Major MacBook Pro issues

Hi everyone,

My macbook pro is a mess right now. I am going to give all the info I can. I am sure there are some things about the computer you will need to know, but I have no clue what you need or how to get it so if you tell me how to I will find it out and put it up ASAP. I have had if for just over 3 years and it has not been what I expected it to be but now it is even worse.

Problems:

Since the beginning I have had some issues with Safari closing for no apparent reason. It has asked me to report it... but I never did. I just quit Safari and opened it again (sometimes I had to reboot to get it to open again and actually work. If I click relaunch it won't do anything other then open and load an 8th of the way and stay there).

About 6 months ago I dropped it and dented the case by the screen. It worked fine after that (well kinda... it has always had a few issues). The only real problem that happened right away was that it doesn't line up perfectly when it closes. It still closes though.

Sometimes if I close it when it is on, and then I open it, I won't get the screen to type in my password. When that happens there are times that I just close it and open it a few times and it will come up and I can type in my password. Other times I have to hold in the power button and kill it...

It frequently freezes now. I mainly use Safari and Pages, but it happens in other apps as well. It will freeze for 5 minutes or so sometimes. That is really frustrating when you are in the middle of a paper. It used to freeze for 30 seconds every now and then...but now it is a huge issue.

Sometimes when I type it gets way behind what I am typing. It has done that for most of this post.

This summer my keys stopped working for a few days (well the bottom row, spacebar, and some of home row). But that hasn't been a problem since then.

My mouse doesn't work properly sometimes. I will have to click several times (10-15) to get it to actually work. I have it set up so you have to physically push the track pad in because I bump it when it is set up the other way and it drives me nuts.

I think that is all of it... I will add some if I remember any of the other problems I have had. I am just frustrated and what to know how to fix if (if it can be fixed) and a cost estimate. Let me know what additional info you need for my help.

Thanks!

My MBP 13.3" was appalling when I first received it direct from the Apple Store. I won't go into boring detail, but I was extremely disappointed, especially with the display. The trouble is, I live in central America and returning it is a cumbersome and costly process, so I tried to sort it myself. I was finally persuaded to reformat the hard drive (not a simple process) and install OS-X anew. The machine was utterly transformed - everything worked as it should. Somehow the OS had been wrongly installed from new, which seems incredible but was undeniably true.

I have discovered though that it is only marginally more stable than my current Windows machine, something I wasn't expecting. I have had the Mac about 16 months now and have just completed the third software reformat and rebuild. That's about the same as for my Windows machine of around the same age. My nephew maintains some 40 Windows machines plus a heavy duty server, and from hard experience he now reformats and reinstalls on every machine every six months. He is never caught out by machines malfunctioning, unless of course like yours they've been dropped.

You haven't said what you have running on your machine, nor whether you have been diligent with Time Machine backups. If you have been, and have a backup from a time when the machine was working perfectly, I suggest you try going back to that. Otherwise I suggest the more radical and time-consuming approach of a reformat and reinstallation from original disks. Only if you still have problems after that would I consider a possible hardware issue. I was utterly convinced that my display was defective on delivery, yet it was fully corrected by starting over.

Formatting the drive is not a simple process??? Takes me seconds. I ran OSX without a reinstall for 6 years on my iMac G5. It never slowed down.

I should clarify. I found the instructions on reformatting hard to follow, and I had three attempts at it before I finally succeeded. After each unsuccessful attempt I duly reloaded the OS and then realised nothing had changed. Once I sussed out what the instructions meant it has indeed been simple. Takes me more than mere seconds though.

My machine hasn't particularly "slowed down" before I've decided to rebuild. Rather I've had increasing instances of "hanging", of applications refusing to close, and sometimes refusing to open. And the apparent internet wireless sensitivity dropping. Maybe there's a way of dealing with each instance separately, but I found it simpler and in the long run quicker and more certain to pull the plug.

I'd just install a new OS on it, install Firefox and delete Safari.