I've used this MacBook 2,1 (Intel) for a few years without any issues. It has always had very snappy response and very few problems. Earlier this week, I noticed that it takes about 4 minutes to boot up now as opposed to the 30 seconds it used to take just a week ago. Once running, Safari also tends to be unresponsive at times and slow to load. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that during boot up, I can HEAR the hard drive give off some "clicks" and faint "beeps" (for lack of a more technical description). In my experience with Windows machines, this is often a sign of hard drive problems.
With Vista, I can run a CHKDSK and fix the drive by taking the bad sectors out of the mix. I am trying to figure out how to best diagnose and repair my drive on this Mac. I tried booting from the Snow Leopard DVD and running Disk Utility/First Aid to find the problem, but this utility reports that everything is fine and dandy. I am not sure I agree.
Can someone tell me of a more powerful tool for the Mac that will fully diagnose any hardware or software problems on this machine so I can get it back to tip top performance. Is there a diagnostic utility provided by Apple? Other utilities built in to Snow Leopard? Third party applications? (I looked at TechTool Pro but $98 is pretty steep. Plus you can't download it. Looking for something closer to $0 that I can get right away.)
I've tried holding down "d" during a restart with the Snow Leopard DVD in the drive in hopes of launching Apple Hardware Test, but the Mac just starts up normally every time.
As I have never had problems with a Mac before, I am in uncharted waters with regard to diagnostics so if anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
MacBook2,1 Mac OS X (10.6.3) Vista 32 Ultimate/Parallels 5
With Vista, I can run a CHKDSK and fix the drive by taking the bad sectors out of the mix. I am trying to figure out how to best diagnose and repair my drive on this Mac. I tried booting from the Snow Leopard DVD and running Disk Utility/First Aid to find the problem, but this utility reports that everything is fine and dandy. I am not sure I agree.
Can someone tell me of a more powerful tool for the Mac that will fully diagnose any hardware or software problems on this machine so I can get it back to tip top performance. Is there a diagnostic utility provided by Apple? Other utilities built in to Snow Leopard? Third party applications? (I looked at TechTool Pro but $98 is pretty steep. Plus you can't download it. Looking for something closer to $0 that I can get right away.)
I've tried holding down "d" during a restart with the Snow Leopard DVD in the drive in hopes of launching Apple Hardware Test, but the Mac just starts up normally every time.
As I have never had problems with a Mac before, I am in uncharted waters with regard to diagnostics so if anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
MacBook2,1 Mac OS X (10.6.3) Vista 32 Ultimate/Parallels 5