Can a mid 2009 MacBook really run Mountain Lion?

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I got a hand-me-down MacBook (mid 2009). It had Lion on it and was running fine. I put Mountain Lion on it now it's crawling. I thought the drive was bad so I used Scannerz to run a drive test on it and it came back telling me the drive was fine. I tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC, no difference. I thought maybe the permissions were screwed up so I went ahead and repaired them with Disk Utility. Once again, no change. I verified the disk with Disk Utility as well, once again no problems. There are no messages in the console that would lead me to believe there's a problems.

Apple's ads say this should run with Mountain Lion. Can it really? Any idea what's wrong?
 
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I got a hand-me-down MacBook (mid 2009). It had Lion on it and was running fine. I put Mountain Lion on it now it's crawling. I thought the drive was bad so I used Scannerz to run a drive test on it and it came back telling me the drive was fine. I tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC, no difference. I thought maybe the permissions were screwed up so I went ahead and repaired them with Disk Utility. Once again, no change. I verified the disk with Disk Utility as well, once again no problems. There are no messages in the console that would lead me to believe there's a problems.

Apple's ads say this should run with Mountain Lion. Can it really? Any idea what's wrong?

How much RAM do you have? How much drive space is used and how much is free?
 
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09 MBP 8GB ram 500GB HD OS 10.9 32B iPad 4 32GB iPhone 5 iOs7 2TB TC Apple TV3
Mine is an 09 and it has been running ML since it came out with no problems.
 
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Sorry I took so long to get back. It was the RAM, or should I say lack thereof. Scannerz now comes with a thing called Performance Probe which is like a summary of Activity Monitor. It came as a free update with Scannerz recently. The company that makes Scannerz has it on their web site, but I forgot the web address.

In any case, using it and opening some apps like Safari to a site that uses some video (I used the Weather Channel to look at a map) and opening up Mail pretty much pegged the memory out. Page outs were rampant and swap changes increased pretty radically.

With 4GB of RAM it seems to work OK, but I wouldn't say it's stellar. Lion and Snow Leopard seemed to do the same amount of work on a lot less RAM. On the other hand I like Mountain Lion better than Lion. I'm not sure I like it better than Snow Leopard. These are just personal opinions, of course.
 

bobtomay

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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Every web browser seems to chew through memory nowadays. Seems like they all want to store every page you visit in memory so they can make the 'we have the fastest browser' claim.

I can go from 2.2 GB free memory down to 30 MB in about an hour using Safari, FF or Chrome.

Enter Free Memory Pro. They have a free version Free Memory if you really must try it before giving them your $1.
 

dtravis7


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Well said Bobtomay. I get amazed how quick even 4GB gets gobbled up using especially Safari in ML or Lion. I use something like Free Memory Pro but it's called iFreeMemory or close. Safari does not seem to always release the RAM when it's done with it.
 

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