I'm relatively new here, but I've asked one question prior to this one. I'd really appreciate any help I can get, regarding this problem. Thanks in advance.
When I went to use my System Preferences menu tonight, I noticed right away that something wasn't right. It would allow me to select something, but it would take about five to ten minutes to load it. For example, it took about 10 minutes (at least) to open the lock and bring up the window that asked for my password, to authenticate it. It also took it upon itself to load for fifteen minutes, once I typed in my password and pressed enter.
After closing that, I decided that I'd try to find something in my Home Window. I double-clicked on that, and everything seemed fine - that was until I clicked on one of the menu links (ie. Documents,) and it proceeded to give me the pinwheel for about ten minutes. It never did load, and I had to get out of it.
After having those problems, I decided that I'd do a force restart. That worked fine, but I had the same problem as soon as I tried to do the same things again, once it had restarted itself. I tried to bear with it, but I kept getting the same problem in everything that I would attempt to do with that application.
What could this be? A friend told me that my hard-drive might be screwed. I'm hoping that that is not the case, because this is a laptop that I'm renting from my college for three years, and I already have about fifteen to twenty notes on it. I don't want to lose them, so I'd end up putting them on my flash drive; however, I don't want to go through all of the hassle.
If I go to the computer resources desk tomorrow, they'll probably want to take a look at it, and keep it over the weekend. I can't afford to have it taken away for that long, due to the fact that I have an assignment to do. I'm hoping that it's something I can fix myself.
Edit: I forgot to mention that everything else worked fine when I was loading those things for large amounts of time.
When I went to use my System Preferences menu tonight, I noticed right away that something wasn't right. It would allow me to select something, but it would take about five to ten minutes to load it. For example, it took about 10 minutes (at least) to open the lock and bring up the window that asked for my password, to authenticate it. It also took it upon itself to load for fifteen minutes, once I typed in my password and pressed enter.
After closing that, I decided that I'd try to find something in my Home Window. I double-clicked on that, and everything seemed fine - that was until I clicked on one of the menu links (ie. Documents,) and it proceeded to give me the pinwheel for about ten minutes. It never did load, and I had to get out of it.
After having those problems, I decided that I'd do a force restart. That worked fine, but I had the same problem as soon as I tried to do the same things again, once it had restarted itself. I tried to bear with it, but I kept getting the same problem in everything that I would attempt to do with that application.
What could this be? A friend told me that my hard-drive might be screwed. I'm hoping that that is not the case, because this is a laptop that I'm renting from my college for three years, and I already have about fifteen to twenty notes on it. I don't want to lose them, so I'd end up putting them on my flash drive; however, I don't want to go through all of the hassle.
If I go to the computer resources desk tomorrow, they'll probably want to take a look at it, and keep it over the weekend. I can't afford to have it taken away for that long, due to the fact that I have an assignment to do. I'm hoping that it's something I can fix myself.
Edit: I forgot to mention that everything else worked fine when I was loading those things for large amounts of time.
