OT-For you IT guys-slow MacMini

[oldpotatoe]

About 4 years old, OSX 10.7.5.

It's just slow. Any online, 'clean up' type stuff, hopefully free, that will help it's lethargy? Kinda recent gig, wireless thru Airport via Comcast cable. BUT been ok until about a week or so ago.

Grazie

BTW-I am a 'puter idiot', so layman's terms please.

[staggerwing]

Simplest first. Any change the HD is close to full?

My MacBook was acting awfully lethargic, until I found my boy filled his account with about 80GB of music, leaving less than 1GB free. Opened up 10GB, and all is better now.

[yashcha]

About 4 years old, OSX 10.7.5.

It's just slow. Any online, 'clean up' type stuff, hopefully free, that will help it's lethargy? Kinda recent gig, wireless thru Airport via Comcast cable. BUT been ok until about a week or so ago.

Grazie

BTW-I am a 'puter idiot', so layman's terms please.

I also had a super slow mac mini, would take a minute to open at any program. I ordered some extra RAM for around $50, installed it myelf, and it seems to run noticeably faster.

[mccx]

Cocktail http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/ is a good application that runs clean up scripts, repairs permissions, and other things that can help. Free trial for the first 10 times you open the app, so it'll at least sort out this slow patch and help you figure out if it helped before it would cost you anything. Has lots of features, but also has a "pilot" that runs all the recommended stuff without you having to configure anything.

If this kind of tidy-up doesn't help you may have a specific hardware issue (like a full hard drive), but doing a tidy up of system files can't hurt.

[ceolwulf]

Mine is a 2012 base model and was almost unusable till I went from 4gb to 8gb of RAM, completely transformed it. Loading programs was still very slow until I binned the hard drive in favour of an SSD. Now it feels like a modern computer. However - if you say it was fine till recently, then something else going on.

[oldpotatoe]

Mine is a 2012 base model and was almost unusable till I went from 4gb to 8gb of RAM, completely transformed it. Loading programs was still very slow until I binned the hard drive in favour of an SSD. Now it feels like a modern computer. However - if you say it was fine till recently, then something else going on.

Might be just need more memory..only has 2 gig..altho I just ran a clean-yer-mac software and it seems better right now.

Thanks for the inputs tho.

[ceolwulf]

2gb is going to be painful yeah.

http://www.macsales.com is where I got my upgrades from. RAM is super easy to install. Five minute process.

[Bostic]

Does it have the dvd drive on it or is it the newer design that removed it? You can get specs for the max RAM it can take from something like Mac Tracker app on the iPhone. Always buy memory that is Apple certified. A former co-worker bought a boat load of cheaper 16 gig kits 'suitable' for Macs and over the course of months they all eventually caused lockups and kernel panics and had to be replaced.

Boot to the recovery 650 meg partition and from disk utility repair the disk permissions.

2 gigs can be painful, even for Lion. Opening a Mini is not super difficult but swapping the hard drive with an SSD does take patience. There is a black wrap and some sensors that attach to the drive. Not totally necessary but if you bring it to a store and they run Mac Resource Inspector it will fail without them.

[Anarchist]

Might be just need more memory..only has 2 gig..altho I just ran a clean-yer-mac software and it seems better right now.

Thanks for the inputs tho.

2 GB is only barely enough to load the OS, install more RAM and run Cocktail a few times.

[Tony T]

https://fangirlfatale.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/it-crowd-2.jpg?w=500


But seriously: Reboot into safe mode (hold shift-key on boot, then re-boot normally (this will clean up the cache files and temporary file).

[Nooch]

not necessarily meaning to hi-jack, but I updated my macbook a while ago with new ram and a new harddrive, and it's back to running at slowpoke pace.. plenty of room and all... i mean, all in it's a 2007 or 2008, the first year of the aluminum unibody, IIRC, so I've gotten my use out of it, but still don't have money to replace :(

so perhaps I'll try your clean up software and cross my fingers :)

[Robbos]

SSD all the way for the Mac Mini. I installed an SSD to run my OS, and it is mad fast. Way faster than when the computer was new. Got the SSD caddy cheap on Fleabay, SSD on sale, then followed the steps on Ifixit.

[cderalow]

with macs, the more memory the happier they are. max it out. RAM is cheap.

if it's still slow maxed out with memory, then opt for a SSD.

Also, i find fresh installs of OS X tend to run faster than older ones for some reason, so if you can back it up & reinstall... do so.

