. Yeah I am wondering if it's just the HDD being old. Which program would I do a full virus scan with?

MrRockliffe · 7 Jan 2019 at 10:56

smr said:
Thanks. Yeah I am wondering if it's just the HDD being old. Which program would I do a full virus scan with?

Any of the main free ones; Avast, AVG - which ever your prefer to use

smr · 7 Jan 2019 at 11:08

MrRockliffe said:
Any of the main free ones; Avast, AVG - which ever your prefer to use

Ok thanks I'll give AVG a go.

ChrisD. · 7 Jan 2019 at 11:11

Sounds like the HDD needs replacing or is just plain slow. Time machine backup to something, put in an SSD, time machine restore. Done.

smr · 7 Jan 2019 at 11:31

are there any hdd apps like crystal disk for mac?

ChrisD. · 7 Jan 2019 at 12:20

smr said:
are there any hdd apps like crystal disk for mac?

There's one in the app store, black magic disk test.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12

Hades · 7 Jan 2019 at 15:38

4gb RAM is a bit low nowadays. Applications and web pages grow over time and consume ever more resources. What's probably happening is that it's paging to disk more often than it used to (because it needs more than 4gb RAM). If the disk is an old style spinning hdd then it will grind to a halt. An SSD would improve matters considerably and are quite cheap now. The 2012 macbooks are still from the generation that were upgradable so you could upgrade the HDD to an SSD and the RAM to 8gb. I would probably start with swapping an SSD first and see if it improves matters a lot.

Barry Smalley · 8 Jan 2019 at 07:08

My 2012 Mac mini went like this. That had 4Gb ram and a mech HDD in it. The best thing I did was to put a 500Gb SSD in it and upgrade the ram to 16GB. It was and still is like a new computer.

smr · 8 Jan 2019 at 13:46

Thanks for the advice. I've decided to back up the data via time machine onto an external drive and wipe the hard drive, install mojave again and see if it's any quicker. I've got a feeling there have just been so many crap programs added over time that remnants of them remain and are slowing things down, so many processes running in activity monitor.

So yesterday, after a setting I probably changed, I had to wait for the main drive in the laptop to be deencrypted, which took about 8 hours. Finally deencrypted meaning time machine could back up the data onto the external drive, and I must have not unticked 'Encrypt drive' as now, even though the back up is complete, the external drive is encrypting - and I imagine that will take another 8 hours!

So the question is, can I just eject the drive whilst it's at 2 percent encrypting, wipe the mac, install the OS, then use time machine to restore the data from the backup? ie. would the data be intact still if I quit the drive encryption process.

Or shall I eject the backup drive, format it, and run time machine again but without encryption enabled, as that'll be quicker I reckon than waiting for the drive to encrypt! What a faff...

smr · 9 Jan 2019 at 09:28

Well I left the macbook encrypting the backup drive since yesterday morning, and it's at 25 percent, its been on since then. This is why I hate macs. I don't think I even ticked encrypt drive thinking about it now, it just decided it would.

smr · 9 Jan 2019 at 10:16

Argh... so I need to get this macbook repaired SOMETIME this week, thanks apple.

So I had to cancel the encryption, it would have taken another 3/4 days. I took the external drive out, formatted it, and ran the backup again, making sure that file vault is not on, and having seen for myself that the main c drive went through dencryption a few days ago. So fwiw I am sure the main drive is deencrypted, in any case the file vault etc. is turned off. Yet when I plug the formatted external drive in, and make sure encrypt backup is off, it then says just before copying the files Time Machine is 'backing up an encrypted disk to an unencrypted disk' so I know that when it finishes backing up, it'll go back to encrypting the drive which would take about a ******** week!

So annoying. I think I am just going to do a manual back up of the photos and documents, and then install mac OS again.

**** apple.

ChrisD. · 9 Jan 2019 at 10:27

I don't understand, you formatted the drive and you're backing up to Time Machine? That doesn't make sense. Did you reinstall the OS from media/online recovery?

Do you have a Time Machine backup of it? Is that backup encrypted or not?

If you have a working backup on Time Machine, throw the drive in the bin and get a cheap SSD, restore to SSD, done.

smr · 9 Jan 2019 at 10:33

ChrisD. said:
I don't understand, you formatted the drive and you're backing up to Time Machine? That doesn't make sense. Did you reinstall the OS from media/online recovery?

Do you have a Time Machine backup of it? Is that backup encrypted or not?

If you have a working backup on Time Machine, throw the drive in the bin and get a cheap SSD, restore to SSD, done.

I needed to back up time machine to an external drive, but after it copied the files it started encrypting the backup drive, which started yesterday morning and this morning was only 25 percent done. It was taking too long.

So I then ejected the backup drive, formatted it, and set about backing up via time machine again, this time making sure not to have the 'encrypt backup disk' option enabled. But alas, before copying the backup it said "Time machine is backing up an encrypted drive to an unencrypted drive" so the whole saga would have began again.

She doesn't want to spend much money repairing it so I am trying this option first before going potentially for an SSD.

So I am now having to do a manual backup, drag and drop onto the external drive. I'll have to copy the photos if I can find where they are, documents and downloads, then install the OS from scratch.

ChrisD. · 9 Jan 2019 at 10:35

FileVault is turned on, so that warning is normal. It's just saying you have an encrypted disk and it's backup up to something which is not encrypted. It won't encrypt the backup drive if that check box is not checked.

You're making thsi hard on yourself by doing it manually.

smr · 9 Jan 2019 at 10:41

ChrisD. said:
FileVault is turned on, so that warning is normal. It's just saying you have an encrypted disk and it's backup up to something which is not encrypted. It won't encrypt the backup drive if that check box is not checked.

You're making thsi hard on yourself by doing it manually.

Ok thanks, I'll give it another go.

smr · 9 Jan 2019 at 15:40

Ok great that worked, back up is complete.

So is it just best to wipe the OS clean, install mojave and then run time machine and restore the data?

ChrisD. · 9 Jan 2019 at 15:47

Clean install and then restore the data, or just restore directly from the TM backup as I believe it'll drag the image down over the internet anyway.

FWIW I don't think it will make a blind bit of difference. It's not Windows, you don't have to rebuild macOS to make it go faster. The limiting factor will be the spinning rust that's in it and perhaps the RAM.

smr · 9 Jan 2019 at 15:55

I was hoping I'd be able to erase the disk, and then install mojave, and then select what I want to put back on from the time machine back up? Would I need a bootable USB drive though to install mojave after the disk has been erased?