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Macbook running extremely slow

A

applecow

macrumors member
Original poster
May 23, 2007
34
0
The Macbook is a brand new C2D 2.16 running 1 gig of ram. It takes minutes to start some programs like firefox and itunes and even finder are excruciatingly slow. It takes minutes to delete things from trash and songs to import into itunes.

Does anyone know whats wrong?
 
  • Check Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder to see if there's a process using up a lot of your CPU cycles and/or RAM. Make sure you check All Processes, not just the default My Processes.
  • What apps are you running and what third party hardware do you have connected or installed?
  • How much free space do you have on your hard drive?
 
Nothing is taking up a large amount, or none more than usual. However, I'll see a few random programs like iTunes or Finder in red saying it is non responsive.

No third party hardware installed. More specifically, none I can link directly to the slow down. The computer was already slowing down and when I put in a thumb drive to upload some music, it froze it to an unbearable crawl. I currently have only Transmission and NeoOffice installed as 3rd party softwares.

Theres about 90 to 100 GB left.

Im taking it to the Mac Store tomorrow.
 
No, everthing looks fine immediately after a restart. However, within minutes, the computer will randomly beachball whenever I switch applications, open a new tab, click on a link, and in fact, it froze 2 times as I am typing this with nothing running except for firefox with 2 tabs open.

It usually takes about 30 seconds to a minute (froze again) to clear it. I tried opening safari and it took (froze again) 2 minutes and 13 seconds to open. It just kept bouncing (froze again). It happens randomly so I can't exactly explain to the Genius Bar what is causing the problem. I repaired disk permissions just in case. Could it be faulty ram? Bad hard drive?

Oh yeah, about an hour ago, my screen turned grey and this message box came up telling me I need to restart and I hear my HDD whirling like crazy. Whats up with that?

Keep in mind this is brand new no more than 2 weeks old. Should I just return it and exchange for a new one? Will they transfer my music and other files for me?

Oh could someone explain to me what a kernal panic is? NEver understood what that meant

Edit: LOL (froze), I just looked it up on wikipedia...guess I got a kernel panic. Does that mean its bad ram?

Edit 2: Wed Jun 27 18:42:56 2007
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x001A429B): Unresolved kernel trap (CPU 0, Type 14=page fault), registers:
CR0: 0x8001003b, CR2: 0x4da40035, CR3: 0x01eb7000, CR4: 0x000006e0
EAX: 0x4da40005, EBX: 0x1b040005, ECX: 0x3f75e7f0, EDX: 0x0cd541e0
CR2: 0x4da40035, EBP: 0x15163d28, ESI: 0x3f7541e0, EDI: 0x136422c8
EFL: 0x00010202, EIP: 0x009cd03d, CS: 0x00000008, DS: 0x00000010

Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x15163ae8 : 0x128d08 (0x3cb204 0x15163b0c 0x131de5 0x0)
0x15163b28 : 0x1a429b (0x3d0f1c 0x0 0xe 0x3d0740)
0x15163c38 : 0x19ada4 (0x15163c50 0x0 0x15163c78 0x127ee3)
0x15163d28 : 0x9a61b7 (0x13658004 0x3f7541e0 0xcd541e0 0x4da40005)
0x15163f08 : 0x39a533 (0x136422c8 0x3b4f100 0x1 0x36e706c)
0x15163f58 : 0x399705 (0x3b4f100 0x135eb4 0x0 0x36e706c)
0x15163f88 : 0x39943b (0x3b48880 0x0 0xaa5773 0x0)
0x15163fc8 : 0x19ac1c (0x3b48880 0x0 0x19e0b5 0x4026050) Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0x0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AirPortAtheros[/(223.47.4)@0x975000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.1)@0x6a6000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.2)@0x59d000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family(154.1)@0x7aa000

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.9.3: Fri Apr 27 14:50:07 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.19.5~2/RELEASE_I386

Seems like airport? I have no idea how to verify if it is Airport or not. I've had 2 Macbooks (friend's) using my WPA internet and they seem fine. I've had an old powerbook g4 that worked fine too.

(Froze 3 times during 2nd edit)
 
That's referring to the internal AirPort card, not a router. Try running the Apple Hardware Test. It came on one of the discs supplied with your machine and it tests components of your Mac, including your AirPort card. Kernel panics are often caused by bad RAM, but not always. :)
 
Short hardware test worked and found no problems.
Froze on the long hardware test, didn't finish.

:confused:
 
It froze for about an hour. I'm not sure where.

It seems to have stopped, but I didn't really do anything. I'm fairly certain it will start up again. If I can't reproduce the problem of an Apple Genius, how could I go about asking them to do a repair/exchange?
 
Thanks for the help. The Mac Genius just said that they'll replace it for me. It seemed like a hardware problem and since it was within 14 days, he didn't even bother trying to figure it out.

Luckily, the problem reproduced itself during the time I showed him the computer. He thought it might have been hardware and asked if I booted/switched to another user to see if it was bad software. I said no so he booted OS X off his firewire drive. Sure enough, as soon as it started, it froze before any programs were even opened.

Thanks for your help though. Too bad I ended up returning it. :)
 
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