Fixing my Mac

[pugilato]

I love my MacBook.

Purchased in 2007, I was considering whether I should buy a new one. $1,000 at least and ouch. After digging for a while, got the hard drive cleaner app (Clean my Mac) and that helped, but not so much. Found crucial.com and for $200 got an SSD (solid state hard drive), 256 GB, along with 4 GB RAM.

What a change. The only thing holding me back is the slow internet, but I can live with this for another 5-6 yr.

 

[crazydave789]

most machines are stalled by bloat over time, cleaning them out or a format usually does the trick as does updating the OS, the internet speeds will get better but the browsers will always stall, chrome is as a bad as IE now for locking up due to flash errors.

I always fancied upcycling a durabook into a sys 1 with a mega battery and a solar lid setup.

 

[mouppe]

By coincidence, my 2011 Macbook Pro also ground to halt a couple of months ago. I could not understand why, so I spent 7 hours going through the hard drive and deleting stuff on Monday. Eventually I found the main culprit. iPhoto had copied my entire photo library- 135GB worth- even though I never use it. My hard drive spare capacity went from under 100GB to almost 250GB. Now it works as well as ever.

I also sorted out all the log files, cache etc . which may have helped.

 

[Mr Heavy]

Whatever anyone does, NEVER use a cleaner or optimizer app, particularly virally-marketed stuff like MacKeeper etc.

You might want to get hold of FileBuddy and trawl for duplicate files, and that can be an interesting experiment in itself but generally only ditch document files and not anything that might be system related. I once managed to claw back about 250 GB of iTunes dupes that had wandered all over my drivefarm after too many late night poor-concentration solo partying. Mea culpa / idiot.

'Fraid I disagree about keeping up with the latest system. Later Mac thinking is to suck everyone into being IStore's 81tch and sell 'em stuff at every opportunity. ITunes was pretty good up to v4. and I accidentally "upgraded it," losing all ability to play flacs, load my own artwork, organize playlists properly... and they royally shafted FCP users (much of small company/independent Hollywood) by making nothing compatible with legacy files. Arrogant, evil tossers!!

There was a time when I happily proselytized the Mac paradigm, but they've lost me and most of the hard-core pro users (It's what I do, I'm just a hobbyist woodworker) by leaving us out in the cold and marketing what has become fashion-accessory big-screen mobile 'phones. Unfortunately web-based consumer computing demands the latest in browsers or everything breaks, and latest browsers only run on latest operating systems. If you're a coder not a browsing consumer, Apple have you bent over without enough lubrication.

/rant

Mac user since 1986, btw.

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name: Mac Pro
  Model Identifier: MacPro4,1
  Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
  Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
  Number Of Processors: 1
  Total Number Of Cores: 4
  L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
  L3 Cache: 8 MB
  Memory: 32 GB
  Hard Drives, SSD; X2
  Hard Drives, HDD; X6
  Hard Drives, Firewire or USB; X10
  Total 5TB

 

[Holmz]

I love my MacBook.

Purchased in 2007, I was considering whether I should buy a new one. $1,000 at least and ouch. After digging for a while, got the hard drive cleaner app (Clean my Mac) and that helped, but not so much. Found crucial.com and for $200 got an SSD (solid state hard drive), 256 GB, along with 4 GB RAM.

What a change. The only thing holding me back is the slow internet, but I can live with this for another 5-6 yr.

I fixed my niece's machine up with a 480 GB from OWC and 8GB of RAM from OWC.
She is also smiling and it solved her birthday present concerns.

 

[pugilato]

There was a time when I happily proselytized the Mac paradigm, but they've lost me and most of the hard-core pro users (It's what I do, I'm just a hobbyist woodworker) by leaving us out in the cold and marketing what has become fashion-accessory big-screen mobile 'phones. Unfortunately web-based consumer computing demands the latest in browsers or everything breaks, and latest browsers only run on latest operating systems. If you're a coder not a browsing consumer, Apple have you bent over without enough lubrication.

I too am getting somewhat tired of the glitzy bull... I'm wondering if prettiness of the device is going to overcome its utility.

 

[SittingElf]

Whatever anyone does, NEVER use a cleaner or optimizer app, particularly virally-marketed stuff like MacKeeper etc.

