Is it me or has Mountain Lion slowed my Macs down?

When I walked to the 'light' side and bought my first Mac just barely three years ago, I was both flummoxed yet well hooked. The apex of the Mac learning curve is in sight..I haven't reached the apex...but it's in sight! ;-)

I started with Snow Leopard, then progressed to Lion, then a couple of months ago, updated to Mountain Lion after the initial bugs had been exterminated. (Ver. 10.8.2)

My main question is this...

With each upgrade, both my boot up and shut down times have grown longer, on both my iMac and much newer MacBook Air 11". My boot times on the iMac are now in excess of 45 seconds and the shut down times have grown exponentially...they used to be faster than I could arise from my chair...truly, only about 4 seconds. Now, it exceeds 40 seconds.

On the MBA, boot up is about 15 seconds, just about 6 or 7 seconds longer than a year ago when it came out of the box...no real biggie, but shut down times can range from 5 seconds to 45 seconds.

I NEVER leave applications open..I shut them down after I am done with them. I rarely ever have more than two or three open at one time (I spent decades on Windoze machines). I reboot often too... I rarely sleep my computers.... I want them 'fresh' when I come back to them. In fact, I've stopped sleeping my MBA...if at sleep more than 2 hours, it locks up and is a PITA to get restarted. But that's another topic for another day. ;-)

I think I have cleared my Log In items of just about everything save for an HP Event Handler which I cannot make go away. Other than that, I am unaware of any other programs opening up on start up. Since I close EVERYTHING before shutting down, (and I look at my dock for any proggies open before shut down), I am pretty sure there's not much left open for either machine to close down before powering down.

Still, these start up times and shut down times blow my old Windoze machines out of the water.... but I'd like to get them 'back the way they were' if at all possible.

If not, I'll just grin and bear it!

TIA!!!

Cheers!

Pat

Well, it's never going to be as fast as your SR-71 "Blackbird" but you can do some things to speed it up somewhat.

What we recommend is to download the free maintenance and optimization program "OnyX" from here and run it in auto mode. And, please do not even consider running any other so called cleanup or speedup program as most of them are fake and do nothing but cause problems. Especially avoid like the plague a program called "MacKeeper".

Another vote for Onyx and here is a detailed instruction sheet:-


Onyx Mac – Instant Download Onyx for Mac OS X » Blog Archive » How to use OnyX for Mac

Just a thought, when you went from Snow Leopard to Lion to Mountain Lion, did you upgrade or did you do a clean install. The only reason I mention this is I went from Lion to Mountain Lion on a Mac Mini and experienced basically the same symptoms. After a clean install and restore my Mountain Lion install responded exactly as expected.

Another thing to consider is the amount of RAM that is in your machines. My Mini came with 2 GB of ram with Lion and would slow considerably with several applications open at the same time. I checked via Activity Monitor that my page outs were high and climbing. I actually expected this and had already ordered 8 GB of ram. Upon installation of the ram, I had NO page outs with a number of memory intensive apps open at the same time. The machine responds as I expect it to.... fast enough although I never sleep it. I do reboot it every 2 weeks.

Bill

I am SO glad I "rediscovered this forum. Thanks for all the help.

chscag: First, nothing I know of ('cept the Space Shuttles) are faster than my old Blackbird. ;-)
I only have 4 gigs of ram but understand I can upgrade to 8...which is a very likely scenario for me. Guess I'll go check ram prices on MacMall, etc. Thanks! And TY for the Onyx tip. See below >>>>

harry!: I just downloaded Onyx today.....but looked at it and didn't do anything... I need to research what it will do....and I thank you for the "manual" for it...that is just what I needed. In a former life, on PC's, I used to zap files with aplomb... but would take days to get back up and running again....over and over....well, that was decades ago....but I DID learn from that..... on my Macs, I don't delete anything without first removing it to a 'savior' folder and making darn sure the machine reboots and runs well BEFORE emptying the trash! I owe you one!

bboggess....

No, I have always just 'upgraded', not thoroughly knowing the process for a "clean" install. I have no clue as to how to do that now....although my machine is hooked up to a 2TB disk that backs up multiple times a day..so I know I have 'fresh' copies of everything handy.

Would you recommend a new download of ML and doing a clean install now? Can you point me to a site that lays it all out for me since I have no clue how to do that properly.

If I ever sleep this machine, it's only for a couple of hours...not longer than that. ****, I'll restart it on a typical long day 2-4 times a day.....I am not one of those that thinks it's a badge of courage for not rebooting for months at a time. I use several major memory hogs a day (photoshop, elements, premier, final cut, etc) so sometimes after a long session on any ONE of those proggies, I'll go grab a cool one while my machine reboots. I rarely have more than one proggie open at a time, save for maybe Mail and Safari...but I close those down too when I go into the "memory eating" proggies.

I have just started processing 1440 rez videos shot from a new (to me) GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition and this poor machine cannot handle the 1080 and higher resolutions..... it smokes the 720 rezzes tho.... so I guess I need some more ram....and maybe down the road a little a faster processor and quad cores.....but I digress.

Again, thanks to you three for yoru quick replies.... I guess I'll shut down premier and do a little "studying" on how to use Onyx tonight! ;D

Cheers!

Pat

First of all, see how you make out with Onyx. It is a good program and may clean up everything and your need for a clean install may not be necessary.

I have been a linux user for a decade now and have installed in on multiple machines. One machine that I have, still running, has never had a clean install and it runs like a top. Upgraded every step of the way from ubuntu 5.10. I have 2 other machines that just do not like to be upgraded. So, every new upgrade that comes out, I automatically do a clean install on them. Like I said in my previous post, I wound up doing a clean install of Mountain Lion and all has been well ever since.

Here is the guide that I have used for a clean install of Mountain Lion. BACK UP YOUR DATA. I can't stress it enough, your data will be removed by this process! Double check your backup. I had a backup of a linux box fail once and didn't know it until I needed to do a restore. Once you do a clean install, restore your data from your backup medium.

How to Clean Install OS X Mountain Lion

Bill

Thank you for the tips, Bill. I'll see what Onyx will do first and will proceed with caution. As for backups, that is going on constantly with Time Machine. I've learned my lessons there....early on...backing up nowadays is a painless procedure, runs in the background...nothing like it used to be, feeding 1.44 disks into your disk drive for hours

Cheers!

Pat