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MacBook Pro is slow

W

wickedking94

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
271
4
Every single task I try and do on this MBP is a pain. When watching a youtube video, it will freeze every minute for 5 seconds for no reason, it gives me a 30 second ball of death if I hit the play button on itunes, it freezes when I'm typing, It can barely play games like minecraft or garry's mod and half the time it crashes doing that anyway. If I load a webpage with more than one flash ad on it freezes. I've reset the SMC, the NVRAM, checked the RAM for errors, checked my HDD for errors, done a clean install of Snow Leopard, fixed disk permissions, and pretty much every other thing to try and gain any performance improvement, and they've all failed. My MBP used to do all these things without a problem but now its slow and useless.

MBP specs:
2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo
GeForce 320M 256MB
500 GB 5400 RPM HDD (250 GB free)
8 GB DDR3 RAM
OS 10.6.8

Its seriously starting to get on my nerves. My brothers cheap 2.1 Ghz Core i3 laptop is out running my over priced aluminum desk ornament.

Any suggestions to improve/fix my MBP would be greatly appreciated.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ouch. Bet the MBP felt that review.

Assuming you saved all of your date before the clean install SL and then copied it over... Check Activity Monitor when you're using the Mac to see hidden processes that could be slowing down your computer. Also, try Clean My Mac or something of the like. Could remove useless files that are making your computer slower.
 
I'd try upgrading to a SSD.

If that doesn't fix the speed problems you'll know there's definitely something else wrong internally.
 
Difference between disk r/w speeds on the beginning of the volume compared to the end of the volume differ about 40%.

If you want real world benchmarks, my raid0 system scores around 135mb/s on the first 40gb of both disk partitions, and 85mb/s on the last 40gb of both disks partitions.

What that means in your case? Half the values and you're somewhere there...

If you want a fast system either upgrade to SSD or clean up your system, make partitions.
If you split disk in three, you automatically limit the System partition to the fastest part of the HDD, effectively controlling the system-slowdown due to OS drive clutter.

I have a late 2008 2.53ghz c2d with 9600GT (most of the time running the weaker 9400m), and I can assure you this machine is more than capable handling these mundane tasks, not to mention even more complex tasks, and is in term of hardware performance pretty comparable.

Also, use "clicktoflash". Flash sucks on OS X - extremely. Eats up CPU and power. I have it disabled constantly, using clicktoflash safari extension and html5 player (plugins html5 player, not youtubes) for youtube.
 
Good list!

Still, i highly recommend doing a system partition on the first 30% of HDD. It diminished the effect of system slowdown so severely it's incredible.

That, or SSD.
 
Um yeah I did do a clean install. I booted from the CD and erased the drive, including writing over everything with 0's.

Also I had an SSD in this thing, I returned it because it didn't do anything but make my computer boot faster and programs open faster. When it came to actual CPU heavy tasks it was still a slow piece of junk. No point spending 100$ on a glorified memory stick.

I'm not sure what your getting at about making my HDD have 3 partitions to make it faster. ??

And my HDD is 50% free plenty of free space to not be cluttered.
 
Did you format your HDD? Have you been at Apple to run a diagnostic test? If the answers are yes, I would try to install (clean) ML OSX. If that won't work, I would buy SSD (Samsung 830) and hope for the best.
 
Yes as I said I formatted my HDD before doing a clean install. No I haven't been to Apple 1) because the nearest Apple store is 500 Km from me 2) I don't wan't to pay whatever ridiculous cost they'll charge me to "diagnose" it. Why would I clean install ML? It shouldn't be called "mountain lion" is should be called "fat house cat". Im on SL for a reason.

Did you even read my last post? I'm NEVER buying another SSD. They are a bloody LIE.
 
wickedking94 said:
Any suggestions to improve/fix my MBP would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
If you're having performance issues, this may help:

Follow every step of the following instructions precisely. Do not skip any steps.
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the "% CPU" column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
    (If that column isn't visible, right-click on the column headings and check it, NOT "CPU Time")
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.
 
Open activity monitor and select "all processes" from the drop down menu. Click the "% CPU" header to sort by processor usage(highest at the top)and post a screen shot.

*edit* or do what GGJSTUDIOS posted, since he got here first.
 
wickedking94 said:
Um yeah I did do a clean install. I booted from the CD and erased the drive, including writing over everything with 0's.

Also I had an SSD in this thing, I returned it because it didn't do anything but make my computer boot faster and programs open faster. When it came to actual CPU heavy tasks it was still a slow piece of junk. No point spending 100$ on a glorified memory stick.

I'm not sure what your getting at about making my HDD have 3 partitions to make it faster. ??

And my HDD is 50% free plenty of free space to not be cluttered.
Click to expand...

Then I don't know what to tell you. If you truly did a clean install, it should be very snappy and responsive. My old underpowered 13" MacBook Pro has inferior specs (Intel Core 2 Duo @2.33 GHz w/4GB DDR3, NVIDIA 9400M GT) to yours. Videos, FaceTime, Photoshop, etc. all speed along pretty quickly.

It's not going to be a processor defect. Defective chips either work or don't. Maybe a stick of RAM has gone so bad that it's not recognized by the Apple memory diagnostic? Then again, my 13" has half the RAM of your model but runs just fine.
 
XNFPw.png


Viola. Nothing huge. Just an old crappy laptop.
 
Its obviously user error (apps/settings) or component (your HDD or RAM) have gone bad. People with lower specs than you are running OS X just fine.

Also i know you're frustrated but giving people who are trying to help you attitude won't get you anywhere...
 
your traditional HD may be worn out

did you have these problems when you had your SSD installed?
 
wickedking94 said:
That was weeks ago. If there was any damage I wouldn't have been able to re-install OSX. And I've run several disk check programs. An it wasn't a "tantrum" it was being fed up with how poorly this thing runs.
Click to expand...

And knocking things off the desk because you're fed up is an adult way to solve problems?
 
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