Macbook is slow and crashing

[tlind]

Well this will be the second time posting this (first time somehow logged me out when i hit post).

Anyways my macbook is just over a year old, and haven't experienced any issues other then the rare force quit one. Two days ago i shut down the macbook, went away and two hours later it was still trying to shut down. Spinning on my desktop picture. So i shut it down by holding power. Since then my macbook has been running slowly/chopping on everything. Safari beach ball spins, or quits unexpectantly. Opening apps either spins/ runs very choppy or quits all together. A few times on safari i get a slow script message. DVD seems to be the only app immune to this problem.

So i am concerned as to what the problem might be, as i was naive to think that macs were indestructible. Would this be a hard drive, memory, maintenance issue? I only today performed the fix disk through the utilities and that said that everything was ok, and laptop still runs the same. So any suggestions as to what might be the issue please help me out.

Also if there is any information required from me to help diagnose the problem please let me know, and i will provide said info. Thanks.

 

[i.shaun]

problems will always arise in time, OS X isn't invincible like the ads may make it seem.

Click the link in my signature below, and scroll down to troubleshooting steps, hopefully the problem(s) are solved with only the first few steps.


edit: I finally figured out how to link to specific parts of a thread. . so here are the troubleshooting steps no scrolling down to it anymore

 

[tlind]

i. shaun, thanks for the tips. I followed it and got an Alert from the hardware test: 4HDD/11/40000004: SATA (0,0)

From reading other threads it sounds like its the hard drive dying, so do i just have to replace the pull out Toshiba HD to fix this problem? And are the drives cheap?

 

[tlind]

so, any suggestions? Anyone have a similar problem with a solution?

 

[i.shaun]

Hmm, the hardware test certainly points at a bad HDD.

You say it's slow and crashing. . does this happen at random? I remember my iMac's old HDD was getting slow after 2 years, and if I tried copying files to the Internal HDD, things would slow right down, unable to click menus or do much until it was done -- and it was also very slow to copy.


If I ran a bittorrent program, that would be way too much for the HDD to handle, it would freeze everything, forcing me to do a hard restart. I downloaded a program called XBench to test the drive.

The results didn't display an error, just speed and such, so I didn't know what to make of it until I ran the same test on my External HDD -- those results showed (when compared) that my Internal was WAY slower than the external.



This proved that the HDD is no longer able to operate properly, but I didn't get a hardware test error like you did. I got 4MOT/1/40000004: HDD -- and I still get that even after changing my HDD. I believe it to be a faulty fan, sensor, or something wrong with the motherboard. Unfortunately my only options now are to ride this mac out until it finally dies, but this new 1TB HDD is making it faster than it's ever been.




So use Xbench, check the speed of the drive to see if it's significantly slower than an external

 

[i.shaun]

In any case, the AHT (apple hardware test) points to the HDD, so backing everything up and trying to change it is probably the best bet, unless you can get an store to do it

 

[tlind]

Not random at all, been slow consistently since i had to force shut down my computer. Programs like system preferences crash before they even load 100% of the time. Safari randomly crashes on me. Just over a year old and already a faulty drive, and i thought they were crazy for asking me if i wanted extended warranty.

I do have an apple store in my city, but probably cheaper to fix myself. Will have to start backing things up anyways before if completely goes the way of the ground.