My brother's macbook is going way too slow

[cmm]

I am visiting family and my brother has a macbook (1.83ghz CD, 2GB ram, 160GB HDD 5400 rpm) and it's going EXTREMELY slow. He's young so he surfs a lot of porn sites but I didn't think OS X could get infected like Windows can.

I just had him install 10.5.3 - what can I do; are there any apps, that will help see where things are slow and fix them?

It takes a REALLY long time for him to load http://newschoolers.com/web/content/main (he goes on it all the time, we waited almost 3 minutes for it to load, whereas on my MBP and MB it loads in less than 15 seconds for the entire site).

[bart rijksen]

You might try the application Onyx

[cmm]

Thanks, anything else?

[geek-inthe-pink]

YES. FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, please download and install MainMenu (http://www.santasw.com/). It should appear in the menu bar next to the date and stuff. The icon is like a little box with a + in it. Click on it, select the option Maintenence Scripts, and click run all. Then, open disk utility and click on repair disk permissions. When that's done, NOW open and use Onyx to do a clean-up.
IMPORTANT: A very, very big part of the thing that may be slowing you is your browser cache. To clear it out, go to Safari > Empty Cache or in Firefox find the menu option (I think under tools) and clear all private data.

Hope this helps.

[G-Com]

Reset the PRAM. Hold down the Command+Option+P+R keys after click restart and hear the chime. Hold them down until you hear it a second time then release. Some settings for the mouse, keyboard, etc. might have been altered, but your Mac will probably run a bit faster.

[cmm]

What is PRAM?

[Amdahl]

IMPORTANT: A very, very big part of the thing that may be slowing you is your browser cache. To clear it out, go to Safari > Empty Cache or in Firefox find the menu option (I think under tools) and clear all private data.

Junking your cache is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just defragment it.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=5053757&postcount=6

[comptr]

I have an idea why not back up his data and wipe the drive and reinstall then it will fast again.

[cmm]

That would work if his CD rom drive would work.

[NP3]

That would work if his CD rom drive would work.

comptr is joking. Or they should be. :)

Before you touch anything on the system, and if "Empty Cache" doesn't do the trick: Safari > Reset Safari. This will put the program back at its defaults. Does he have a huge history saved?

Is anything else on the computer slow? or just web browsing?

[cmm]

Everything. Everything loads slow, moves slow, acts slow, and is slow. It's almost as bad as Windows ME.

[phenixbleu]

I would recommend you to follow this guide I made. Its a bit long but the information it gives is price less. My entire mac & windows computing is to find ways to improve the system performance. Here is the link: http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_OS_X_On_A_Diet

[mr.steevo]

Hi,

How much hard drive space is free?

s.

[Sorkvild]

Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and see if some process is using a lot of processor power.

[IJ Reilly]

Onyx and Main Menu do essentially the same thing, so either one is good.

Does the Mac seem to be slow immediately after a restart, or does it take a while?

Check "login items" in your Accounts Preferences. What's listed there?

[cmm]

It's immediate. He has 70 of 120 GB available I can't check the login details now, but what am I looking for?