My late-2008 MacBook Aluminium (non-Pro), which is now my wife's, has always been a bit of a dog in the Finder. I attributed this to a lack of power, though I'm thinking it has a root in the software. Perhaps something that has migrated from laptop to laptop over the years.

Yes, I use Cocktail, Onyx, etc., regularly to clean out the cruft. Never has made a difference with the issue I'm about to detail;

On my late-2011 MacBook Pro 13" (2.7Ghz i7, 4 gigs RAM), the Finder performance is similarly doggish.

An example: In the finder, I hit Command-Shift-A to open the Applications folder, which currently has 583 items, and is set to open in List view.

It takes the Finder approximately 16 seconds to display the list of apps. This seems to me to be a bit odd.... or is this on par with your experience, dear ehMacians?

Wondering if I need to delete the .DS_Store file? Or something else?

Cubamark;

have the same 2008 MacBook (non pro), best one all around for accessibility to battery and HDD. Anyway, it take less than a second for the App folder to open and list the apps. IMHO I think your HDD is at fault. I have never deleted the .DS files. But I also have a 240 gb OWC SDD, that may be the difference

I have a 2010 15" MBP unibody 2.66g core i7, 8gb ram 500gb 7200rmp HDD running 10.6.8 and shift+command+A is instantaneous.

Have you run Activity Monitor or top in the Terminal to see what's eating up your CPU time?

If you run "top" this is what you get (hit the "Q" key when you wish to finish):


Processes: 66 total, 2 running, 64 sleeping, 286 threads 21:43:02
Load Avg: 0.44, 0.36, 0.23 CPU usage: 3.11% user, 5.75% sys, 91.12% idle SharedLibs: 10M resident, 8824K data, 0B linkedit. MemRegions: 11763 total, 522M resident, 26M private, 276M shared.
PhysMem: 794M wired, 888M active, 308M inactive, 1990M used, 6200M free. VM: 159G vsize, 1043M framework vsize, 62191(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts. Networks: packets: 256182/321M in, 152049/17M out.
Disks: 77897/2000M read, 103143/2240M written.


PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #WQ #POR #MREG RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VPRVT VSIZE PGRP PPID STATE UID FAULTS COW MSGSENT MSGRECV SYSBSD SYSMACH CSW PAGEI USER
617 top 3.4 00:03.50 1/1 0 24 33 1664K 264K 2244K 17M 2378M 617 614 running 0 55589+ 56 2512707+ 1256164+ 20322+ 1262220+ 264+ 0 root
614 bash 0.0 00:00.00 1 0 17 24 388K 244K 1056K 17M 2378M 614 613 sleeping 501 463 104 128 56 398 95 23 0 k
613 login 0.0 00:00.01 1 0 22 53 488K 244K 1596K 19M 2379M 613 591 sleeping 0 621 121 280 129 1229 184 24 0 root
612 mdworker 0.0 00:00.13 3 1 48 73 5756K 17M 10M 54M 2437M 612 1 sleeping 501 3500 141 1048 465 2891 665 114 0 k
606 activitymoni 1.3 00:05.02 1 0 23 37 852K 244K 1384K 29M 2389M 606 1 sleeping 0 234912+ 62 924074+ 460829+ 90328+ 487316+ 699+ 0 root
603 Activity Mon 0.3 00:02.53 2 1 113 259 5300K 92M 18M 37M 2833M 603 158 sleeping 501 60213+ 320 22968+ 8855+ 58066+ 20442+ 2283+ 169 k
591 Terminal 1.4 00:10.23 5 1 111 117 5804K 33M 16M 53M 2729M 591 158 sleeping 501 19684+ 422 70470+ 32982+ 469497+ 66113+ 7158+ 213 k
567 Preview 0.0 00:01.20 3 2 109+ 160+ 14M+ 43M 28M+ 59M+ 2771M+ 567 158 sleeping 501 20946+ 365 22658+ 9850+ 3732+ 29638+ 19444+ 1449 k
544 AppleSpell 0.0 00:00.42 2 1 38 64 3820K 14M 8080K 47M 2428M 544 158 sleeping 501 2753 96 6959 3302 7871 4368 569 272 k
501 WebProcess 0.0 06:03.62 13 2 230 1764 177M 36M 244M 476M 4033M 216 216 sleeping 501 12223263 4919 6252566 3056779 2440032+ 5978109+ 1206579+ 734 k
436 Mail 0.0 00:15.27 12 2 241 311 34M 62M 83M 210M 3838M 436 158 sleeping 501 57107 755 276364 121643 212375+ 276586+ 84114+ 2496 k
222 DGHelper 0.0 00:15.62 2 1 57 57 4728K 10M 6332K 51M 2426M 222 185 sleeping 0 681645 72 319037 154169 616739 248719 20671 46 root
216 Safari 0.0 07:25.11 19 2 517 696 54M 72M 99M 239M 3890M 216 158 sleeping 501 14749077 2575 9396332 4745616 2980810+ 8582814+ 2330785+ 3732 k



