Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacBook Pro 17 problem (SLOW)

S

Skip Magnuson

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 26, 2011
6
0
Spokane, WA
My MBP 17 runs very slow. I took it to the Apple Store and they ran a file clean-up and reinstalled the OS (Mt. Lion) And pronounced it good. Last night at an air men's group I had my Mac connected to a projector trying to play a Reno air race DVD and it was so slow it was impossible to watch. Luckily a member had his PC portable and it saved the show. How embarrassing.
What should I do? Help is greatly appreciated.
Skip Magnuson
Spokane, WA
 
I don’t have a whole lot of ideas but it could be over throttling from heat. You connected an external which immediately switched it to discreet graphics.

Have you tried opening it up and blowing it out?

In any case if it’s still under warranty it’d take it back to the apple store and let them fix it.
 
Could be a hard drive going bad possibly. I know i have had macs where they worked but were beachballing a lot and very slow and it was the had drive
 
MBP model

OS10.8.4
2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Mem. 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M 256 MB
Model MBP 5.2
L2 Cache 6 MB
And at times is very, very slow.
Skip
 
Well its a C2D...
I suggest throwing some SSDs in and maxing out the RAM.
Thats all you can do.

Or do a fresh install if it doesnt change.
 
8GB of ram on a C2D shouldn't be nearly that slow. You have a Penryn Core 2 Duo - one of the last and fastest iterations of C2D.

I think you have something bigger wrong. Is all 8GB of your ram recognized?
 
Ram checking

Doward said:
8GB of ram on a C2D shouldn't be nearly that slow. You have a Penryn Core 2 Duo - one of the last and fastest iterations of C2D.

I think you have something bigger wrong. Is all 8GB of your ram recognized?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response(s). How do I check if all of the ram is being recognized?
Skip
 
yusukeaoki said:
Well its a C2D...
I suggest throwing some SSDs in and maxing out the RAM.
Thats all you can do.

Or do a fresh install if it doesnt change.
Click to expand...

Upgrading from 8gb isn't going to help. My guess would be the CPU..
 
We have been able to play DVD’s in Mac’s since the G3 a C2D is fine to play DVD’s

In this place you’d think nothing got accomplished until the core i processor..
 
Skip Magnuson said:
OS10.8.4
2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Mem. 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M 256 MB
Model MBP 5.2
L2 Cache 6 MB
And at times is very, very slow.
Skip
Click to expand...

I believe the early 2009 MBP's (5,2) came with both NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT and GeForce 9400M graphics. The 9600M with 512 Mb discrete vs. 256 Mb shared in the 9400, user selectable under "energy saver" settings in System Preferences. Selecting the discrete graphics might help with video playback.

Sounds like more going on than this though.
 
I have an MBP 17 with an identical CPU. No issues here, though I did put in an SSD. Still, I don't believe this should have an impact when playing a DVD. I would suggest for you to test the performance again with a DVD, and while doing so, examine which process (or processes) requires a high CPU usage. Identifying and eliminating the culprit, particularly when attempting a DVD playback, should help.
 
OP didn't specifically say that only watching a DVD causes the behavior. They merely stated that the DVD scenario is the latest example of when the issue caused them problems.

Swap the hard drive out. If problem goes away, it's the drive.

Not sure why people are totally ignoring the possibility of it being hard drive related. This isn't DOS. OS X is capable of multitasking, and it's certainly possible that (for example) a background task (such as a kernel task, for example) is trying to write to a log, and due to drive issues, is having difficulty doing so. Such a problem with a low level process like that could have a system-wide effect.

Given the age of the system, my money is on it being caused by one of the parts with moving pieces. Hard drive or SuperDrive. Parts with moving pieces do not last forever. They will fail eventually. Since the symptoms are present at all time in general, I would suspect the hard drive first.
 
i agree with duervo. check the hard disk. id also open it up make sure its free of dust and not over heating causing the throttling down. as far as upgrading u have had it for years and im sure been playing movies for a while no reason why yesterday it worked and today u need to upgrade to watch the same movie lol. its not a ram or needing to upgrade to ssd thats just stupid... the problem is something more complicated. but start with hard drive and checking for dust and it have to be major dust at that too.
 
foxf8 said:
i agree with duervo. check the hard disk. id also open it up make sure its free of dust and not over heating causing the throttling down. as far as upgrading u have had it for years and im sure been playing movies for a while no reason why yesterday it worked and today u need to upgrade to watch the same movie lol. its not a ram or needing to upgrade to ssd thats just stupid... the problem is something more complicated. but start with hard drive and checking for dust and it have to be major dust at that too.
Click to expand...

---------
I have had the MBP 5.2 for several years. I've used the SuperDrive only a few times (15-?) and have never done any cleaning. I don't think I have ever heard a fan come on - should it? If HD do I just replace it? Advice on how to clean would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Skip
 
o u just take a can of air just blow everywhere. there like a couple bucks at any com

Skip Magnuson said:
---------
I have had the MBP 5.2 for several years. I've used the SuperDrive only a few times (15-?) and have never done any cleaning. I don't think I have ever heard a fan come on - should it? If HD do I just replace it? Advice on how to clean would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Skip
Click to expand...

o u just take a can of air just blow everywhere. there like a couple bucks at any computer store. or wallmart would have it too im sure. no its not a bad thing u never heard the fans kick in. but before u go spending money on a hard drive you should check it first. use mac os disk utility by either starting up in safe mode partition of your hard drive or if you have the installation cd put that in and hold down "c" to boot from the cd drive and use the First Aid tab to run a check on the main partition of the harddrive that well let u know if its bad if it has alot of errors. or maybe its something stupid and that well fix it at the same time.
 
All we can do is speculate. It doesn't sound like it is going to be a simple fix. You've had it to Apple once already. Take it back and tell them they haven't fixed it yet. If they had it open before, they probably cleaned it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back