Slow, but new MacBook Pro

I could use some help here.

My Fiancé purchased her Mac back in August for school this year. It's a 13inch MacBook Pro - standard configuration. It's been great - except for it's slower than molasses. Seriously - I used iMovie on her Mac the other day to edit a quick project for one of her education classes and it took 1 minute to open it up, and then it spent another minute loading iMovie (it had never been used before - therefore no clips to load). It has taken that long every consecutive time. The internet is doggedly slow. It takes a while just to open the internet. It takes forever to open Microsoft Word, PowerPoint etcetera. Basically - anything and everything is slow. My 2010 MBP (w/ SSD - personally upgrade) is easily 3 times faster at every single operation her computer does even thought the SSD is a low-end model and the CPU is only a dual-core.

I know what you're thinking - there has to be tons of programs on this computer that are slowing it down. Nope. Just Office, iLife 2011, and the normally installed apps. She is running OSX Mavericks - it was slow prior to the upgrade though. I've also thought that maybe she just had too many things open at once - so I closed everything and just tried to open the "About this Mac" tab - took like 6 seconds or more to just open. Her computer is slow and laggy and I can't figure out why.

I'm also in college and I've been drowning in internships, work, and papers to give Apple a call as of yet (will this week over break if It can't be resolved). I don't think it's the HDD because normally those just fail - correct? The computer is only a couple months old. It also had some problems within a month of her owning it where it would completely freeze up on her and I had to manually force it to shut down in order to gain control of the system again. Any advice would be appreciate.

kribensis12 said:

I know what you're thinking - there has to be tons of programs on this computer that are slowing it down.

Click to expand...

Having lots of programs installed isn't a problem. What can be a problem is...having too many apps open at the same time.

kribensis12 said:

I've also thought that maybe she just had too many things open at once - so I closed everything and just tried to open the "About this Mac" tab - took like 6 seconds or more to just open. Her computer is slow and laggy and I can't figure out why.

Click to expand...

Looks like you already investigated the "too many apps open at once" area.

kribensis12 said:

I don't think it's the HDD because normally those just fail - correct?

Click to expand...

Many times yes. But sometimes HD's "on the decline" can operate in a "limbo" sort of state with greatly decreased performance. But eventually they will fail completely.

kribensis12 said:

The computer is only a couple months old. It also had some problems within a month of her owning it where it would completely freeze up on her and I had to manually force it to shut down in order to gain control of the system again. Any advice would be appreciate.

Click to expand...

If this computer is having so many problems (multiple problems mentioned)...maybe this computer should have been taken to the local Apple Store for an exam.

- Nick

p.s. I could offer some other ideas...but maybe it would be best to have Apple take a look at things. If it's truly a hardware issue...then only "good" replacement hardware will solve things.

The nearest Apple store is 2 hours away from my university and 3 hours from home. Any suggestions that might fix this computer situation prior to me driving there?

Seems like I'll be giving Apple a call this weekend. At least they have good customer service.

kribensis12 said:

The nearest Apple store is 2 hours away from my university and 3 hours from home. Any suggestions that might fix this?

Click to expand...

Yes...that is pretty far. To get a computer serviced via Applecare...you can also ship the computer to Apple. Just call Apple...they will send you a box...and arrange for pickup (usually Fed Ex). Turnaround is usually pretty fast (1 week or less many times).

Just in case...here are some other things to look into regarding the issues:

- Too many apps open at once (this may have already been covered).
- Hard drive too full (how big is the HD & how much free space)?
- How often is this computer rebooted (this clears the ram, and clears page-outs & the swap file)...things which can greatly slow down a Mac computer.
- Try doing an "SMC Reset" and an "NVRAM Reset" (do a search for the procedures if you do not know how).
- Download & run a program called "Onyx"...and run the automated tasks only (it's a button).

If none of this helps. The computer may have a hardware issue...which as I mentioned above...can only be solved by good replacement hardware.

- Nick

Also launch the Disk Utility from Applications/Utilities and click on the main hard drive and check the SMART status at the bottom. Does it say Passed? Onxy that Nick recommended will also check the SMART and also the Integrity of the hard drive.

I'll look into it tomorrow. I've used Onyx on my Mac before. I'll see if it helps. She doesn't normally reboot it but I've turned it on/off before to no success. I'll try that as well though. I know how to do an SMC reset - not an NVRAM reset though. I'll figure it out. If none of these work I'll give Apple a call - it should resolve to a quicker solution because they'll have me do half of this stuff for troubleshooting anyway. I appreciate the responses!