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Annoying C2D MBP problems.

DJMastaWes

DJMastaWes

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 14, 2006
1,243
1
Montreal, Quebec
Hey guys, I've had my Stock 17" C2D MacBook Pro for about 4 months, and there are some annoying problems with it.

1) When an iPod is plugged in via USB, and I turn the computer on with it in, the computer won't even get past the gray screen with the gray apple, it's just a gray screen until I unplug the iPod.

2) (unrelated to problem 1): Once I put in my password at the log in menu, it takes a long time for the computer to start. First the desktop picture comes on, then 5 seconds later, the dock, another 5 seconds for the menu bar, then about 10 for the desktop icons, and then the menu items load last. THIS is where it gets annoying. once the menu items load, the time goes by in 2 second increments, and then the time stops for about 3-3.5 minutes. During the time where the clock stops, I can't do ANYTHING on my computer. It's unresponsive almost. Start up on my iMac and my parents Mac Mini is faster.

3) My computer is just generally slow. I mean, It's Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.33GHz with 2 GB of ram. This thing should be flying, but iTunes takes long, Safari takes long, opening the finder takes long. Doing small tasks go at the same speed as my iMac G4 700MHz 512MB Ram.

Other Info:
• I use OnyX and Cocktail bi-weekly and I run all the maintenance settings (except for "Reset system cache").
• My desktop just has four items. Mac HD, External HD, iPod and Vista partition (these problems have happened BEFORE I put vista, so vista isn't the problem).
• I've booted up the OS X disk and repaired disk and disk permissions.
• I shut off my computer everyday when I'm at school, and leave it on during the night.
• I DO have a lot of things on my computer. 22GB of music, Adobe CS3 Suit, Office 2004, Aperture, FCP, FCE, iLife, iWork (My apps folder has 104 items in it).
• I keep my files organized, in folders.
• I use custom icons, themes and cleardock.
• I have a lot of widgets, but only using 6.

So, I tried to make this thread as helpfully as I can, so it might be clearer as to what's going on with my computer. Any help would be great!

Thanks.

PS. I'm wondering if my computer is 64-bit or 32-bit, if anyone could tell me, that would be great.
 
Okay, well check your Login Items in System Preferences. Also check the contents of a folder named StartupItems (Spotlight'll help you find it). Remove anything that you don't use or want. Now, how much free space do you have remaining on your machine? Is there anything in Activity Monitor that looks like it's using more resources than it probably should be? Are things snappier if you disable the theme changer(s)? :)
 
Sorry I can't help you with question 1 or 2 BUT i'm able to answer your P.S question. The C2D chip is 64bit.
 
People with custom themes and all that jazz usually experience slowdowns. Try running OSX without them and see if your performance goes up. By the way, the Core 2 Duo is indeed 64-bit. But the Napa chipset in your MBP isn't able to fully use 64-bit memory adressing (4+GBs) but you will be fine with out that, and you will be able to take full advantage of Leopard.
 
Thanks for your help thus far guys.

In "Log in items" in SP, there is Aurora wakeup helper, which I use as an alarm, and some Adobe updated, which I deleted, so, just the Aurora.

In Startupitems folder, there are 3 folders. Parallels (which I just deleted), AW_flexlmStartupItem and Qmaster. I don't want to delete these, as I'm not sure what they do. What should I be looking for in Activity Monitor?

Disk space, I have a 160GB HD. 130 for Mac OS X and 20GB for Vista. 60GB left on the Mac, and about 10GB left on Vista.

For the custom theme, I'm using Uno.
 
Okay, well I use UNO too and have no problems. Drag the items from your StartupItems folder to the Trash or even to the Desktop and reboot. This means you keep them if necessary, but they won't be initiated next time you restart. Is it any faster this time?
 
Ahh, okay, sure. Activity Monitor is in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder. Open it up, select All Processes from the drop down list in the top right and then sort them by CPU and then RAM. What are you getting up the top and what sort of figures are these processes using? :)
 
Okay, but sort by %CPU in the first image and Real Memory in the second. Having said that, it doesn't look like Activity Monitor has caught anything anyway. Create a new user account and check the iPod problem again. :)
 
CPU:
picture5dt1.png


Ram:
picture6od8.png
 
Yep, thanks mate. Nothing's hanging (red) so try the new user account and see if the problems carry over. At a guess, they will, but it's still worth the effort of ruling this out.
 
When logging into the new user, it just loaded Spotlight in the menu bar, then about a minute to a minute in a half, then everything loaded and once everything loaded, the time stopped for about a minute.
 
Yeah, I reckon this is a hardware issue. Do you have third party RAM? What peripherals do you have plugged into the thing? It might be time to take it back to Apple. :eek:
 
No 3rd party ram. I have and iPod, External HD, Griffin Power Mate and a USB wire to transfer photos, but the issue still happens when nothing is plugged in. I really have to take it back to apple? That's something I don't want to do :(.
 
Damn. Alright, thanks for all of your help.

Do you think re-installing OSX will work? Because this problem hasn't been happening for 4 months. Only for about a month and a half or so.
 
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