Macbook has slown down a lot!

[Schism]

Hey all

First post here, don't really like coming onto a forum, and asking for help straight away, but this is really doing my head in.

My Macbook runs fine usually, but it very regulary randomly comes up with the 'spinning beach ball' icon instead of the mouse, even when I'm browsing the internet, it doesn't freeze, that little icon just comes up, and I can't click anything, but I can still navigate into the corners of the screen, and expose etc still works... I have upgraded to 4gb RAM to see if this would fix it, but did nothing. I have no idea what to do to be honest.

Thanks a lot for any help!

Cheers.

 

[Neil321]

Did you check your page in page out's before upgrading your RAM,what about your log in items ?, how full is your HDD ?, you could try running a maintenance app like OnyX see if that helps

 

[toolbox]

Make sure you run disk utility to repair disk permissions and run a verify on your hdd too

 

[blodwyn]

Try keeping an activity monitor window open, and when the beach ball happens, check to see if anything is maxing out your CPU

 

[erstwhilepo]

The suggestion to repair disk permissions is spot on.

Get OnyX - it's free. Your Mac already has a disk utility, but OnyX will help because it can do more.

HD space also could be relevant.

 

[madog]

Reset your PRAM whenever you add or upgrade hardware such as RAM/HDD.

Quite possible that your current drive is dying.

To ultimately/bestestly (yeah I said that), find that info out, format your drive (you do already have a backup, right?) reinstall the OS, run updates, and see if you have the same problems. If not, then you've fixed the software problems by reinstalling. If the problem persists then you've got a hardware problem which would most likely be the hard drive.

Alternatively, you can try using just one RAM stick at a time and try to replicate it. Maybe the original stick has gone bad, or soemthing along those lines.

 

[sawmaster]

Hey all

First post here, don't really like coming onto a forum, and asking for help straight away, but this is really doing my head in.

My Macbook runs fine usually, but it very regulary randomly comes up with the 'spinning beach ball' icon instead of the mouse, even when I'm browsing the internet, it doesn't freeze, that little icon just comes up, and I can't click anything, but I can still navigate into the corners of the screen, and expose etc still works... I have upgraded to 4gb RAM to see if this would fix it, but did nothing. I have no idea what to do to be honest.

Thanks a lot for any help!

Cheers.

somebody could have purchused a beach ball and stuffed it in your computer.

same here, exept my computer acutely freezes.

and the 'spinning beach ball' cracked me up! you made me lol!

 

[Schism]

I ran that Onyx program, and all is good now it seems

Cheers!