Slow and laggy Macbook Air 13" mid-2012 (A1466)
I've had it since it first came out and they're finally starting to give way. Maybe it's because I was rough with them, but I hoped they last me a little longer (or at least until after university). I use them mostly for work now (Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop) but I did game on them lots when I was younger, so that's probably where the damage comes from.
Its performance now:
- It stops 3/4ths of the way in the loading screen, it takes 30 mins to boot up.
- Even after it's booted up, applications take ages to load and the cursor lags hard. Typing takes a while too.
- More than half of its RAM is empty, trash is empty.
- Did Apple diagnostics and EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi can't be loaded.
- The battery appears as an "X" and won't last a second without a charger plugged into it.
How should I go about fixing it? Where should I get the parts? I'm not really in a position to send it to repair -- I do want to learn how to fix issues should they happen again.
Thank you very much. Any help would be very much appreciated.
Solution 1:
The general process I have for rehabilitating old hardware is a complate wipe.
- Back up to Time Machine via USB or FireWire local drive. (Optional)
- Connect to ethernet (WiFi can be slow and spotty)
- Boot to internet recovery and erase install
Before I load anything I repeat all!the tests with clean installs of only a few apps.
In your case, the battery is likely the biggest problem since all Apple devices with glued in batteries depend on a healthy battery for full performance. The AC power supply can’t provide burst current needed by the CPU and GPU so performance is lower without a healthy battery.
Next likely is the storage is failing or throwing errors. Macbook Pro incredibly slow/laggy