SOLVED OS 10.14.6 incredibly slow at opening programs

[Freddie1848]

My wife's 2014 Mac Mini running OS 10.14.6 is incredibly slow at opening programs. They open slightly faster when the machine has been on for a session. The machine does not have heavy programs trying to open on startup and is only really used for word processing. I know this Mac Mini is an older machine, but it I think it should be able to run Mavericks reasonably well. Please advise.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

-Do you have any third-party utilities like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, or antivirus installed and running?
-How much free space is left?
-Is it all applications, or some specifically?

C

 

[Freddie1848]

I have AppCleaner for uninstalling programs, Clam antivirus, BBC iPlayer download app and Adobe PDF reader. Other than those 4 all is Mac stuff that came with the OS. Out of 500GB there is a whopping 393GB still available and all applications are slow to launch with Safari being the worst.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

I would first try disabling the Sentry background monitor in ClamXav. That may speed things up.

C

 

[TonyAguila]

Another usual suspect is memory, or the lack thereof. How much memory does the Mac Mini have? If it happens to be upgradeable, this would probably be a good avenue. You can use Activity Monitor to monitor the state of RAM usage. If the slowness becomes more evident when you have more and more applications running at the same time, chances are you will need more RAM.

 

[roskruge]

Years ago I had the MacBook Pro 17" it was always slow for the first half hour, then after that no problem.
I am also using 10.14.6 but on a Mac Pro 6.1 (2013) - get full speed the moment I switch on - Only slows down when I use a movie/music download program 'Vuze v5.7.7' but never more than for 10 minutes, then back on the race track.

 

[Freddie1848]

Safari was high on Activity Monitor, I have decided to drop Safari and use Chrome browser and see if that is better. Will try other suggestions if there is no major improvement.

 

[Freddie1848]

Enable Sentry background monitor on Clam was the culprit, it now runs normally.