Too often people upgrade only to find their problems begin, or persist.
Safari is optimized for Mac, and it tends to offer better performance and lower energy usage than its rivals. Favor Apple’s first-party apps. Like Safari, many Apple apps are optimized for macOS and Apple hardware. One striking example of this is Final Cut Pro, which drastically outperforms Adobe Premiere on older machines.
If you need help with a slow Mac running a Mac operating system, please be prepared to answer these questions, or find out how to get the answer to these questions.
Etrecheck, a software written by one of our fellow contributors, is a software that has been useful in isolating many of the issues below:
Look at these troubleshooting steps. Find
1. If MacKeeper was installed, and if it is, remove it with the instructions in this tip:
2. If any other system cache cleaner is installed. If there is, contact the vendor on how to remove it.
3. If the possibility your hard drive is over 85% full exists.
4. If Spotlight hasn't finished indexing. (does not apply to 10.3.9 or earlier). Clicking on the icon in the upper right that looks like:
(it may have a different color), will reveal if Spotlight is indexing, or is ready to search. Going to Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy will show if a specific folder or drive is ignored by your last Spotlight index.
Delayed Opening Of Apps On Macbook
5. If you are attempting to multitask with a Time Machine backup going on. (does not apply to 10.4.11 or earlier)
6. If permissions are damaged. Often a problem when using pre-2006 Classic environment on PowerPC Macs. See #10 how to identify Macs.
7. If third party software or drivers hasn't been tested with your installed operating system.
8. If You migrated data from a different Mac CPU type. I.e. from PowerPC to Intel, or Intel to PowerPC. See 10 on how to identify Macs.
9. If energy saver isn't giving some peripheral problems, because the peripheral doesn't understand low power mode.
10. If the possibility exists that there is marginal hardware on
Intel Macs or PowerPC Macs
Use: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6413 to determine if you have PowerPC or Intel.
11. If you have had 4 language screens forcing you to restart your Mac, that's significant, and indicates what is known as a kernel panic.
Usually an issue relating to the hardware, though sometimes a directory may be damaged, or sometimes a bad or incompatible driver is installed.
Running the hardware test for Intel Macs or PowerPC Macs
will indicate if some RAM is bad, but not all RAM. Any errors found with it are significant.
12. If you don't have a current system, find out if a website you are visiting needs a newer plugin for Java, Flash, etc...(10.7.2 or earlier do not run a current Java. 10.6.7 or earlier do not run a current Flash. But updating to those is only necessary for a few websites. Check before updating to ensure you don't make yourself incompatible in other ways). Before updating to 10.7 or later, be sure to read this tip about compatibility first: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6271
13. If your data is backed up from before or after the upgrade, and we can isolate other issues. Without a backup, we can't say if the solution might be worse than the problem.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1992 - tells you how to backup a functional system.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1689 - tells you how to recover a system that is not functional or able to boot so at least other issues can be
isolated.
14. Slowdown to internet applications may be due to third party router firmware not being up to date, too many machines using the router, an insecure router not using WPA2 connectivity (802.11b original Apple Airport can't use it, and it is better to get a WiFi ethernet bridge with at least 802.11g), proxy servers, and bad DNS issues which http://www.opendns.org/ can resolve. Additional WiFi related issues are documented on this tip:
15. A bad iTunes install, or one that isn't properly updated for the system may cause slow down. If you are trying to isolate that as a possibility, note the path to the iTunes Helper which is loaded in your System Preferences -> Accounts (Users and Groups in some versions of Mac OS X), Login Items (startup items in other versions of Mac OS X)
/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources
You can use the Finder's Go to Folder command in the Go menu to reload that program after removing it from your Login Items and troubleshooting the situation.
16. Peer2peer sharing software, torrent software, both make your machine into a software server. This can slowdown your overall internet. Do not get software from such sources, as most are illegal. If you have trouble finding software for your operating system, visit http://www.roaringapps.com/ if using Mac OS X 10.7 or later, or ask on this board where to find software that is legal that does what you need.
17. If your Mac is backed up, then's the time to see if a directory repair is necessary:
Delayed Opening Of Apps On Macbook Pro
18. Often times, you will see the system slowdown and get a spinning color circle indicating it is busy. After a certain amount of time, if you can risk losing the data that has not been saved on the application, force quitting the application with command-option-escape key sequence is a possibility.
