Macbook pro 2010 takes forever to respond.

[alexus39]

My new macbook pro 2010 has always taken a little longer than normal to respond to my commands, but nowadays it has become unbearable..
Whenever I try clicking on a link, scrolling a page, typing, or basically any command, that little rainbow wheel will show up and it will be stuck for about 20 seconds.. Anything I try to do on this computer now takes a very long time..
As I type this thread it has already stopped to "think" 4 times..
Does anyone have any idea of what could be wrong?
Any steps I can take to try to fix it?
Please help... My macbook is everything to me... lol
Thanks!

 

[GGJstudios]

Launch Activity Monitor and look at what's eating up system resources.

 

[ECUpirate44]

Run the Apple Hardware Test. (hold D when booting)
Reset Pram
Reinstall OSX.

When did you buy your mac? Do you have Apple Care?

 

[jtcedinburgh]

Another thing to check - could be a dodgy hard drive. I had this problem - incredibly sluggish MBP, forever showing that spinning wheel of despair - turned out that my WD 'green' 500Gb HDD (a 5400rpm) was spinning down all the time when it shouldn't have. Meant that I had noticeable pauses whenever I wanted to do anything - and it seems that in OSX, hard drives are accessed a lot, hence lots of pauses.

A swap to a Seagate Momentus XT 500Gb seems to have given the machine a real kick into line, and then some