2010 MacBook Pro Running Slow

[malione]

In recent months, Chrome has been dragging my computer down. Pages stall and fail to load, to the point that Chrome prompts me to kill them. I'm running 10.6.8 with 4 GB of RAM.

 

[pigoo3]

- How full is your hard drive (gigs used & gigs free)?
- How often do reboot/restart the computer?
- How many apps do you usually have open at the same time?
- How many tabs in Chrome do you usually have open?

* Nick

 

[malione]

hard drive -- 230 GB used and 20 GB free (Been this way long before the problem started)
reboot -- I've been rebooting daily now, and the problem still persists.
apps -- Usually not more than 3 or 4. The problem persists even when I kill all other apps.
tabs -- This varies, but I've seen it happen with as few as 3 to 5 tabs.

The problem began about a month ago, and I'm wondering if there isn't some incompatibility with a recent Chrome update. I've looked into upgrading the OS to Yosemite, but after seeing mixed reviews, I don't really want to go that way unless I'm relatively certain that it will solve the problem.

 

[pigoo3]

hard drive -- 230 GB used and 20 GB free (Been this way long before the problem started)

I'm pretty sure this is the problem. 20gig free is less than 10% free…and the 10% free space that is available…may be fragmented (spread out all over the hard drive…non contiguous).

Believe me…you need more free space for the computer to run well.

- Nick

 

[malione]

Thanks Nick,

I cleared up another 60 GB of disk space and it's better now, but Chrome still stalls and keeps giving me "Shockwave Flash has crashed" errors and gray jigsaw puzzle pieces. This symptom started right around the same time I started noticing the slowdown.

I'm going to monitor it and see how bad the problem continues to be.

-Mike

 

[pigoo3]

Great to hear that freeing up some extra space has helped. That 20gig free (before)…was just too little for the computer to run efficiently.

As far as the problems with Chrome…I'm not 100% sure what's causing that. But here are some things to try:

- Try a different browser like Safari or Firefox…an see if it helps.
- Try downloading & installing the free maintenance app called "Onyx". After launching Onyx…just click on the "Automaton" button…and let it do it's thing.
- Try running the program "iDefrag" and see if it helps.
- Try a fresh install of Chrome.

HTH,

- Nick