Turn on Manual Indexing

Manual Index Mode - Magento Increase Admin Performance

In default Magento installation, admin area is particularly slow. The reason for this is that admin area can’t use much cache and more database operations. After adding products it becomes even slower. Modifying or adding a new products becomes very slow, this is caused by the indexing taking place in the background. You can adjust this setting and save yourself from the super slow Magento admin panel.

As with most Magento settings, this can be done in the Magento admin panel or the Command Line

Setting Indexing to Manual Mode - Via Control Panel

System -> Index Management -> Select Indexes to change(select all) -> Change Index Mode -> Manual Update -> Click Submit

Setting Indexing to Manual Mode - Via Command Line

php -f shell/indexer.php -- --mode-manual all

or two switch them all back to "update on save"

php -f shell/indexer.php -- --mode-realtime all

After you have set your indexer mode to manual you will have to run the command

php -f shell/indexer.php -- --reindexall