Macbook 3yr old running ridiculously slow, apps crashing!

[MrA-newb]

Hi there

was hoping someone out there would be able to help, i am a graphic designer and am very familiar with most applictions but not the technical side of things.
Basically i have a white macbook which is about 3.5 years old, it has been running very slow for some time now and fails to complete very simple tasks, for instance when opening adobe photoshop or illustrator, both CS2, simply creating a new document can take minutes as with resizing images etc.

illustrator and photoshop will not run together, one will 'unexpectidly quit'
word takes atleast half hour to save an essay
applications bounce forever before opening
beach balls at the smallest task
apps crash

about this mac: processor: 2GHz intel core 2 duo. memory 1GB 667 MHz DDR SDRAM.

i have 17.43gb left

If anyone out there could help speed this sick macbook up please could you suggest somethin as my knowledge is limited, would be very greatfull for any suggestions.

Cheers

Mr A

 

[jzuena]

Hi there

was hoping someone out there would be able to help, i am a graphic designer and am very familiar with most applictions but not the technical side of things.
Basically i have a white macbook which is about 3.5 years old, it has been running very slow for some time now and fails to complete very simple tasks, for instance when opening adobe photoshop or illustrator, both CS2, simply creating a new document can take minutes as with resizing images etc.

illustrator and photoshop will not run together, one will 'unexpectidly quit'
word takes atleast half hour to save an essay
applications bounce forever before opening
beach balls at the smallest task
apps crash

about this mac: processor: 2GHz intel core 2 duo. memory 1GB 667 MHz DDR SDRAM.

i have 17.43gb left

If anyone out there could help speed this sick macbook up please could you suggest somethin as my knowledge is limited, would be very greatfull for any suggestions.

Cheers

Mr A

Does your hard drive make lots of seeking and/or grinding noises when it slows down? If so, the hard drive may need to be replaced. If not, it might be worth saving your data files off to an external drive and reinstalling the OS and applications from scratch and then restoring your data files, just incase something either got corrupted or some kind of malware was installed.

 

[MrA-newb]

hi thanks for the response, my macbook is always making noises but they are more like werring and fan noises, often even if the mac isnt in use it will suddenly fire up and sound like its gonna take off.

i have an external hardrive how would i go about "installing the OS and applications from scratch and then restoring your data files"

cheers mate