Mac seems to be slow ( not normal) when opening documents

[mr.beachball]

Hi my first Thread:

For a view weeks now I noticed that may Macbook Pro 15 late 2011 ( 2,2 GHZ/ 4 GB Ram/ 500GB HD 5400 rpm) is very slow when I work with documents/pictures/videos and especially PDF's.
When I open them with Preview or by pressing the Spacebar, I always get the Beachball Icon. This also happens when I'm closing the document/picture/video. The Icon stays for abou 3 to 10 seconds.
This doesnt seem normal regarding that I have this Computer for may 5 months now.
However Applications ( Safari, Outlook, Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator etc.) seem to open normally.

I used to drop the machine once from my desk, but brought it to an Apple Care Centere. They cheked the HD and said it looks normal. Since then I often have a S.M.A.R.T. Programm running and everything on the HD looks fine. ( Also Disk utility from Mac says its running fine...)

Here are my questions:

Is there any possibility that this is caused by a Hardware Error? Maybe not the HD but something else.
Or will it maybe help to reinstall the OS or run a repair Software? ( If so which Software?)

Since I stay in Cape Town, South Africa right now, we only have a Apple Reseller here and he will charge me at least 65 Dollars if he will check my machine and find out that the Problem is Softwarerelated and not Hardwarerelated.

Thank you in advance for your reply!

 

[MWPULSE]

Have you tried setting up and using a temporary, separate account. To verify that the effects are universal to the OSX install.

You can also go one further than that, by backing everything up and then reinstalling the OS.

If glitches still seem to be occurring then its possible that it might be hardware related. But you can also use a further application. Like Tech Tool Pro 6, Mackeeper, or Onyx to see if they pick up anything. Having used all 3 of those applications I can vouch that they are good at what they do. Definitely help speed up my mac.

Hope this helps

Pete

 

[mr.beachball]

Thank you Pete!

I'll try what you told me and see if it helps.

 

[GGJstudios]

Hi my first Thread:

Welcome!

Is there any possibility that this is caused by a Hardware Error?

Yes, it's possible, and I would recommend you always keep a current backup, in case your hard drive ever does fail. However, there are some things you can check to see if your performance issues are software-related:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X

Mackeeper

I agree with your other recommendations, but I strongly recommend against using MacKeeper. You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Some remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. Some of these apps delete caches, which can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​

 

[mr.beachball]

Thank you GGJstudios,

that was also very informative.

I will try to see if the Problem ocurres when I'm logged in as a different user and maybe reinstall the OS.

And a good link, too!

 

[skepticat]

Hi my first Thread:

For a view weeks now I noticed that may Macbook Pro 15 late 2011 ( 2,2 GHZ/ 4 GB Ram/ 500GB HD 5400 rpm) is very slow when I work with documents/pictures/videos and especially PDF's.
When I open them with Preview or by pressing the Spacebar, I always get the Beachball Icon. This also happens when I'm closing the document/picture/video. The Icon stays for abou 3 to 10 seconds.
This doesnt seem normal regarding that I have this Computer for may 5 months now.
However Applications ( Safari, Outlook, Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator etc.) seem to open normally.

I used to drop the machine once from my desk, but brought it to an Apple Care Centere. They cheked the HD and said it looks normal. Since then I often have a S.M.A.R.T. Programm running and everything on the HD looks fine. ( Also Disk utility from Mac says its running fine...)

Here are my questions:

Is there any possibility that this is caused by a Hardware Error? Maybe not the HD but something else.
Or will it maybe help to reinstall the OS or run a repair Software? ( If so which Software?)

Since I stay in Cape Town, South Africa right now, we only have a Apple Reseller here and he will charge me at least 65 Dollars if he will check my machine and find out that the Problem is Softwarerelated and not Hardwarerelated.

Thank you in advance for your reply!

Try this, it worked for me. Go to the app in finder and highlight it. Press 'command + I' and in the info popup check 'open in 32 bit mode' . That should work. Cheers, Ian