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MacBook running VERY slow, need some help

P

panamax

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 1, 2009
23
0
About a week ago my MacBook started playing up for no apparent reason, the last thing I remember doing was downloding music on utorrent and talking to friends on msn.
Then the computer froze up so I just forced shutdown by holding down the power button and started it up again. Now since then it has been running VERY slow that it's nearly unusable. When I try to start any program they take a few mins to load up then whenever I try to do anything the computer freezes every 5 seconds and then the loading pinwheel stays on the screen for a few mins before I can do anything again.
I've tried running disk utility and it says all the permissions have been repaired but that doesn't fix anything, I've run the performance monitor and nothing is taking up any excessive amount of ram or CPU that I can see. Then last night I decided to reinstall snow leopard, here's the strange part, it took about 5 hours to do it.
I'm guessing there is some major issues with the hard drive but no idea how to be sure about it, I've tried restarting the mac holding d to perform a hardware test but it just boots up like normal.

Any idea what to do next? Any help would be great, I'm getting pretty desperate :(
 
Probably a failing hard drive or failing ram perhaps. Do you have upgraded ram in the computer?

May want to see if it boots better with one stick of ram. Or try a new hard drive and see if it is much faster.
 
All of the hardware is stock, I havnt done any upgrades. I don't really have any spare ram or harddrives sitting around to try out lol. Is there any way to see what's wrong with it without having to try new hardware?
 
Try removing the ram and use 1 stick of ram. If it still is slow. Switch the ram sticks around and if it has improved then you have a bad stick of ram. Otherwise could be a failing hard disk. Bad ram can cause that problem. Seen posts about it on various sites that sell ram where one bad stick caused very slow booting/ running conditions.
 
Okay, I pulled out 1 ram and tried booting it, no luck. Swapped around for the other one and tried booting with it, MacBook still ran like crap. I've but them both back in, guessing the problem is somewhere else then?
 
panamax said:
Okay, I pulled out 1 ram and tried booting it, no luck. Swapped around for the other one and tried booting with it, MacBook still ran like crap. I've but them both back in, guessing the problem is somewhere else then?
Click to expand...

Probably HDD failure. Could you try booting off an external drive?
 
The best I have is 8gb, is that enough? I used to have an external 600gb but it died a while ago. Why do harddrives only last me like 6 months???
 
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