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MB--slow, problems shutting down, freezing

aureiden

aureiden

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2007
72
0
USA
2.0 GHz, 1 GB memory.

My macbook is just SO slow. I usually only run firefox, thunderbird, and word and it takes forever to even switch from one window to another. The drop-downs in apps are slow too. Opening iPhoto takes so long. Limewire is a killer--I virtually can't have anything else running when using it, but I guess that's understandable. In short, everything is incredibly slow.

And more often than not, it refuses to shut down. Everything disappears except the background, and then it stays stuck there until I just press the power button. It's really aggravating me.

There are lots of other problems with the computer as well, but I can't recall them at the moment. I went to a genius bar but they didn't do anything to help.

Any ideas? Any help would be appreciated, as I can't stand this anymore.
 
Update your Mac with the latest software updates and repair permissions afterwards. Also it could be bad RAM, so get that checked out too and forgot to mention...reset the PRAM.
 
To reset the PRAM hold down option, apple, p, and r while the Mac is booting.

To repair permissions, go to applications > utilities > disk utilities. Select your hard drive and click "repair permissions".
 
Check that you have plenty of free space on your hard drive (over 8GB). Then check Activity Monitor to see if there's a process taking up a lot of your CPU cycles or RAM. Unplug all your peripherals and turn off the file sharing apps. Is it still slow? :)
 
Thanks for all the tips--unfortunately, I tried them all and it is still slow. Nothing's really eating up too much CPU--the highest anything gets to is around 15% right now.

I don't know what PowerPC apps are.... I don't think I'm using any.

Any other suggestions, please?
 
I usually run thunderbird, firefox, word, itunes, and spamsweep.

It wasn't as slow on a new account. And it still doesn't shut down. Is there anything I can do in this case to turn it off without pressing the button?

P.S. 512 MB not 1 gig. But even so, I don't think it should be taking 2 sec just to close a window.
 
SLOOOWWWW MacBook

Yeah, I have the same problem. I recently replaced my wife's G3 Powerbook with a MacBook, and it's actually SLOWER! She ends up restarting twice a day (this was Apple's suggestion), which helps, but I must say, this is not what I had in mind when I purchased it. Running all Apple apps (Safari, iCal, iPhoto, Mail, etc.) so I don't get it. Latest updates. Zap pram. Repair permissions. Factory RAM.
Come to think of it, I'm not seeing blazing performance from my MacBook Pro (Which I upgraded from a Powerbook G4 Igig).

I don't get it. If I had known this, I would have waited.

NW
 
nickweston said:
Yeah, I have the same problem. I recently replaced my wife's G3 Powerbook with a MacBook, and it's actually SLOWER! She ends up restarting twice a day (this was Apple's suggestion), which helps, but I must say, this is not what I had in mind when I purchased it. Running all Apple apps (Safari, iCal, iPhoto, Mail, etc.) so I don't get it. Latest updates. Zap pram. Repair permissions. Factory RAM.
Come to think of it, I'm not seeing blazing performance from my MacBook Pro (Which I upgraded from a Powerbook G4 Igig).

I don't get it. If I had known this, I would have waited.

NW
Click to expand...

Get at least 1-2GB of RAM.
 
I don't get it... my Macbook was fast as anything, when I had it (it was stolen *sniff*). I was doing numerical computing in matlab in linux virtualized by Parallels alongside MacOS X... And I was able to run other apps fine while number-crunching too, lol. This was only after upgrading the RAM, of course -- more than likely if you have more than a couple apps open you're running out of memory and it's thrashing the harddrive for everything. So get at least 1 GB of RAM so you can use more than a few apps at once.
 
If the RAM is loose then it most likely won't show up in System Profiler. As for the slowness, open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and check All Processes from the drop down list to see whether there's anything using up a tonne of your resources (CPU and RAM).

Also, head to Disk Utility in the Utilities folder and verify your hard drive. If it comes back with any errors, then run fsck.

Finally, check that you have plenty of free space on your hard drive. Aim for at least 8GB. :)
 
Everything's in single digits in terms of CPU with Word jumping to the 30's when I'm using it. 10-15 MB of RAM and 21 GB of disk space free. Verified and repaired in disk utility. No errors. I would like to think that I just have too little RAM, but what with the problems with shutting down, freezing app's (Finder freezes occasionally too), and extreme slowness even in just navigating the hard drive, I keep thinking there's something with this thing.
 
my new macbook is also running slowly.... i have a 2GHz C2D, 2GB RAM.

here is one scenario that irks me frequently:
immediately after awaking from sleep, with no apps open, i open firefox. the dock icon bounces about 30 times before the firefox menubar finally appears. about 5 seconds later, an actual browser window appears. what could be causing this trouble?

firefox is probably the worst, but i feel like all the apps I use frequently take a long time to load. os X on intel is significantly less snappy than i expected it to be, even though i am using intel native apps.

how do i check if i have enough free HD space for virtual memory? i have about 16GB free right now.
 
Oats said:
how do i check if i have enough free HD space for virtual memory? i have about 16GB free right now.
Click to expand...

With 2GB ram, I'd be surprised if you're running out of physical memory so often; although that sounds like it might be the problem you're running into. You're not running out of virtual memory. How many apps do you keep open at a time? And I mean, all the apps you can see when you hit Command-Tab, not just the ones with windows open or in the Dock. Do you always have a lot of them there at once, or do you actually Quit programs you're not using?

You might want to get a system-profiler app and see what's going on. It might be one broken program that's ruining everything.
 
infz said:
With 2GB ram, I'd be surprised if you're running out of physical memory so often; although that sounds like it might be the problem you're running into. You're not running out of virtual memory. How many apps do you keep open at a time?
Click to expand...

I keep very few apps open at a time. Typically Mail, Dashboard, iTunes (not playing, but open, hidden). The Firefox process says it uses ~50-60MB "real" memory and ~450MB virtual memory. Why is it that every app uses 10X the amount of virtual memory as "real" memory? I have 2GB of RAM, so that means 20GB of virtual memory could be used of fairly easily?

Actually, this is crazy, but most of the widgets I keep open use about 8-10MB of "real" memory and over 350MB of virtual memory!! For example, the process "Weather DashboardClient" uses 11MB/357MB!! What is that?? Is that normal?
 
Same thing in my first macbook, no reason but it was sooooo slow , sold it and bought another one...and it was much faster but has more Issues.... I am typing this on a HP:D
 
I, too, have a simliar problem. I have 2.0 Ghz C2D 1gb ram and I've noticed in recent weeks that it's been very slow on certain things that usually had taken mere seconds, such as opening Safari. The only thing I've come to think affect my MB was the last Mac OS X upgrade I downloaded. It seems everything after that has been affecting my MB negatively. I'm going to wait until Leopard comes out to see whether or not I need to upgrade to 2GB of ram.
 
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