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a84c72

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 13, 2018
41
3
I am on a Macbook mid 2012 running Yosemite 10.10.5. In previous attempts to upgrade to High Sierra (is that the latest?), I've found High Sierra gives me numerous beach balls every time I even try open an app, etc. I reverted back via Time Machine. My next attempt a few months later resulted in much of the same thing, but not as extensive. It was enough to drive me crazy so once again, I went back. Before that last attempt, I made sure temp files, cookies, and just JUNK was cleaned out before the upgrade. That didn't help much.

Now I am noticing beach ball issues on Yosemite. More specifically, I find that opening a browser (doesn't matter which browser) after startup takes a few minutes and leaves the icon in the dock to bounce while it's trying to open. Even when it opens, it takes a few seconds (or minutes?) to even be ready to input a website. I switched browsers after this happened to me Chrome. Now I am in Firefox. It was fast. I added maybe four extensions and it still was fine. Lately, it's acting like Chrome did. But, other apps bounce for a good amount of time before opening. In fact, I've had it where the dot is next to the app as if it were open, but there is no window. It takes a bit for the window to even open. Yes, I have done permissions. Yes, I have checked the harddrive in utilities. Those have seemed to check out fine. I have nothing running in the background other than system things. I've cleaned temp files, cookies, etc. Now I am wondering if I have compatibility issues with apps/software because I am way back in Yosemite still?

The last thing I want to do it try and upgrade over what I already have only to cause a mess once again. I want to do a clean install, but I am wondering how that works with a backup on Time Machine? I mean, my pictures, documents, etc are all backed up via Time Machine, but how would I get those back without putting back my old OS junk (temp files, etc) that may have caused my issues previously? Does that even make sense? LOL Any help would be greatly appreciated!

ETA....I've used OnyX, as well, to clean garbage out but refrained from the stuff that was over my head :)
 
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