Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Macbook Pro Experiencing Slowdowns

K

keikun13

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 24, 2007
6
0
Well, I've had my Macbook Pro for about a year now (it's a Rev A one; 2.16 Core Duo, 2gb RAM, etc...). I am still new to Macs so please excuse me if I say anything wrong. So here's the problem, my Mac is slow as a snail now. Namely apps like Firefox, iTunes, Quicksilver are slow to launch. Startup time has been slowly increasing since the day I purchased the computer. Sometimes I get just plain computer lockups. It's kind of annoying because my old old Windows desktop ran a lot more reliably and smoother than my Mac is now :(. I'm guessing this isn't normal...

Now, I've done a couple searches and it seems that a few people have been having the same problems as me. I've looked and tried out a few solutions like running Onyx to little to no avail. Please help me get my Mac back up to speed!
 
How much free hard drive space do you have?

The other possibility is a RAM issue. Insert your OS X install disk, and hold down 'D' upon booting up the machine (before the Apple logo appears) and run a hardware test, it will tell you if you have any faults.

Faulty RAM is a pretty big issue, not just for Apple but for everyone...
 
I currently have about 39gb out of 100gb left on my hard drive. I will run the hardware test when I get back home, but last time it didn't come up with anything wrong.
 
I ran the hardware test and it came up with nothing. Right now I'm running MainMenu, but I assume it'll just go through the same things that OnyX did... Any other ideas?
 
The only thing I can think of right now is installing BootCamp, but even before I did that, I was still experiencing these issues.
 
keikun13 said:
The only thing I can think of right now is installing BootCamp, but even before I did that, I was still experiencing these issues.
Click to expand...

Have you looked at your startup items?

System Preferences > Accounts > User Account > Login Items

Is there anything abnormal?

Also, I would open Activity Monitor to see what's currently running, check the available ram, see what the processor is running at in terms of stress, etc.
 
Yea there were some unneeded things in the Login Items so I removed those. As for anything unusual in the Activity Monitor, there is a process called WindowsServer running under the user windowserve. Is this normal even if I don't utilize any Windows sharing?
 
keikun13 said:
Yea there were some unneeded things in the Login Items so I removed those. As for anything unusual in the Activity Monitor, there is a process called WindowsServer running under the user windowserve. Is this normal even if I don't utilize any Windows sharing?
Click to expand...

WindowServer is actually a required process by the operating system (so long as you would like a GUI), so I wouldn't stop that process (not even sure if it will let you).

When convenient (I know, it's never convenient), I would reinstall Mac OS X and see if this clears everything up. This will at least determine whether it is a software or hardware issue. If after installing and using certain applications, it may become obvious which program is causing the slowdown.

Unfortunately nothing immediately obvious and helpful comes to mind, but hopefully this will at least get you moving in the right direction. Good luck!
 
Yes I was going to do an OS reinstall as a last resort. I am still running 10.4 so I think I'll wait until I get 10.5 to do a fresh install. Thanks for all the advice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back