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Slow Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard

First time I ran Snow Leopard, I noted it was a little slower than Leopard, specially when using Exposé. Due to I spent my money supposing to get a faster and better operating system, I started looking on the internet for an answer to this. The solution was easier to find than I thought because it was on Apple Support discussions. The only thing I had to do is to delete the following file:

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

It works for me. Now the system runs faster and smoother.

Found in: Apple Support

12 Comments

  1. Finally something that seems to work. I went from a machine that I loved to use, to one I preferred to stay away from. I have been looking for something that works for a few weeks now, and this seems to have done the trick.
    Many Thanks

  2. I found the info below on the Apple support site too. Any thoughts?

    http://support.apple.com/kb/DL947

    and…

    “I had the same problem and it appears incredibly to be an issue with 2 preference files. Trash them and it is up to speed.

    delete the “com.apple.systemuiserver.plist” preference file from the /username/Library/Preferences/ folder

    and

    /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist”

    • Hello Ryan! Thank you very much for your contribution!

      When installing Snow Leopard, I deleted the file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist, and the performance improvement was considerable. Now I deleted also the /username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist, and the system works fine (with no errors), but I don’t notice substantial improvements. Perhaps this solution is as good as removing the first file, but I can’t test it at the moment. In next installations I will try and tell you.

      I also took a look to the link you shared. That performance update refers to intermittent hard drive related pauses, but my Macbook is not affected by this update. Anyway if your computer is in the list of affected products, I always recommend to install Apple updates.

  3. I was hoping 10.6.2 would fix things, but it didn’t really, so I tried this (deleting coreaudio prefs). It works!

    HOWEVER, deleting these prefs removes UI sounds for example, emptying trash, deleting a file, etc. These default sounds are no longer played. Is there a way to regenerate the plist file for snow leopard. Until then will have to use the old file.

  4. Wow, I think that did it. I bought and installed Snow Leopard the same week it came out and have been suffering through really poor performance since then. But I think it is fixed now. I almost can’t believe it. I recently switched to a mac and my wife has been complaining because she is still used to PCs. The whole freezing and running at a turtle’s pace hasn’t been helping much. But now hopefully I can enjoy using the Mac again.
    thanks

  5. I just did a complete reinstall of SL and found that exposé was slow and choppy. So I found this thread and deleted the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist from the fold but not to the trash. I just dropped into a folder on the desktop for save keeping. After a restart, the problem with exposé was fixed, but, as mentioned, I was not getting some system sounds e.g., trash, drag, drop, etc. So I just re-installed the plist file back into the folder from which it originated, restarted and I now have a smooth, fast exposé and my sounds. I don’t know why just moving it out restarting and then reinstalling it would work, but it does. Thanks for this thread.

  6. I did what Isaac did but even after putting the coreaudiod.plist back I no longer get the UI sounds as before. Any suggestions?

    • I did the same and later found out that ownership of the file changes if you copy it to the desktop which results in the demon not accepting that plist file. Fix by opening a terminal window and typing: sudo chown system:wheel /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

        • kioshi
        • Posted July 1, 2010 at 18:06
        • Permalink

        I get a ‘chown: system: Invalid argument’ when I try to do that.

        Any ideas? Thanks!

  7. I did what Isaac did but even after putting the coreaudiod.plist back I no longer get the UI sounds as before. Any suggestions? [2]

    Same thing here because 10.6.4 slowed my computer to a crawl (do a search a lot of users are saying that), cannot get my sounds back :/

    • Heh fixed it. Doing a permission repair repairs the coreaudio file (saw in the log) and after a restart it’s all good again 🙂

  8. WOW! This made my macbook pro (late 2008) run like a champ! I was wondering why performance was so bad!


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