Need advice about strange MacBook problem

[alexf]

Hi Everyone,

I have a 2.0 GHz MacBook, running the most recent build of Leopard, that is just over a year old (and therefore unfortunately just out of warranty) which has begun to experience the following problem:

Sometimes the computer runs fine, but very often the infamous "beachball" will appear and it will get hung up for up to two minutes, even when doing very undemanding tasks such as checking email. Force quitting usually doesn't work, as during this time the computer won't respond to the key combinations. The computer never completely freezes, i.e. if I can wait long enough it will eventually complete the task (only to hang up again a minute later).

This seems to happen with all applications, so it is not app-specific. I have also made sure that no background apps are running and slowing it down.

Any advice would be very greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance. 🙂

 

[macospimp]

Hard Drive or Ram.

This is usually indicative of early stages of hard drive failure, or Your ram may need to be reseated. Have you tried the basic trouble shooting steps. Ex. Reset PRAM, SMC, Repair Disk Permissions, SU fsck -f -y?

 

[alexf]

Thank you for your reply.

The only one of the things you suggested that I have tried is Verfying and Repairing the Disk permissions, which went smoothly.

How do I do the others?

Thanks again.

 

[alexf]

I did figure out how to do these trouble-shooting steps... now how can I find out if this is a hard drive issue?

Thanks.