That is pure unhelpful nonsense.  YES, people have trashed MacKeeper because of the way that marketers have "virally-marketed" the product, which is due to affiliate programs the company offers, and is in the process of changing due to massive complaints about spamming by their affiliates. That says NOTHING about the actual performance of the program itself.

MacKeeper, regardless of how you purchase it, is a very effective and highly useful application. Provides solid virus protection as well as cleaners and security functions that are unmatched by any other SINGLE application. It has won numerous awards, including those from Apple themselves, and has helped tens of thousands of Mac users over the years clear out the junk on their systems, and protect them from the few virii and other nasties that have focused on OSX.

As an owner of seven Macs of various flavors and ages from Mac Pro to MB Air, as well as innumerable IOS products, I have NEVER had a bad experience with MacKeeper over a number of years of use, and have been extremely impressed by their support and functions of the program.  It has been extremely effective in keeping my Macs clean, fast, and virus-free.

To say "Never Use a cleaner or optimizer program", especially due to marketing... is an opinion, and simply not based on hard facts. The program has proven itself for years, and the naysayers for the most part are just trolling.

Others may differ.... [2cents]

Frank

 

[pugilato]

I used MacKeeper and it did not break the Mac

 

[Cheese]

MacKeeper, regardless of how you purchase it, is a very effective and highly useful application. Provides solid virus protection as well as cleaners and security functions that are unmatched by any other SINGLE application. It has won numerous awards, including those from Apple themselves, and has helped tens of thousands of Mac users over the years clear out the junk on their systems, and protect them from the few virii and other nasties that have focused on OSX.

As an owner of seven Macs of various flavors and ages from Mac Pro to MB Air, as well as innumerable IOS products, I have NEVER had a bad experience with MacKeeper over a number of years of use, and have been extremely impressed by their support and functions of the program.  It has been extremely effective in keeping my Macs clean, fast, and virus-free.

I was told that once you install MacKeeper, you can never fully uninstall it and bits and pieces reside on the hard drive no matter what you do. 

 

[SittingElf]

Not true. You can fully uninstall MacKeeper.  Even the company has an uninstall instruction page:

MacKeeper Uninstall

Furthermore, google MacKeeper uninstall and you'll find plenty of other "ways", though the official uninstall works just fine. I have removed it from computers I've sold to maintain my license.

Cheers,

Frank

 

[Cheese]

[member=20326]SittingElf[/member]
Thanks for the info Frank. Maybe I'll install MacKeeper, clean my computer (it is running slower little by little) and then try installing the Yosemite update again. Possibly the issues I was having with Yosemite were caused by some of the garbage that hopefully will be removed by MacKeeper. My MacBook Pro was purchased in October 2010 so it's had a lot of time to accumulate unwanted/unneeded crud.

 

[SittingElf]

Cheese,

The first thing to do is delete all the contents of your Cache Folder...ALL of it. Don't worry, it will regenerate what's important.

Go to OSX drive-Library-Cache-Select all and move to trash. Then empty trash.

You also have a library, and even bigger cache in your USER library (Separated from the main OSX library. Depending on the version of OSX, you have to enable viewing the USER library. Google "how to enable unhiding USER LIBRARY and follow the directions you find.

Once you can SEE your USER library, do the same thing and delete all of the contents of the CACHE folder.  Reboot, and you may be VERY surprised at the speed increase!! [big grin]

The USER Library Cache folder is usually chock full of crap, because you don't even know it's there!  (It's also the first place forensic police look for history and where you've been and what you've been doing on your computer).

If you have any questions or problems, feel free to post them and tag me. I'll try to help!

Cheers,
Frank

 

[Cheese]

[member=20326]SittingElf[/member]
Thanks Frank for your offer, you've been more than kind. I'm not a computer guy and really don't want to be. The reason I switched to Mac from Microsoft is because Mac allowed me to become somewhat detatched from the computer world and I openly welcomed that option. I certainly have enough other hobbies/interests to pursue and 1-0-1-0-1-0 is not one of them. 

Thanks again for stepping me through the Mac cleanup program. I know it takes a lot of texting on your part but it makes my life so much easier to follow a step by step process (that I don't fully understand) to purge the demons from my Mac. As an aside, I'm presently gutting our only bathroom so my main focus is on that process, consequently, it may take some period of time to get back to purging the demons from the Mac, but when issues arise, I will be texting you for your input.