Macbook Pro inexplicably slow

[hagar]

Hi,

I have a 2 year old Macbook Pro 15 inch with 4Gb of RAM. Ever since switching to Snow Leopard (clean install) it's been very slow. I decided to do another clean install this summer, but it's still very unresponsive:

- Safari 5 (very slow and beachballing all the time)
- Starting Office 11 applications can take over a minute
- Finder
- Switching apps can take up to 20 seconds
- Mail
- iTunes
- ...

The problem is that I can't find anything wrong with it. Clean software install, no apparent hardware defects, no errors in the logs, ...

I already did the hardware test but it also says nothing is wrong. What else can I do? It's clearly not normal my 4 year old iMac is faster...
Any tips?

 

[devilstrider]

Apple care?

 

[mdickson]

Have you used memtest to check out the RAM?

 

[TJones]

Definitely do the memtest thing. I had a stick of ram go bad on me this week. Corrupted patch downloaded, applications crashing and chrome blowing up all of a sudden and everything just seemed to be getting slower and slower. Booted up while holding the D key and performed a hardware test and bingo bad ram. Put the ones that came with the system back in and everything picked right back up.

 

[devilstrider]

Is memtest free?

 

[TJones]

Is memtest free?

Start your computer while holding the 'D' key and it will boot into the hardware test. It takes a little longer to start but be patient.