Also, are you always connected to the internet when this occurs? If you are, disconnect and see. Double check all Finder prefs, make sure you're not having finder search networks, etc.

have the same 2008 MacBook (non pro), best one all around for accessibility to battery and HDD.

Agreed. Until I was forced to buy this MBP, the 2008 model was my favourite Mac laptop ever. I did manage to do the DC board replacement in the end, so it's still functioning fine, but it was a fairly easy decision to adopt the new baby as my own and pass on the now 4-year-old model to my wife ;)

IMHO I think your HDD is at fault.

I'm always aware of the HDD being a potential issue - but this problem has persisted across a number of laptops and OSes now. And my 2008 model, I upgraded the stock HD to a 500-gig model. The new MBP has a 750gig Toshiba... less about 9 months on its odometer, so not likely part of the equation. I also monitor SMART status constantly.

So - I think we're down to concluding that it's some kind of cruft stuck in my user account (or possibly at the system level - will have to log into another account to determine). Housecleaning... deeper than before... may well be needed.

* * *

kps: apart from "ActivityMonitord", the only other processes using significant CPU power are "kernal task" and as usual, Safari Web Content chewing up around 10%.

Interestingly, "top" in the Terminal shows me that I have 1 "stuck" process. Hmmm... how do I determine which one that is...

Internet: yup, always connected. 10mb/s cable with Airport Express wifi.

And as I write this, I note that the Application folder is now opening instantaneously. So it's not a consistent issue... perhaps the first time I open the folder is when it delays... and subsequent displays are cached? Sigh.

* * *

kps: apart from "ActivityMonitord", the only other processes using significant CPU power are "kernal task" and as usual, Safari Web Content chewing up around 10%.

Interestingly, "top" in the Terminal shows me that I have 1 "stuck" process. Hmmm... how do I determine which one that is...

Look under the heading "STATE" and see which is 'stuck', but I don't think that's your problem.

Internet: yup, always connected. 10mb/s cable with Airport Express wifi.

And as I write this, I note that the Application folder is now opening instantaneously. So it's not a consistent issue... perhaps the first time I open the folder is when it delays... and subsequent displays are cached? Sigh.

Since you've had this issue across different machines and OSs and I would guess OSs with multiple updates, etc. my non-scientific-wildass-guess would be that it's either your network and/or an app or utility you've been running for years on all your machines.

One more thing to check if you're adventuresome would be your console logs ---Applications/Utilities/Console.app

Tonnes of info, most of it indecipherable, but sometimes there is a recognizable clue. Next time you have that slowness open the console and have a look at what it's reporting.

You could also run sudo dmesg in the terminal, which is a little more in-yer-face.

The new MBP has a 750gig Toshiba... less about 9 months on its odometer, so not likely part of the equation. I also monitor SMART status constantly.

This line of thinking is why people lose their data and not backup in the first place. I've seen MBP's with dead drives that are less than 30 days old. Trust me, it happens. Also, in 9 times out of 10 cases, dead drives pass SMART testing. While I'm not insinuating your hard drive is the problem, as I haven't seen your machine to accurately say what the issue is, you shouldn't write off the possibility so quickly. :)

Create a new user account and see if issue persists there. If it does, it's an OS or mechanical problem.

