Macbook slugish, reinstall OSX?

[pro2010]

I don't know howthe situation occured, all I remember is iTunes failing on me and word encountering a problem. So I restarted my macbook (1.8 core duo) instead of running disk utility.

Now when I restart my computer it goes to the desktop and my finder app folder appears. If I were to click on it it would beachball makign it take longer than it should to scroll. Applications does not seem to start, even after right click>open it won't even bounce in my dock.

I tried quicklooking for Disk Utility to repair permission and the problem persisted. It could be a RAM problem, is there a way for me to check the RAM at startup, again I'll be unable to get to about this mac.

In the past doing a reinstall fixes everything. I no longer have a working disk drive in my laptop, so I would be forced get a external drive. I have 10.6. would a dvd drive possibly fix the problem?

 

[JediMeister]

You can check the RAM through a variety of methods. Apple's bundled hardware test for one can do an extended test which will do multiple passes to test the RAM. Rember is yet another method. Unfortunately without a functional optical drive, the Apple test is not possible; an external DVD-ROM/burner that is plug-play compatible with OS X may allow you to bypass the issue though.

Before even considering a reinstall, have you tried safe boot perhaps? This interrupts any non-standard background processes and startup items. Is your system still slow as molasses? Understand that certain applications may not function in Safe Boot so take that into consideration when you're testing out the overall functionality of your system. If it isn't slow anymore, its a good opportunity to check the Launch Agents, LaunchDaemons and StartupItems folders in /Library.

You also mentioned you ran Disk Utility to repair permissions; I see many people on the boards overuse that as a catchall for any perceived software issue. It only reads the permissions for Apple applications. So if Word is quitting on you, running a Disk Permissions scan is not likely to do much of anything. Pages, Numbers, Keynote, maybe, but not Word. Have you tried just a regular Verify/Repair Disk? If so, any errors of note?

 

[pro2010]

Correction, I'm unable to run any applications. I desired disk utility but I am unable to do so. Turns out I do have 2gigs of RAM. I went out and bought a DVD Drive, it's WAL MART.. I will just return it... And besides I could use some new CDs.

My computer is just useless as of now, I can't open a PDF into finder, I can't launch Firefox, thought the about mac did appear. Will certainly try the safe boot..