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wickedking94

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
271
4
Okay sorry my computer is from 2010 even if the CPU isn't. Why the heck did apple put a 2 year old CPU into this thing?

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Also I'm pleased to report that my MBP can see the full 640 GB. I thought I read somewhere that the maximum this one could use was 500 GB..? Maybe thats the most supported by Apple.
 

treyjustice

macrumors 65816
Jun 14, 2009
1,252
141
TX
Okay sorry my computer is from 2010 even if the CPU isn't. Why the heck did apple put a 2 year old CPU into this thing?

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Also I'm pleased to report that my MBP can see the full 640 GB. I thought I read somewhere that the maximum this one could use was 500 GB..? Maybe thats the most supported by Apple.

Great. Does it run any faster? Even though c2d is older you shouldn't have any problems doing basic tasks
 

Ploki

macrumors 601
Jan 21, 2008
4,308
1,558
Okay so I agree with those saying my HDD is dying. Makes sense since its as old as my MBP and I use it a ton.

I got a brand new 640 GB toshiba HDD (not sure if my MBP can "see" over 500 GB but whatever). Will do a partition for my OS and Apps.

I'll post results once I've gotten the new HDD in and all my stuff copied over to the new one.

didnt you say that you bought and tried with an SSD?
 

wickedking94

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
271
4
Can't really tell yet. It installed SL in about 15 minutes so thats a bit faster. Have to re-download all the software updates because my SL disc is 10.6.4. I'll know once all the updates are installed.

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didnt you say that you bought and tried with an SSD?

I bought a 60 GB SSD and it was useless, so I returned it.
Why do you ask?
 

Ploki

macrumors 601
Jan 21, 2008
4,308
1,558
because you either are extremely unlucky and got a crappy SSD, or your problem lies elsewhere than a botched HDD.

Also sorry for using the word "idiot" back there. It came out harsh - I apologize.
 

wickedking94

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
271
4
because you either are extremely unlucky and got a crappy SSD, or your problem lies elsewhere than a botched HDD.

Also sorry for using the word "idiot" back there. It came out harsh - I apologize.

Well I only used the SSD a little bit so I don't know if it would have helped or not. The only thing I did with it was test Maya and it didn't help much so I returned it. Good thing I did otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get the 640 GB HDD.

And thank you for the apology.

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At least it was a Mac. If it was a PC, it would have spontaneously combusted (knocked my old PC off of a table once it started smoking).

Haha. Once a loooong time ago my friend brought his computer over (it was like a pentium 2 machine) and when we powered it on flames shot out of the HDD. Good times. Then again I was working on my mom's PC once and someone threw a shoe and it hit the heatsink and ripped it and the CPU out of the socket, but when I put it all back together it was fine.

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Well so far Steam wont even open now. Won't use that as a benchmark though because Steam is the worst effing game launcher on the planet.
 

naparkertx

macrumors newbie
Oct 13, 2011
6
0
No clue what "kav" is

I've had serious issues with my MBP running very slow and/or sluggish. "Genius" bar hasn't been much help. Here is a screen shot of my Activity Log and clearly there is something running hogging all the CPU usage.

Any help on how to find and get rid of it? Is this some sort of spyware?

Thanks for any and all help.
 

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JosephBergdoll

macrumors 6502
May 7, 2009
416
0
NYC
Okay sorry my computer is from 2010 even if the CPU isn't. Why the heck did apple put a 2 year old CPU into this thing?

----------

Also I'm pleased to report that my MBP can see the full 640 GB. I thought I read somewhere that the maximum this one could use was 500 GB..? Maybe thats the most supported by Apple.

*looks at 1tb drive in my 2008 first gen unibody*

Are you sure you know what you're doing? I'm on a c2d machine and have had no problems like yours at all. After 8gb of RAM and a 128gb SSD + 1TB HDD combo, it's pretty killer.
 

wickedking94

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
271
4
*looks at 1tb drive in my 2008 first gen unibody*

Are you sure you know what you're doing? I'm on a c2d machine and have had no problems like yours at all. After 8gb of RAM and a 128gb SSD + 1TB HDD combo, it's pretty killer.

Oh I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing. I got 98% on a Cisco computer hardware software course and I've been tinkering for 6 years before that.

Anyway the partition trick works. The OS partition gets 85 MB/s read 80 MB/s write and the secondary partition only gets 55 MB/s read 50 MB/s write. Huh.

Still cant get steam to launch so no way to tell if my games work any better :(
Photoshop launches in about 2 seconds compared to the 10 seconds from before. And now I don't get a ball of death for every little task.
 

Jaimi

macrumors regular
Jul 22, 2009
135
2
I've had serious issues with my MBP running very slow and/or sluggish. "Genius" bar hasn't been much help. Here is a screen shot of my Activity Log and clearly there is something running hogging all the CPU usage.

Any help on how to find and get rid of it? Is this some sort of spyware?

Thanks for any and all help.

kav is Kaspersky Anti-Virus. It's your anti-virus running. I use Clam-AV. It's free, and doesn't do that.
 

