10-12-2008, 11:39 PM

Firstly, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it for simply clicking on my problem to read the whole thing.

I have a Black MacBook from April 2008 that's totally maxed out with 4GB RAM and 250GB HD. So I thought it strange that, in the last week or so, my computer has been really, really slow. I'm not sure if it's a memory problem, because this happens even when I've just restarted the machine and have only two programs running.

The symptoms are:

1. Cursor/typing is being hindered by something, because you can tell it's not smooth and fast and keeping in step with what I'm typing, as it usually does. Deleting does the same thing; it deletes letter-by-letter (#%*&$!).

2. Scrolling shows the same symptoms as the above--really rigid, inaccurate, and unsmooth (I exclusively use the native trackpad).

3. Safari runs really slow. I have a hard time watching videos online because they exhibit the same symptoms as the two above...takes forever to load and then will only play about 3 seconds at a time before reloading again just to play another 3 seconds...and so on.

I empty my caches and my trash relentlessly, and I have ~130GB of free space on my hard drive. I use activity monitor to view my RAM usage, and it typically is fine with around 1-1/2 GB of free memory available.

So, not only is this puzzling to me, because I got the 4GB of RAM for a reason, but when I last restarted it the other day, it booted making this repetitive crunching cue (you know, the whirrr...pause...high-pitch-sound, whirrr...pause...high-pitch-sound...etc.) and it wouldn't stop, so I restarted it again. It stopped thankfully, but that really, really worried me. Could any overheating malfunctions be causing this (I'm really just curious about this one)?

I don't know what's the deal with my computer, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Thank you so much, guys. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

10-13-2008, 02:26 AM

make sure you have the latest updates from Apple.
The latest update is 10.5.5

10-13-2008, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by umang7888

make sure you have the latest updates from Apple.
The latest update is 10.5.5

I checked and I'm up to date with 10.5.5.

11-04-2008, 07:02 AM

you may want to try some software like Onyx and do some maintenance with it.

11-05-2008, 01:02 PM

Originally Posted by Creare

Firstly, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it for simply clicking on my problem to read the whole thing.

I have a Black MacBook from April 2008 that's totally maxed out with 4GB RAM and 250GB HD. So I thought it strange that, in the last week or so, my computer has been really, really slow. I'm not sure if it's a memory problem, because this happens even when I've just restarted the machine and have only two programs running.

The symptoms are:

1. Cursor/typing is being hindered by something, because you can tell it's not smooth and fast and keeping in step with what I'm typing, as it usually does. Deleting does the same thing; it deletes letter-by-letter (#%*&$!).

2. Scrolling shows the same symptoms as the above--really rigid, inaccurate, and unsmooth (I exclusively use the native trackpad).

3. Safari runs really slow. I have a hard time watching videos online because they exhibit the same symptoms as the two above...takes forever to load and then will only play about 3 seconds at a time before reloading again just to play another 3 seconds...and so on.

I empty my caches and my trash relentlessly, and I have ~130GB of free space on my hard drive. I use activity monitor to view my RAM usage, and it typically is fine with around 1-1/2 GB of free memory available.

So, not only is this puzzling to me, because I got the 4GB of RAM for a reason, but when I last restarted it the other day, it booted making this repetitive crunching cue (you know, the whirrr...pause...high-pitch-sound, whirrr...pause...high-pitch-sound...etc.) and it wouldn't stop, so I restarted it again. It stopped thankfully, but that really, really worried me. Could any overheating malfunctions be causing this (I'm really just curious about this one)?

I don't know what's the deal with my computer, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Thank you so much, guys. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

Run a SMART scan on your hard drive, sounds like it's on its way south if it's clicking/crunching during bootup. If it is, back it up and get a new hard disk.