My mac has started running a little slower. What suggestions are there for the best software to keep my mac running smoothly, get rid of all the malware, spyware, etc... and get rid of all the other things that slow down the system?
... What suggestions are there for the best software to keep my mac running smoothly, get rid of all the malware, spyware, etc... and get rid of all the other things that slow down the system?
Thanks
Adam
There is no malware, spyware, etc. If you want to do something effective, then:
Run File System Check (type fsck -fyon the command line) in Single User Mode.
Make sure that you have at least 10% (some say 15%) of your hard drive capacity available as free space.
Apart from what Mr. Me proposed there are two important things to consider when a machine slows down: (1) amount of available physical memory (RAM), and (2) processes running in the background.
If the system RAM is limited and the machine is sufficiently loaded to ask for more than the available memory, the system will create one or more files on the hard drive that will be used to store information normally residing in RAM. But hard drives are much slower than RAM and when this happens the system may run (much) slower than usual.
Also, some processes may be running in the background and taxing heavily the processor(s). This will also slow down the machine. You can always check what is running through the Activity Monitor. If there is anything suspicious in the list (e.g. a process taking all the time 100% of CPU while you have not started anything like that) you can always kill it from there. Often this can be just flash animation in Safari windows, so closing those windows will release the CPU.
It may also help to Repair Permissions* (in Disk Utilities; select your HD, click First Aid, then Repair Disk Permissions) and to remove all the language files and manuals of languages you don't use anyway with a cleaning utility like MacKeeper etc. That saved me Gigabytes of disk space too.
* I recommend to do a Repair Permissions a minimum of once a month, or after any major software install or uninstall (like Windows Office for Mac's 6,000 files..., or an iPhoto restore with 50,000 photos, etc.). Repairing Permissions usually takes about a half hour. But it can run in the background while you're doing other stuff. If you haven't repaired Permissions in a long time it may also take a long time to repair them all! Just leave it running all night if need be.
A Repair Permissions process had best be concluded by a complete restart of the Mac. And an incremental backup on Time Machine.
Comments
... What suggestions are there for the best software to keep my mac running smoothly, get rid of all the malware, spyware, etc... and get rid of all the other things that slow down the system?
Thanks
Adam
There is no malware, spyware, etc. If you want to do something effective, then:
I will run File System Check and see if this improves my mb performance.
If the system RAM is limited and the machine is sufficiently loaded to ask for more than the available memory, the system will create one or more files on the hard drive that will be used to store information normally residing in RAM. But hard drives are much slower than RAM and when this happens the system may run (much) slower than usual.
Also, some processes may be running in the background and taxing heavily the processor(s). This will also slow down the machine. You can always check what is running through the Activity Monitor. If there is anything suspicious in the list (e.g. a process taking all the time 100% of CPU while you have not started anything like that) you can always kill it from there. Often this can be just flash animation in Safari windows, so closing those windows will release the CPU.
* I recommend to do a Repair Permissions a minimum of once a month, or after any major software install or uninstall (like Windows Office for Mac's 6,000 files..., or an iPhoto restore with 50,000 photos, etc.). Repairing Permissions usually takes about a half hour. But it can run in the background while you're doing other stuff. If you haven't repaired Permissions in a long time it may also take a long time to repair them all! Just leave it running all night if need be.
A Repair Permissions process had best be concluded by a complete restart of the Mac. And an incremental backup on Time Machine.