Cannot conclude why my mac runs slow! Help!

[Evelyn]

My mac is just over a year old. I am running OSX 10.6.7, with 4gb ram and all updates. About a month ago, I had an issue with booting. I literally left my mac on for almost an hour, with nothing but alternating blue screens and the spinning wheel. I reset PRAM, did a hardware test (nothing wrong there), and had to boot from install disc. Then I reinstalled the OS, archive and install. Everything seemed to run a lot clearer for a week or two.

Now, not only is booting slower than it should be, but whenever I open a web browser I get frozen with the rainbow wheel for a few minutes. There have been a few times where I get frozen for over 10 minutes without ability to force quit or navigate elsewhere.

I have deleted caches, repaired permissions (a lot of repairing took place with airport utility), cleared login items, widgets, add-ons/extensions.. and I still am running pretty slow.

I have 206gb of disk space free, and 2.33gb of memory free. Processes taking up the most memory (over 100mb) are Safari (which I am using right now) and kernel_task. Nothing suspicious going on in activity monitor. My console messages include many "kCGErrorFailures".. not sure if that has any importance at all.


Sorry for the long post. My cousin works high up at HP and of course HATES macs. He is taunting me incessantly, and I am trying to prove to him that I can get my mac up and running fast and smooth again! PLEASE HELP!

 

[karazelle]

I love HP as a brand, their machine quality overall is good, but running classrooms of them at work, you hit the occasional bad behaving machine as well that just refuse to work reliably. In any batch of products, you can be the unlucky and get the one that had issues.

As to your problem, the last time I experienced this I had a definitely failing harddrive. Start by doing a backup of the disk.

Then you need to do a health check. I used this tool to confirm my last disk problem: http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php

Note, you do NOT need to buy the tool to get a quick indication. It will run 4 times or 29 days in trial mode (it's designed to detect a negative trend), but it asks the disk more deeply than the MacOS itself does what its condition is like and can do other tests.

Download it, double click to unzip it, then start it up. You should see your disk on the left as "Macintosh HD" or similar. Look at the health colour indicator on the lower right. If its green, that means that the disk is "likely" fine, but we need to do two deeper tests. Above the health indicator is a small panel named Tests and the button "More Info". You should click the button and perform at least a Short run test on the disk. Note that the disk will be very noisy during this test. The test is not destructive.

 

[Evelyn]

Wow. I am blown away.

Thank you so much for your feedback. I followed your instructions and found out that my hard drive is indeed failing. I finally have an answer!

But there's one more thing. Aside from understanding the yellow "FAILING" box, I am clueless as to what the attributes in red mean, nor do I understand the uncorrectable error messages. I am going to attach a screenshot of the SMART utility screen that I have, with both boxes captured. If you could provide me with any more information I would be so grateful.

My main concern is that the uncorrectable errors all occurred at the same time - 1822 hours? This calculates to 76 days? I'm lost. I also do not know what my next course of action should be.

I will say that I think the drive overheated. I say this because in the middle of the vents above the keyboard, there are brown heat markings. I take a full load of online classes and stream lectures many hours a week. I also stream television shows and play flash-based games. I noticed this sometimes has made my macbook extremely hot to the touch. I don't know whether I should try to get the harddrive repaired, replaced, or buy another computer (probably HP) with better specs that could handle my usage? :\

 

[Kaveman]

Your first step is BACK UP all your important files.

Then you take your computer to an AppleCare service centre, there should be one in your area. You did buy extended AppleCare, right???

They will replace the drive.

 

[karazelle]

The biggest mistake many people do is they put the laptop in their backpack before its gone to sleep, or don't check if its actually gone to sleep. Also, laptops MAY wake up, especially if some drivers are installed like the EyeTV stuff for recording TV which can optionally be set to wake up the computer for recordings.

That is a problem with laptops irregarless of HP or Apple. If you are going to keep the computer off for a longer period of time it is always best to shut it down. Sleep is more for between classes/meetings and such.

 

[Kaveman]

Yes, that used to be a problem with the earlier laptops.
If you own a newer MacBook it will have snapshot its RAM state and put itself to sleep long before the lid fully closes. We advise people to leave their laptop running unless they are not going to use it for 2 months. With 2 exceptions if they are running Microsoft or Adobe apps, then Logout before shutting the lid.

I've never heard that Shutting the Lid will cause the Hard Drive to fail.

 

[susanexpress1]

I have met the problem but it was solved by one of my friends.