My macbook takes 2 hours to do anything, virus?

Yesterday my macbook was working fine but then it froze up and I had no choice but to hold the power button until it turned off. When I switched it back on it took 2 hours to start up and 20 mins for anything else to work and no programs will start up. I've been having problems with for the last couple of weeks anyway, files I delete don't go to my trash can and yesterday before it froze my itunes wouldn't start up instead I was getting this pop up with nothing but a red warning triangle and an ok button. Has my laptop got a virus or something?

I'm using Leopard on a 2 year old macbook

More than likely hard drive dieing.

Have a new WD Green 1.5TB, 6 weeks old, just died in this manner.
It will cause all sorts of other random issues.
Mine was in a Win 7 machine - First thing happened was the UAC corrupted and couldn't log in to any user accounts except in Safe Mode. Spent two days troubleshooting Windows (incl'g a clean install, which took over 2 hours) and getting mad at MS until I stuck a couple of other drives in and all problems disappeared. It had all the same issues you've just mentioned, no program would start, if it did it took 20 minutes, etc.

(There are no viruses that will run in OS X at this time.)

Oh so if I get a new hardrive am I going to lose all my files and itunes songs/videos?

kellie101 said:

Oh so if I get a new hardrive am I going to lose all my files and itunes songs/videos?

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Maybe, depends on how badly damaged your currently HDD is.

CrimsonRequiem said:

Maybe, depends on how badly damaged your currently HDD is.

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I agree. Try backing up as much of your data to another drive as soon as you can. The longer you wait, the harder recovery could be in the future.

I agree with Vansmith, BACK UP and do it NOW!

If you get a new drive today I would also get an external hard drive case and put in the old dying HDD.

how can I back it up though if the laptops barely working :/

You said you got it to boot up. If you've got Time Machine running, great! If not, at the very least, copy your critical files to a flash drive.

Worked on mine across a couple of weekends, not all at one shot.

I "think" I had everything backed up to my server that was on this drive, but before I tried the clean install I was able to get all of my media files copied from it to my Mac just in case.

It may take awhile to transfer your data, but if you don't want to lose it, ya gotta try it. As long as it's semi-running you got a chance at saving your data.

Can you start your computer in Safe Mode How To Start Your Mac In Safe Mode (Technology & Cars: Protecting Your Computer) and Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode? That may at least let you get to many of your files, as long as they're not directly OS-dependent.

Sadly it is a bit late to tell you, the time to back up to an external drive is whilst your HDD is in tip top condition. As Missing Manuals author David Pogue puts it "There are only two types of computer users .. those that have lost all their information and those that are about to."

but could it just be that I've taken up to much space on my hard drive and need to uninstall something like the sims 3 and delete some HD videos and pictures|

It could be. What size drive do you have and how much free space is on it.

A full drive can definitely slow it down enough to be frustrating, but typically not enough to be ready to throw it out the window.

I'd try hughvane's suggestion to boot into safe mode also. Have seen failing drives work like normal there for a period of time after they started acting up in a normal startup.