Mid 2009 Macbook Air Problems

[paul3000]

I have been having issues with my Macbook Air 1.86 Core 2 Duo, 120gb HD. I can't exactly say when problems started happening, I was given this laptop after my brother in law started having issues. He is not exactly computer savvy and it looks like he possibly installed some kind of malware, I'm not sure but something definitely kept popping up trying to get you to buy the updated version of some virus program or whatever (sorry don't remember what it was). Not sure if that is related but thought I'd add it in. Main issues are the computer takes forever to start up, will do the spinning beachball when starting up apps or doing things in apps. The computer normally recovers but it can take some time. I tried to install Lion on it but had issues, for some reason when it tried to get to the point where the computer would restart to continue with the install it would say an error happened. I was able to put Lion on a USB drive so I will attempt a clean install.

What I wanted to find out is what is the likely cause of these problems? Does it seem likely that the hard drive is the problem? Or is it possible that it's the ram? The computer is in decent shape, it's definitely quite possible the laptop has been banged around a lot.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[checkitout]

I have been having issues with my Macbook Air 1.86 Core 2 Duo, 120gb HD. […] Main issues are the computer takes forever to start up, will do the spinning beachball when starting up apps or doing things in apps. The computer normally recovers but it can take some time. […]

What I wanted to find out is what is the likely cause of these problems? Does it seem likely that the hard drive is the problem?
Thanks!

My experience: Most likely the hard disk. These 1.8" drives seem to die in a long agony, where first the number of errors increases, and the drive takes an increasingly long time to do error recovery each time. So the systems gets slower and slower until it finally no longer works. Since, at first, the recovery often does work, you won't even see errors in the log file (Console application) until it gets really bad.

I fixed one such MBA by installing an SSD (and Mountain Lion, which couldn't be installed any more on the HDD that already had progressed to a bad state for a while), and it is like new again. If you have the money, the OWC Aura is really worth it, and it is a snap to install.

 

[paul3000]

Thanks so much for the information. I was finally able to format the stock HD and install Lion on it. It works a lot better than before and doesn't get the hang ups that it previously did. However I am thinking about upgrading to an SSD anyway just to get some more speed out of it.

Not like this will influence my purchasing decision much, but is there any noticeable difference in regards to battery life or heat from the laptop? How big of a difference in speed did you experience? (I installed an SSD in my 2.0ghz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini and noticed a pretty huge difference.)

Thanks!