Slow Macbook

I have a Macbook with 2gb of RAM in it and Bootcamp. In the past the speed has been amazing, but recently it has been really slow to start up, and this morning it was moving at a crawl. I would open up Firefox and it would take over a minute to load, and then the browser would freeze for a second when I change pages (not slow page loading, but the browser not responding). I shut it down and I hope things will be better when I get home tonight. I also have Windows on the macbook, and that works fine.

Any ideas? It makes me think of virus but virus and macbook don't seem to go together. Any software I can download to clean things up? Thanks.

try running macaroni. http://www.atomicbird.com/ Get the latest version that runs on a Intel Mac. I would also consider running Disk Warrior 4.

Repair permissions?

This works for me when I have this issue

Thanks, I'll try macaroni and disc warrior 4, but what is repair permissions?

Ok, are there any programs that are good that are...free? Thanks.

I don't think it is a virus. Currently, there are no known viruses for OS X. However your Mac might get slow if you have too many startup processes. (You can check the listed items by clicking More Info.. button from the "About This Mac" window in the main manu)

The system can also get slow if you have too many active widgets.

Try Onyx to cleanup the cache. It is a freeware application comes in handy for maintaining your system.

Goto Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility to repair permissions.

novicew said:

I don't think it is a virus. Currently, there are no known viruses for OS X. However your Mac might get slow if you have too many startup processes. (You can check the listed items by clicking More Info.. button from the "About This Mac" window in the main manu)

The system can also get slow if you have too many active widgets.

Try Onyx to cleanup the cache. It is a freeware application comes in handy for maintaining your system.

Goto Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility to repair permissions.

Click to expand...

completely agree with novicew.

most likley you've just got some packed caches. you should notice a performance increase almost immediately. although the very first time you restart after doing this, i've noticed OS X and some apps will start just a bit slower. guessing that it may have to recreate some "temp" files that are normally used to speed up restarting and app launching.

cliffius said:

Thanks, I'll try macaroni and disc warrior 4, but what is repair permissions?

Click to expand...

Another function of Onyx. I believe the permissions getted screwy sometimes when you install apps or remove apps. It was recommended to me to repair them in Onyx every few weeks along with general maintenance. I find that this helps the performance of my Macbook, which also runs with 2 GIG of RAM.

Thanks for the replies. I installed onyx and it has made the computer perform a lot faster, it no longer drags at setup. however, my web browsers (firefox and safari) are still dragging whenever i click links. it's not the internet, but the actually browser freezes. i'm thinking of installing and uninstalling the programs and seeing what happens tonight.

i use azureus, is it possible that program stores a cache somewhere of downloaded files that onyx doesn't get?

well, you can always use a browser's ability to clean it's own temp files, cookies, and history. that may help a bit.

It's a lot better, but it still freezes up for a few seconds here and there. I was planning on buying a bigger harddrive when Leopard comes out, so it doesn't matter too much.