os sierra

[asif]

Hi guys, since upgrading to os sierra i have had a number of niggles on my iMac. Safari mainly is slow and the spinning ball is seen a bit too often for my liking. On occasions i am having to force quit apps and open again. I have created a bootable installer of sierra and clean installed it on my mid 2010 MBP as a trial and it is running a lot better.
My question is, now i have clean installed os sierra on my MBP, i want all the files, apps back on it. But if i restore it from the time machine backup won't it go back to being sluggish again?
Once i get the MBP back to normal i want to do it on my iMac (27-inch, Late 2012) which is the real issue ( the MBP is for the kids).
Thanks

 

[honestone]

One of the things you need to do is to determine if any third party apps you are using are compatible with Sierra. If they are not, the developer (hopefully) has an update you can download. Some third party apps, however, have specific versions for each Mac OS. Onyx is a perfect example of that.

To give you an example, I use the following 3rd party software that always require updating to be compatible with a new Mac OS:

1Password
TechTool Pro
Office 2016
SuperDuper!
Onyx
Logitech Control Center

This link will help you determine whether any third party software you are using is compatible or not:

http://roaringapps.com/apps

The best way to use that is to 1) click on Options, 2) "de-select" El Capitan, Yosemite, and Mavericks, 3)"de-select" iOS 10 and iOS 9, and 3) "de-select" Windows 10 and Windows 8.1. You will then just be left with Sierra, and you can then search the remaining table.

Additionally, if you are using either OS 10.12 or OS 10.12.1, Apple came out with an update, OS 10.12.2, the other day. You can download the Combo Updater from here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1900?locale=en_US

The other thing to make sure of is that you are not using either MacKeeper or CleanMyMac, nor any virus software. Both MacKeeper and CleanMyMac do more harm than good.

By the way, I assume you are using Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy any needed "stuff" from you external backup.

 

[asif]

Thanks for that honestone, so should i do a full restore and see what the outcome is? Then start picking through the 3rd party apps? Safari was my main concern, it was just buggy and not as normal. I have taken a look at the roaring apps site and changed my adblock extension to adblock plus, the previous had no data whereas the latter is ok for sierra. Lets see what that does.

 

[honestone]

Glad I can try and help. Safari, of course, is an Apple app, and it comes with the OS. Sometimes Apple issues updates "outside" of the OS. Right now, after updating this week to OS 10.12.2, the version of Safari is 10.0.2. But, I do not use it, preferring Google Chrome.

Also, adblock/adblock plus, I believe, are extensions you add to a browser.

In any event, the procedure I have always followed when Apple releases a new OS is to 1) run Onyx one more time on the soon-to-be "defunct" OS, 2) run TechTool Pro to do final cleanup, etc., again on the old OS, and 3) make a SuperDuper! backup (actually 2 of them) to separate external devices. Given that SuperDuper! makes such backups bootable, I then boot from that backup, use Disk Utility there to Erase and Format the internal drive (SSD), install a fresh, new, clean and "virgin" OS, then use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all my needed stuff from that SuperDuper! backups. That migration includes all my admin account settings, and anything else needed for bypassing the need for setup with the new OS.

In your case, not sure if any of that set-up "stuff" has issues. Maybe someone else can offer advice on this. Again, given that you upgraded "in place", I of course do not know if there were any "prevailing" issues prior to you upgrading.

Again, you need to insure about any other third party apps you might have.

 

[honestone]

I forgot to ask you a couple of things.

First, from which OS did you upgrade from? And, did you just do that upgrade "in place"?

Secondly, have you ever done any disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs?

 

[asif]

On the iMac I upgraded from mavericks. It ran without issue. The mbp was previously on El Capitan. The mbp is running smoothly now on a clean sierra install. Last night I restored it from a TM backup under a different account name and did some maintenance and cleanup using onyx. It's not as fast as the new account with nothing but the basics on. So that would point to some conflicts somewhere. There isn't much on it so I should find a solution quicker by removing stuff one at a time hopefully. I'm not sure what you mean by "in place".

 

[honestone]

By "in place", I mean one can upgrade from a prior OS to the new one, without doing a clean installation of the nee OS.

Removing stuff one at a time might reveal what the issue is, but it could be in a preference file, or another kind of "support" file. If you do decide to remove apps one at a time, use the excellent freeware program AppCleaner. You can get it from here:

https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

As you can see, after you launch it, just drop the app's icon that you want to remove "onto/into" AppCleaner's window. It will find all the files associated with the application you are removing.

 

[asif]

Thanks for the reply. Sierra was installed "in place" on both machines originally. As said before though the mbp has had a clean one done recently. I think I should do a clean one on the iMac, would you agree?

 

[honestone]

Thanks for the reply. Sierra was installed "in place" on both machines originally. As said before though the mbp has had a clean one done recently. I think I should do a clean one on the iMac, would you agree?

Yes, that should be the way to go. Just make sure that 1) you have a backup, and 2) any third party software you are using is compatible with Sierra.

Exactly how do you plan on doing the clean installation?

 

[asif]

I followed a link on you tube, basically back up, erase the drive and then install via bootable sierra USB. This is how I did it on the mbp.

 

[honestone]

OK< that should work. Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

 

[asif]

All done, things are running a lot smoother now, when repairing permissions with onyx i noticed a lot of stuff there for an old printer i had so i tracked them down and trashed them. That did seem to help somewhat also,. Thanks for all your help honestone its good to have a community to fall back on.

 

[honestone]

Wonderful! Glad everything worked out. And it's amazing what an excellent product Onyx is! For a free program, it can do wonders!

Just out of curiosity, is the version of Sierra you have V10.12.2? If not, I provided the link for you above as to where you can get the OS 10.12.2 Combo Updater.

Going forward, it would be good if you perform disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs frequently. Myself, I am doing disk cleanup on a daily basis. For example, I use VueScan, an excellent piece of scanning software. Yesterday, the company released an update. So, I downloaded it (from their site), installed it, saved that new version in a folder I have called "Useful Software", and deleted the prior version. I am also going to do the same with the Opera browser, as a new version of it just came out today. No sense keeping old unneeded stuff around, cluttering up disk space.

Then, every Saturday, I run Onyx, TechTool Pro, and SuperDuper! to perform disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs, and backups, for each of my Macs. (I actually make two backups for each of my machines, to two separate external devices). In your case, you can use Onyx, Disk Utility (booting it in an isolated manner, via the Recovery HD partition), and Time Machine. I will say, though, that having TechTool Pro makes that process easier for me, and also it does a lot more useful tasks than Disk Utility. Additionally, it is best to run the Repair Permissions feature a couple of times, to insure that all permissions are repaired.

Again, glad you got things working.