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MacBook Pro too slow to use

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swimmerboyzrg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2013
4
0
Hey all, over the past week or so my Macbook pro has become too slow to use. It is a mid-2010 15” with 2.53 GHz intel Core i5. 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3 memory, and I’m running OSX 10.8.4. I have 200/500 GB memory free on the HD, In terms of RAM, I have 1.39 GB free, 785.5 MB wired, 1.27 GB active, and 455.7 MB inactive, so I don’t really think memory is a problem.

Basically, the computer is just incredibly slow. If I want to open a program, let’s say Microsoft Word, I get the spinning rainbow wheel for 5-10 minutes before the program opens, or the computer just goes unresponsive. If I want to type anything there’s a 1-2 minute delay for each time I press a key. I can’t open up web pages because the computer becomes unresponsive after 5-10 minutes of trying. Any ideas?
 
SandboxGeneral

SandboxGeneral

Moderator emeritus
Sep 8, 2010
26,482
10,051
Detroit
You may have a corrupt HDD or something corrupted in your user profile. To start, I'd create a new user profile in OS X, use it for a day or so and see if the slowness persists. If it does, then there may be a HDD problem.
 
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swimmerboyzrg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2013
4
0
Thanks for the help guys! I made a new account, logged into that, and it worked long enough for me to download Onyx. While I was running maintenence through Onyx though, it became unresponsive and now that account is slow too.

lagisibuk said:
please clean install with new update :)
Click to expand...

Could you clarify this? Thanks!
 
A

ataq

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2006
186
246
i have a 2nd generation macbook pro with only c2d 2,33ghz and 2gb of ram.
for normal use like microsoft word or surfing the web, its surprisingly fast. i use an imac 27 for heavy editing stuff.

i got a ssd in the old 2006 macbook pro what makes it that fast.

so i think it could be either your harddrive or something is corrupted in the system so you need to do a fresh clean install of os x.
 
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Sandy Santra

macrumors 6502
Feb 1, 2008
350
73
Brooklyn
OP, I think there must be something very wrong here.

I have a 2007 MacBook Pro, 4GB RAM, running ML, and I don't have these problems. It can take maybe 30 seconds sometimes to open iPhoto, but that's because I have 40,000 photos. In general, opening Word and Excel take only 5-10 seconds. No spinning beach ball.

There's a possibility something is wrong with your HD...unsure. But somewhere, somehow, some type of data corruption (I believe) is causing this extreme latency.

If you have ML with all recent updates, you should be able to boot from the intact recovery partition. Hold down Command-R immediately when you hear the chime on reboot. That gets you into Recovery mode. You can then use Disk Utility to run a repair on your HD.
 
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KevinC867

macrumors 6502a
Jun 8, 2007
620
2
Saratoga, CA
snaky69 said:
Your hard drive is probably crapping out. Hope you have a backup.
Click to expand...

+1

I experienced this with my mom's iMac recently. The system was very slow, but still responsive enough for me to use SuperDuper to clone the hard drive. I rebooted from the clone and performance was much better.

I still need to replace the internal drive to get back to full performance, but that's not completely straightforward on an iMac, and the performance is good enough as is.
 
NewishMacGuy

NewishMacGuy

macrumors 6502a
Aug 2, 2007
636
0
This does sound like emminent HDD failure. Thus you need to do the following immediately:

1. Back up your files if you haven't already done so. When you do this, rather than try to back up the whole disk, copy file by file (or folder by folder) in order or importance. This way, you can prioritize the file backup in case the HDD fails for good while you're backing up.

2. Replace your HDD once you have your files backed up. Seems as if you need at least 500GB so you may wish to consider a hybrid drive rather than an SSD. Large SSDs are still kind of pricey and it may not make sense to spend $400 on an SSD if you plan on upgrading to an rMBP or MBA within the next couple of years.


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The Unseen

The Unseen

macrumors member
Jun 24, 2012
94
27
Naples, Italy
You can try to use Disk utility (In the Utilities folder) to verify the disk. You can directly click on "Repair Disk", skipping the check.
Also you can try to install a SMART Status utility that says if your Hard Disk is Failing (and probably it is).
If Disk Utility isn't able to "repair" the disk, try DiskWarrior, is a very powerful application
 
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swimmerboyzrg

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2013
4
0
Wow, thanks so much guys. I use carbonite to back everything up, so I should be good there. I don't know much about computers, any suggestions about where to get a hard drive/ how much I can expect to spend on one?
 
NewishMacGuy

NewishMacGuy

macrumors 6502a
Aug 2, 2007
636
0
swimmerboyzrg said:
Wow, thanks so much guys. I use carbonite to back everything up, so I should be good there. I don't know much about computers, any suggestions about where to get a hard drive/ how much I can expect to spend on one?
Click to expand...

Amazon

256GB SSD $200
512GB SSD $400
750GB Hybrid $100
1TB Hybrid $120

Don't put a regular HDD in there, just not worth the almost negligible savings over the hybrids.

If you want to learn about SSDs and how they work try this site.



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