My MacBook Pro's been lagging alot lately

[Agent Whiskers]

Okay so I've had this mid-2009 MacBook Pro (2.53 GHz, 4GB RAM) since June and it's been running relatively well up until a few days ago when it started rainbow pinwheeling on me while using Firefox, GarageBand, or Finder. I have VMware Fusion running Windows 7 but I'm not sure if that's what's causing the problem.

Some things I usually do that might be deemed suspicious are:

• I use InsomniaX when I need to keep the MacBook from sleeping
• I let the MacBook sleep rather than turning it off when I'm not using it

I haven't encountered many heat-related issues, luckily. Do you guys think one of these habits is causing the slowdown or is it something else? I tried restarting the computer and up until now I haven't noticed anything but I wouldn't put it past it to start chugging again.

[Diunx]

The hard drive might be dying.

[chronovore]

Caveat: I am speaking from near total ignorance. (feel free to preface most of my posts with this caveat, actually  )

OS X is UNIX, an OS which requires maintenance from time to time. Under 10.3 and 10.4 on my PowerBook I ran Onyx to do weekly bookkeeping scripts, but after upgrading to an Intel iMac running 10.5 I haven't been running anything like that. The scripts seemed to restore some pep to my PowerBook, but my iMac hasn't been short on speed yet.

[Don Flamenco]

Yeah, you need Onyx.  It's free and cleans shit up.  Run it every few months. 

[Agent Whiskers]

Alright thanks. I'll download it now and check it out.

[Don Flamenco]

also, I always just put mine in sleep too.  I guess I only restart about once a month or so, if that.  they're designed to handle that and the only thing it'll affect is the battery.

[Agent Whiskers]

also, I always just put mine in sleep too.  I guess I only restart about once a month or so, if that.  they're designed to handle that and the only thing it'll affect is the battery.

Good to know. I was worried about that for a while.

And it turns out my hard disk is pretty much fucked. I'm gonna wait a week until I get a new hard disk before I do something about it.

[Diunx]

CALLED IT!!!

[Don Flamenco]

also, I always just put mine in sleep too.  I guess I only restart about once a month or so, if that.  they're designed to handle that and the only thing it'll affect is the battery.

Good to know. I was worried about that for a while.

And it turns out my hard disk is pretty much fucked. I'm gonna wait a week until I get a new hard disk before I do something about it.

Onyx detected something wrong with it?  Sometimes it takes a long time to do readings...

also, I just got prompted for a mac update that says:

This update addresses intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers.

See if that fixes it.

[Agent Whiskers]

also, I always just put mine in sleep too.  I guess I only restart about once a month or so, if that.  they're designed to handle that and the only thing it'll affect is the battery.

Good to know. I was worried about that for a while.

And it turns out my hard disk is pretty much fucked. I'm gonna wait a week until I get a new hard disk before I do something about it.

Onyx detected something wrong with it?  Sometimes it takes a long time to do readings...

also, I just got prompted for a mac update that says:

This update addresses intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers.

See if that fixes it.

Onyx detected something wrong with the hard drive then referred me to Disk Utility which gave me a titload of error messages.

And I just checked software update and there were 2 updates at 37.1MB but it just showed iMovie being updated.

[bork]

I recently installed Snow Leopard, and now a number of applications are running slower than before.  VLC Player takes a full minute to play any .MKV files with subtitles.  They claim that this new 64-bit OSX stuff speeds shit up, but all I'm seeing is shit taking a little longer to open and Safari sucking worse than usual-- it crashes more than usual.  I think I may finally switch over to Firefox full-time.

[Agent Whiskers]

I recently installed Snow Leopard, and now a number of applications are running slower than before.  VLC Player takes a full minute to play any .MKV files with subtitles.  They claim that this new 64-bit OSX stuff speeds shit up, but all I'm seeing is shit taking a little longer to open and Safari sucking worse than usual-- it crashes more than usual.  I think I may finally switch over to Firefox full-time.

I'm pretty sure the problem is not from Snow Leopard itself. But just in case, have you downloaded all the latest updates?

[Tauntaun]

MACS ARE PERFECT YOU MUST HAVE BEEN USING A PC BY MISTAKE!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[recursivelyenumerable]

[Don Flamenco]

also, I always just put mine in sleep too.  I guess I only restart about once a month or so, if that.  they're designed to handle that and the only thing it'll affect is the battery.

Good to know. I was worried about that for a while.

And it turns out my hard disk is pretty much fucked. I'm gonna wait a week until I get a new hard disk before I do something about it.

Onyx detected something wrong with it?  Sometimes it takes a long time to do readings...

also, I just got prompted for a mac update that says:

This update addresses intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers.

See if that fixes it.

Onyx detected something wrong with the hard drive then referred me to Disk Utility which gave me a titload of error messages.

And I just checked software update and there were 2 updates at 37.1MB but it just showed iMovie being updated.

Try restarting and seeing if any new updates come up.  Not sure how they roll out their updates...i'm in the U.S., midwest, not sure if that makes a difference. 

though if onyx couldn't verify the hdd on the initial start-up, that's probably bad news. still try running the utilities (disk permissions in particular) and see what happens.


 

[bork]

I recently installed Snow Leopard, and now a number of applications are running slower than before.  VLC Player takes a full minute to play any .MKV files with subtitles.  They claim that this new 64-bit OSX stuff speeds shit up, but all I'm seeing is shit taking a little longer to open and Safari sucking worse than usual-- it crashes more than usual.  I think I may finally switch over to Firefox full-time.

I'm pretty sure the problem is not from Snow Leopard itself. But just in case, have you downloaded all the latest updates?

Yup.  I think it's just that some stuff has not been smoothed out yet, and some apps need to be updated again.  VLC's problem is subtitle-related...other players don't have this issue.

[Don Flamenco]

vlc is just weird.  there are issues that haven't been fixed since I first used it years ago.

[GoofyGoober]

I thought I read that SL was having issues if users updated from Leopard, but not with a fresh install. Not sure about the specifics.

[bork]

I thought I read that SL was having issues if users updated from Leopard, but not with a fresh install. Not sure about the specifics.

I updated...