I've got a similar aged mini and it purrs along for its intended use (trainerroad mainly)

[EPIC! Stratton]

Onyx - http://www.titanium.free.fr/
Monolingual - https://ingmarstein.github.io/Monolingual/

I've found both very useful. Onyx more for tweaks and cleanup. Monolingual because I don't need a number of languages on my computer taking up space.

[oldpotatoe]

2gb is going to be painful yeah.

http://www.macsales.com is where I got my upgrades from. RAM is super easy to install. Five minute process.

Done and done..how do you get inside? Mine is the 2011, no disc drive, type 5.1-never mind-googled it, got it, easy-grazie to all.

Thanks BTW!!

Also ran cocktail and did a safe reboot.

[oldpotatoe]

Simplest first. Any change the HD is close to full?

My MacBook was acting awfully lethargic, until I found my boy filled his account with about 80GB of music, leaving less than 1GB free. Opened up 10GB, and all is better now.

Only using 28% of the HD-thanks

[RobJ]

Done and done..how do you get inside? Mine is the 2011, no disc drive, type 5.1-never mind-googled it, got it, easy-grazie to all.

Thanks BTW!!

Also ran cocktail and did a safe reboot.

Check out the link below. This might not be your model, so if not just go to their search page at the 2nd link below and enter your machine identifier and you will get all the details. Great site for looking up the specs etc. too.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/faq_core/mac-mini-intel-ram-upgrade-instructions.html

http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

[velomonkey]

Check out the link below. This might not be your model, so if not just go to their search page at the 2nd link below and enter your machine identifier and you will get all the details. Great site for looking up the specs etc. too.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/faq_core/mac-mini-intel-ram-upgrade-instructions.html

http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

For sure it's your RAM. You're can take dual 8 gig modules - understand whatever you buy replaces the RAM you have - not adds to it.

My rule is 3 years for Macs. Then sell them off on Craigslist, however, there is a clarification


Mac Mini and iMacs can go 5 years, you gotta maximize the RAM, though. Juice it up. If you can adjust a rear derailleur you can install RAM, just remember static electricity.

Laptops go 3 years and get apple care, I have never NOT had apple care pay for itself may times over using a laptop - mini and iMacs are a bit different - I get education discount, but still, apple care for laptops rocks.

My original apple TV just pooped the bed - it would randomly restart if you were checking out titles or starting or pausing a flick. It's 5 years old and has been used a ton. Purchased a new one and all is well and given it's a 60 investment I'm fine.

What monkey has 2 thumbs and purchased 100 shares of Apple stock when Steve Jobs became CEO. This monkey :banana: - my uncle was my broker, he begged me not to do it. I still give him grief.

PM me with any Mac questions, I'm your huckleberry.

[oldpotatoe]

For sure it's your RAM. You're can take dual 8 gig modules - understand whatever you buy replaces the RAM you have - not adds to it.

My rule is 3 years for Macs. Then sell them off on Craigslist, however, there is a clarification


Mac Mini and iMacs can go 5 years, you gotta maximize the RAM, though. Juice it up. If you can adjust a rear derailleur you can install RAM, just remember static electricity.

Laptops go 3 years and get apple care, I have never NOT had apple care pay for itself may times over using a laptop - mini and iMacs are a bit different - I get education discount, but still, apple care for laptops rocks.

My original apple TV just pooped the bed - it would randomly restart if you were checking out titles or starting or pausing a flick. It's 5 years old and has been used a ton. Purchased a new one and all is well and given it's a 60 investment I'm fine.

What monkey has 2 thumbs and purchased 100 shares of Apple stock when Steve Jobs became CEO. This monkey :banana: - my uncle was my broker, he begged me not to do it. I still give him grief.

PM me with any Mac questions, I'm your huckleberry.

grazie-ram on da way...

[wc1934]

IT here at work sent this:

If you're having a problem with your computer and you search for an answer, that fix-it site with drivers and registry repair programs was likely created by malware writers. Most of the programs on the Internet claiming to be anti-malware software are, in fact, malware programs.
Unsure whether that anti-malware program is legitimate? Check out sites like AV-Test or VirusTotal. Both sites test and use dozens of legitimate anti-malware programs every year. If your anti-malware program isn't listed in one of those sites, don't trust it.

[awdwon]

SSD all the way for the Mac Mini. I installed an SSD to run my OS, and it is mad fast. Way faster than when the computer was new. Got the SSD caddy cheap on Fleabay, SSD on sale, then followed the steps on Ifixit.

I upgraded to an external Thunderbolt SSD for my 4+ year old iMac and it's like I bought a brand new much faster computer.

[EPIC! Stratton]

Thunderbolt is so good.