2.8 GHz Unibody MBP suddenly excruciatingly slow

[macbook123]

Not sure whether I should have posted this in the OS X section instead...

As of this afternoon my 5 month old MBP suddenly started acting weird. It happened while I was typing an email. All applications I've tried (Safari, Mail, Skype) are responding very slowly. I.e. it takes 30 seconds-2 minutes for them to open up. Then there's sometimes a lag of several seconds before I can scroll down a page. In Mail, when I'm hitting the "compose" button it takes about 15 seconds or so for an email to come up for editing. Opening a new tab in Safari takes 20-40 seconds.

I tried resetting the ORAM and NVRAM, but to no avail.

Activity monitor looks normal, i.e. no crazy processes occupying CPU or RAM.

Thoughts/suggestions on other things I could try would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Sun Baked]

I hope you've backed up recently.

aka, stick the DVD in and repair the drive -- if it repairs something, do it again, it is a multi-pass repair generally.

 

[macbook123]

I hope you've backed up recently.

aka, stick the DVD in and repair the drive -- if it repairs something, do it again, it is a multi-pass repair generally.

Even starting the install DVD is very slow, I'm waiting since 5 minutes. It seems like it might be something else than the hard drive. Everything is just super slow, as if the processor had been replaced by a 0.001 Ghz one. I also hear no funny noises coming from the hard drive. Am typing this from my iPhone...

Any further thoughts? Will a genius still help me if I don't have AppleCare yet?

 

[maflynn]

Yes, especially since you should still be in warranty. The unibody macs were first available in October so you get a 1 year warranty. Applecare extends that by two more years for a total of three.

As or your problems, did you try firing up the Apple Hardware Test to see if anything kicks out of that.

having a recent backup is sound advice just incase something does fail on it.

 

[w00t951]

If the computer is under warranty, then I recommend that you bring it to the nearest Apple Genius, but if not... Do a clean reinstall.

 

[Sun Baked]

Checking out how to reset the SMC may be worth a shot.

 

[macbook123]

Thanks All for your suggestions. Unfortunately they didn't resolve the issue. I went to speak to a Mac Genius and after he discussed it with one of his colleagues they seemed to basically conclude that they have no idea what's going on but said that "maybe it's something with the top case, maybe the trackpad (which is working flawlessly) or the firewire connector". I think they were just making this up. In the meantime the computer is just getting slower and slower. I'll have to send it in.