If command-option-escape does not work, it may indicate one of the aforementioned issues is happening. Command and Option keys may look like some variation of:
On non-Apple keyboards the Windows key usually takes the place of the Command key, and the Alt key usually the Option key. Though Microsoft has made a patch for its keyboards that forces the two keys to switch their assigned Apple keystroke, since they are in reverse orientation of the Apple keyboard. The Escape key is typically just labelled ESC.
19. You may not experience any of the above issues with games or high end graphics applications. The graphics processor unit (GPU) recommended by the developer should be the one you have installed on your computer. Any others, and speed may be an issue with those programs. It is not to be confused with RAM or your CPU.
Can't Open App On Mac
20. Migrating data from PowerPC Macs. See first #10 to see if you had a PowerPC Mac you were migrating from. If you did, you may have brought over some drivers the Intel Mac does not understand in the Migration or Setup Assistant. If there is a chance this may have happened, you should see this tip on migration which avoids the issue:
Delayed Opening Of Apps On Mac Computer
21. Notifications can slow Mac OS X 10.9 down. Go to Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Notifications to disable those notifications you don't need.
22. iCloud syncing (in 10.7.2 and later) can slow things down. Manage iCloud through the System Preferences to ensure syncing only happens when you need it. iSync in Mac OS X 10.6 and earlier can also slow things down when you don't need it.
Remove Windows 10 Startup Delay
Here are the steps you need to take to edit your Windows Registry to make your PC load faster by removing Windows 10 Startup Delay:
1. Open the Windows Registry Editor by going to the Start menu or search bar and typing “regedit” and choose Run as administrator.
2. Choose Yes when prompted by the UAC (User Account Control) prompt to make administrative changes to your Windows 10 PC.
3. Browse to the following Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerSerialize
4. If Serialize, does not exist, create a new Key in Explorer by right clicking on Explorer: New > Key (Name the Key: Serialize).
5. Within Serialize, right-click and create a new DWORD (32-bit) value and name it StartupDelayInMSec.
Be sure the hexadecimal value is set to 0.
6. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
Applies to All Windows 10 Versions
Windows 10 has a feature that waits approximately ten seconds to open your startup apps when your computer turns on. The “startup delay” is meant to allow your desktop and Windows app services to finish loading, which can make the apps and services run more smoothly. However, if you have apps or services you want to start up immediately when Windows 10 starts, there is a Registry edit you can use.
This Registry edit can reduce or disable the ten second startup delay completely. Unfortunately, it applies to all startup apps; you won’t be able to apply this edit to specific startup apps. It should be noted that this Registry edit works best on a Windows 10 PC that has an SSD (solid state drive). An SSD loads programs much quicker than a traditional HDD (hard disk drives). HDDs are better suited for mass storage and you can apply this Registry edit to a Windows 10 PC with an HDD, but you might not see much of a difference in how fast your startup apps load.
Here are the steps you need to take to edit your Windows Registry to make your PC load faster:
Close Open Apps On Mac
1. Open the Windows Registry Editor by going to the Start menu or search bar and typing “regedit” and choose Run as administrator.
2. Choose Yes when prompted by the UAC (User Account Control) prompt to make administrative changes to your Windows 10 PC.
3. Browse to the following Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerSerialize
4. If Serialize, does not exist, create a new Key in Explorer by right clicking on Explorer: New > Key (Name the Key: Serialize).
5. Within Serialize, create a new DWORD (32-bit) value and name it StartupDelayInMSec. Be sure to set the hexadecimal value to 0. It should be set to 0 by default.
This is how StartupDelayInMSec should look in Serialize in the Registry Editor.
6. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
You’re all done! Windows 10 Startup Delay is removed. Again, if your Windows 10 PC has an SSD, you should see a significant boost in your startup time. With HDDs, you might still not see much, if any, speed increase in your startup times. The boot time into Windows 10 also depends on how many apps and Windows services you have enabled for startup. If you have a lot of services enabled at startup, you may still see a slight speed increase in how long it takes for Windows 10 to start.