Ploki

macrumors 601
Jan 21, 2008
4,308
1,558
Oh I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing. I got 98% on a Cisco computer hardware software course and I've been tinkering for 6 years before that.

Anyway the partition trick works. The OS partition gets 85 MB/s read 80 MB/s write and the secondary partition only gets 55 MB/s read 50 MB/s write. Huh.

Still cant get steam to launch so no way to tell if my games work any better :(
Photoshop launches in about 2 seconds compared to the 10 seconds from before. And now I don't get a ball of death for every little task.

Told ya. :) Incredibly simple trick but makes sense due to physical construction of an HDD.

Disclaimer for anyone else stumbling upon this: no SSD will ever benefit from that trick.
 

iAppl3Fan

macrumors 6502a
Sep 8, 2011
796
23
Every single task I try and do on this MBP is a pain. When watching a youtube video, it will freeze every minute for 5 seconds for no reason, it gives me a 30 second ball of death if I hit the play button on itunes, it freezes when I'm typing, It can barely play games like minecraft or garry's mod and half the time it crashes doing that anyway. If I load a webpage with more than one flash ad on it freezes. I've reset the SMC, the NVRAM, checked the RAM for errors, checked my HDD for errors, done a clean install of Snow Leopard, fixed disk permissions, and pretty much every other thing to try and gain any performance improvement, and they've all failed. My MBP used to do all these things without a problem but now its slow and useless.

MBP specs:
2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo
GeForce 320M 256MB
500 GB 5400 RPM HDD (250 GB free)
8 GB DDR3 RAM
OS 10.6.8

Its seriously starting to get on my nerves. My brothers cheap 2.1 Ghz Core i3 laptop is out running my over priced aluminum desk ornament.

Any suggestions to improve/fix my MBP would be greatly appreciated.

Install a SSD and do a fresh install. Will solve your problems.
 

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
518
www.emiliana.cl/en
I've had serious issues with my MBP running very slow and/or sluggish. "Genius" bar hasn't been much help. Here is a screen shot of my Activity Log and clearly there is something running hogging all the CPU usage. Any help on how to find and get rid of it? Is this some sort of spyware?
No, this is the anti-virus/anti-malware scanner “Kaspersky Anti-Virus”. Deinstall Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Problem solved.
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,539
941
I've had serious issues with my MBP running very slow and/or sluggish. "Genius" bar hasn't been much help. Here is a screen shot of my Activity Log and clearly there is something running hogging all the CPU usage.

Any help on how to find and get rid of it? Is this some sort of spyware?

Thanks for any and all help.
As others have said, that's the Kaspersky Anti-Virus app. You don't need it. Like Mr. Retrofire, I recommend you completely uninstall it. The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:

You don't need any 3rd party antivirus app to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as you practice safe computing, as described in the following link. Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.

If you still want to run antivirus for some reason, ClamXav (which is free) is one of the best choices, since it isn't a resource hog, detects both Mac and Windows malware and doesn't run with elevated privileges.
 

wickedking94

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
271
4
Well im off visiting people for the holidays and of course the restore of my computer didnt include my games so i cant see if those work any better. Ill have to wait until monday when im back home to restore them. How can i get hidden folders off a time machine backup?
 

slushbee

macrumors newbie
Feb 12, 2012
4
0
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Help me too please !

Hello! So I read the whole thread and I'm kind of having the same issues. I attached my activity logs and followed the instructions. So please have a look.

First a bit about my computer:

Macbook Pro Mid 2009
Processor 2.26 GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

My computer was completely JAMMED when I was in my last semester of school and it majorly slowed down. It takes me forever to do anything. Switching tabs in Google Chrome takes 10 seconds. I was running Snow Leopard and finally bought a hard drive backed everything up, completely formatted the computer and installed Mountain Lion and did not restore ANYTHING. I downloaded a trial version of adobe photoshop to see how slow it would run and it's too painful to do any photo editing this way. My computer did not get any faster at all. It's such a pain. Do I need more RAM? Help :D

edit: I verified the disk in utility and it says that it appears to be OK.
 
Last edited:

walkie

macrumors 6502
Feb 13, 2010
331
3
Computers lag for several reasons:

You need more RAM: check with the monitor app if your computer is using up all the RAM memory, when this occurs the computer starts using the hard drive as a RAM memory, hard drives are thousand times much slower than RAM memory.

You have hidden apps that make too much reads on the hard drive, some apps such as anti-virus apps keep running on background accessing intensively the hard drive making everything lags, this is more often on Windows systems.

Some apps lag when waiting for some remote response (from Internet for example), if they don't receive a response they keep trying and every time they wait the whole app can become unresponsive.

You might have TSR apps running on memory, some of them can be CPU hog, and your computer can run out of CPU.

Some apps that use 3D can terminate without releasing resources properly, when a new app starts this resources are stil blocked and the app is unable to run smoothly.

Some apps suffers from memory leaks, some navigators for example can use up all your memory as you open tabs.

Flash player, this is the worst app I ever had, well known for being laggy, buggy, memory leaker, CPU and memory hog, etc. Flash is a plugin that runs into your browser showing horrendous adds and banners on your web page.

Hope this can help.
 
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