macbook is running slow all of a sudden

zerofantasym · Aug 22, 2008

Hey! This is my first mac so pardon with the lanaguage if it's not mac-y enough

But I really need someone's help, because it kind of scares me.

I bought my macbook back in November. It was great! But for a week I've noticed that it slowed down a lot, especially when you start it up. First it takes awhile to be on that grey screen. Then Safari takes forever to load. It even shows you that rainbow "wait" sign. Desktop icons take forever to show up, I can't even access the dock as soon as the macbook starts. When I first bought it, it'd start up in seconds and I could access safari and the dock as soon as I saw my wallpaper.

It's a while macbook, with 2 GB of memory

Zoolook · Aug 22, 2008

Time to clean the cache.

Go to your Terminal (find it in Spotlight or in Applications/Utilities).

As soon as you get the prompt, type

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

It will prompt you for your admin password, type it in and press enter. The process will take a few minutes, you can use your machine as normal during this time. When the process is finished, the prompt will be ready with your username again.

This SHOULD help things, if not let us know and we'll move on.

zerofantasym · Aug 22, 2008

Zoolook said:
Time to clean the cache.

Go to your Terminal (find it in Spotlight or in Applications/Utilities).

As soon as you get the prompt, type

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

It will prompt you for your admin password, type it in and press enter. The process will take a few minutes, you can use your machine as normal during this time. When the process is finished, the prompt will be ready with your username again.

This SHOULD help things, if not let us know and we'll move on.

Thank you so much!
It's so obvious, LOL. I've never cleaned it up. What else could it have been! It's really fast now. Thank you

brodriguez · Aug 22, 2008

macbook running slow please help!

I am new to the Mac world and still trying to learn everything there is to learn. I have owned my mac for almost three months and in the last couple of week it has been running very slow. I am even having trouble switching sites. I have tried cleaning out cache but it did not make a difference. Is there anything else that I can do?

lakewoodlady · Aug 23, 2008

Clear the History? If it was Windows, I would expect it to be spyware slowing it down.

lakewoodlady · Aug 23, 2008

Emptying cache

Hi,
Does typing those commands into the Terminal do the same thing as clicking "Empty cache" in Safari?

Zoolook · Aug 24, 2008

lakewoodlady said:
Hi,
Does typing those commands into the Terminal do the same thing as clicking "Empty cache" in Safari?

No - the periodic commands do a lot more than that. Basically if you leave your Mac on 24/7 for an entire month, all those scripts would run anyway as part of the housekeeping (or cron) jobs OS X (and other *nix operating systems) carry out, daily, weekly and monthly.

These jobs are supposed to run either at the scheduled time or during boot up after the last scheduled time (via launch services). Machines that usually miss their maintenance are laptops that are rarely shut down but spend a lot of time 'asleep'.

The scripts basically clean up a bunch of logs, most notably netinfo as well as install and ftp logs.

Sometimes people suggest repairing permissions:

Sudo diskutil repairpermissions /

But, quite honestly, this rarely helps anything thees days.

MACattack! · Aug 24, 2008

How often do you guys suggest clearing the cache?

RobW · Sep 2, 2008

I am also experiencing a slow browser (Safari) at the moment -- I tried the Terminal tip above and it seemed to help a little, but Safari occasionally (1 out of 3 times) gets hung up on the last item of a page and just sits there for 15-20 seconds. I tried another computer on the same network and it ran fine. Any suggestions?

sonypsp0009 · Sep 2, 2008

Try removing third party addons for safari such as safaristand if its installed or sometimes contextual menu items that have been installed can slow or crash safari such as the copypastpro contextual menu addon.

sh1bby69 · Oct 1, 2008

when I type the password nothing shows up and when I push enter after entering a password that I can't see it moves to the next line and noting happens

Zoolook · Oct 1, 2008

sh1bby69 said:
when I type the password nothing shows up and when I push enter after entering a password that I can't see it moves to the next line and noting happens

That means it's executing. It doesn't say anything like "done" or "executing" or "OK sir, I'll see what I can do".

Just wait, and when you get the prompt again (as you started with), you'll know it's finished.

tab1e · May 5, 2009

Hi there, I attempted to run the Terminal command but was unable to type in my password. It wouldn't let me type anything. When I hit enter, it says, "Sorry, try again." and prompts for the password again. I also tried to 'paste' my password in but that didn't work either. Any help is appreciated. Cheers!

iggibar · May 5, 2009

god I feel so stupid for asking this... LOL

Do you guys know why it will not ask me for my password? I've done it before but now it doesn't ask me for a password...

RobW · May 28, 2009

Has anyone had any luck getting their browser to speed up? I still have the same problem where a page will hang up forever. If I hit refresh it often will end up loading normally, but I would say I run into this on 3/4 pages - very frustrating. I have tried a PC laptop on the same network and it is much faster.

I have tried all of the suggestions above, and nothing seems to work. Tonight I was screen sharing through iChat (something that used to work really well) and the person's screen on the other end would take 30-45 seconds to refresh on my view.

Is there anything else I can do?

zandialex · Jun 26, 2009

Zoolook said:
Time to clean the cache.

Go to your Terminal (find it in Spotlight or in Applications/Utilities).

As soon as you get the prompt, type

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

It will prompt you for your admin password, type it in and press enter. The process will take a few minutes, you can use your machine as normal during this time. When the process is finished, the prompt will be ready with your username again.

This SHOULD help things, if not let us know and we'll move on.

Thank you sooo much! I've been having the same problem for sooooo long. I called Apple several times and nobody seemed to know what to do except tell me to reinstall the operating system. I no longer get the spinning "beach ball" and it runs just like it used to! I am very very grateful for your help.

damndog · Nov 4, 2014

Zoolook said:
Time to clean the cache.

Go to your Terminal (find it in Spotlight or in Applications/Utilities).

As soon as you get the prompt, type

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

It will prompt you for your admin password, type it in and press enter. The process will take a few minutes, you can use your machine as normal during this time. When the process is finished, the prompt will be ready with your username again.

This SHOULD help things, if not let us know and we'll move on.

This worked great for me on 10.5.8 but will it work for 10.6.8???
Thanks