MacBook jerky freeze unstable

feels like an XP machine being taken over by a virus

mostly happens when i load PDF files, but can also happen other times

the entire system just hangs, frustration i'm unable to do my work

i think there might be something wrong with my adobe reader because it doesn't happen when i use preview to view my PDF files

Try repairing disk permissions first.

Applications - Utilities - Disk Utility - Repair Disk Permissions

I'd also recommend giving the Maintenance routines in Onyx a try, but I do agree that repairing permissions is a good first step, particularly if you've had to hard power off your Macbook without doing a full shutdown at any point.

thanks for the response so far

i've tried repairing disk permissions, still happens

i guess it could be a faulty HD?

since the HD is constantly being used for MP3s, watching movies etc...

and since the problem usually occurs when VLC Player / Adobe is running

there might be a connection here...

Could possibly mean that i've over-worked the HD or maybe i have a Mac-virus

at the moment i have all programs closed and the system is acting very sluggish as if a virus was running in the background. infact i am struggling to finish this post

How much ram does your system have? Slowness, jerky, is many time an indication that you don't have enough ram and are putting to much load on it. It's a thought... Either not enough for maybe faulty ram can give those symptoms.

Try running the Apple Hardware Test. That would rule out defective hardware (like a bad hard drive) as a potential cause.

yeah but that doesn't explain why the system struggles even after everything is closed

im quite sure adobe updater was working in the background because after the application "unexpectedly shutdown" the system began to restabalize itself

tried to disable the auto-update but couldn't find the setting so i've decided to uninstall adobe and download the fresh version

hope this fixes the problem

Okay I'm now quite certain that Adobe Update is the culprit of this problem.

It runs in the background and consumes vast amounts of memory.

700MB is real memory and
1.5GB of virtual memory

Has anyone come across this problem before?

I've tried downloading a fresh from the official site twice without success.

Never had this problem with Adobe when I was using Tiger