MacBook Slow And Has Trouble Opening Apps And Freezes Constantly

[Petrofsky]

I have been having a very odd problem with my MacBook lately. It takes a while for it to turn on, and when it turns on, it is for the most part frozen for a few minutes. I can move the mouse around and such, but no applications will open. My only application that opens on startup automatically is iChat, but now when it tries to open it has a pop up that says "Lost Connection with (my username)" Now, after a few minutes, I am able to open up certain applications like iChat, Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft Word, Safari, and several others, but they freeze up a whole lot with the colorful wheel. I quit the application after it thinks for a few minutes and once I quit it a pop up says "(application I was using) Quit While Being Irresponsive" with links to send the problem to Mac. Now there are several other applications that will not open altogether. I have Final Cut Express, and when I try to open it, it has the arrow under the icon on the dock as if it were opening, but it never does, and quits automatically after a few minutes. Then after my computer is on for a while or if I let an application run long enough being frozen, my screen goes grey and has a box with a message saying I need to restart my computer. I have no idea what the problem with my computer is, but it is aggrivating and very annoying. Please help!

 

[JediMeister]

There are more than a few factors that could cause the symptoms you're describing. For one, have you checked how much hard drive space you have remaining recently? Last time you ran Disk Utility? How about any hardware/software you have may have installed recently? A software update perhaps? Performing a safe boot (hold left shift key at startup until gray screen with Apple logo/gear) and restarting clears cache files. Safe boot should also allow you to take a look at your account login/startup items that could also be causing what your computer is experiencing.

 

[Petrofsky]

There are more than a few factors that could cause the symptoms you're describing. For one, have you checked how much hard drive space you have remaining recently? Last time you ran Disk Utility? How about any hardware/software you have may have installed recently? A software update perhaps? Performing a safe boot (hold left shift key at startup until gray screen with Apple logo/gear) and restarting clears cache files. Safe boot should also allow you to take a look at your account login/startup items that could also be causing what your computer is experiencing.

I do remember a while ago that my computer was saying I did not have that much memory left, but I cleaned it up because my computer was saving certain things I never knew I kept in certain folders, and I got my memory back. I dont think I have ever ran Disk Utility. Before this problem started, I had installed Leopard on my computer, then the problem started. I will try that next time to see whats going on.