Cubamark;

have you tried to run Applejack? it will clear up a lot of problems. Just a suggestion

My late-2008 MacBook Aluminium (non-Pro), which is now my wife's, has always been a bit of a dog in the Finder. I attributed this to a lack of power, though I'm thinking it has a root in the software. Perhaps something that has migrated from laptop to laptop over the years.
... ...
On my late-2011 MacBook Pro 13" (2.7Ghz i7, 4 gigs RAM), the Finder performance is similarly doggish.

An example: In the finder, I hit Command-Shift-A to open the Applications folder, which currently has 583 items, and is set to open in List view.

It takes the Finder approximately 16 seconds to display the list of apps. This seems to me to be a bit odd.... or is this on par with your experience, dear ehMacians? ... ...


Ouch!!! That's not slow, but seriously sick!! :(

Is it that slow when booted up using a Safe Boot Mode??

It's probably not completely related but here are some emails I sent to our local VMUG list in April, and a link to my ehmac post. Maybe all the stuff got defragged somehow, but it's still substantially faster but it was never that slow.

-------

WOW!! What a Mac SL Speed Increase experience!!!

I finally got around to and completed switching my normal SL boot from its inner partition to the outer partition of my mid-2007 24" iMac and its partitioned WD 1TB Black 3 GB/s 7200 RPM today as the outer partition is theoretically faster for any r/w stuff.

No theoretical thing at all, everything is now blazingly FAST and I can't see how using any SSD could be much faster.

For some details for those interested, you can read my post #18 at New SSD is crap - Page 2 - ehMac.ca (http://www.ehmac.ca/showthread.php?p=1184161#post1184161)

Safari and Mail launch in less than a second and Word '08, which is left on the 'inner' partition, takes 11/2 seconds at most and everything is blazingly FAST!!!

Maybe the CCC imaging and cloning got things optimized and maybe de-fragged, but regardless I'm one happy SL user and using a FAST iMac!! And maybe a method to use even if if one is using a single partition and after all the updates for OS X have been installed???

I read that using an SSD is faster, but really, how fast does one really need??? And the SSDs aren't exactly cheap.

Patrick
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And just to add another WOW speed feature, I just ran DU for my re-configured and cloned back SL volume with: Number of Folders : 90,115 Number of Files : 443,069

Time taken:
Repair permissions = 48 seconds
Verify Disk = 34 seconds

I've never witnessed anything that fast.

Methinks we might have a basically an almost free defrag/optimizing option here, and don't forget any CCC donation, and all it takes is some time.

Basically use CCC to create a backup cloned sparseimage somewhere other than the boot volume, use DU to erase and a single zero out the volume, just for the extra suff it does, and then use CCC to clone the backup image back to the boot drive.

Roughly an hour per 100GBs each way, so it's not a quick fix.

Patrick
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Diagnostics will take a few days, folks. A couple of 20-page translations landed in my inbox - will give feedback post-weekend. Cheers.

How do you have 583 things in your applications folder???

Yeah, well, I probably could do a little cleaning.... ;) But since Lion is capable of displaying folders with many, many more items, that's really not the issue, eh?

Maybe because some of the Application folder app folders stuff are showing in some sort of an expanded folder list view that lists ALL the included app folder stuff and that's what the OS X shows??

pm-r: nope, no daughter folders are open. I should also have mentioned, that apart from the slow display in list view, when the window is populated, the application icons are generic (white icon with that "A" made up of instruments), slowly repopulating.

Lars: I hear what you're saying - and I do have a decent backup strategy in place :)

...now, back to the translation. Fun, fun on a Friday night in Mexico....

Hmmm... and I know that you have no doubt run DU to 'repair permissions' etc.

Did you try doing a "Safe Boot"?? It can often clear up some strange OS X happening stuff.

Or even maybe download the appropriate BIG Mac OS X COMBO Update and run it when booted into "Safe Boot Mode".

Edit addition: At least you can enjoy doing your "translations" rather than what my wife and her sister endured at her sisters's condo at the north end of Mazatlan some many months ago when the Canadian woman was strangled and killed in the elevator at the next door delux place!!