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Macbook Pro Running slow.
Hi guys,
I’m using a MacBookPro5,2 with the following:Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores:2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHzI’ve only been at work here for about 8 months so not entirely sure how old this macbook is but seems in relatively good condition.
Anyway, over the last week or so it’s started working a bit slower than usual. For example, programmes like open office and mail are taking about 5 minutes to open.
It’s also struggling with converting files via mpeg streamclip, compressor and exporting QTs from FCP.I know how to run computer maintainence on PCs but not on Macs.
The internal HD is 500GB with 207.13GB free space. Although, I can’t seem to find where the other 200GB of space is being used.
There’s about 88GB on the desktop and I checked through all the folders yesterday. I’m stumped.Any help with this would be amazing.
Thanks. -
4 Replies
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Hi Sarah,
some things for you to check:
– Open the Activity Monitor (it’s inside the utilities folder inside the applications folder) and see if there’s anything eating up loads of RAM or CPU cycles (if it does, note the offending application and see if you can quit or force quit it from inside activity monitor. Sometimes rendering processes go a bit crazy.)
– Repair disk permissions. Open Disk Utility (again in Utilities folder), select the internal hard disk (usually Macintosh HD) and under the First Aid tab select “Repair Disk Permissions”
– Check the hard disk, worst case scenario would be the internal hard disk is failing. To check for this on the same tab in Disk Utility click on “Verify Disk” this won’t be able to repair the disk but should show any major issues. I would recommend to boot from the Mac installer DVD (or snow leopard dvd) and run disk utility from on there (it’ll show up in the menu at the top before you click through to do any reinstalls, obviously you don’t want to reinstall ..) to fix any issues.
Hope that helps,
André
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Audio Engineer, Sound Designer
Video- and Photographer
http://www.andreengelhardt.net -
Hi Sarah,
A great utility I like to use to see where my hard drive space is being eaten up is called GrandPerspective
you can find out more information and download it here: Grand Perspective
You can tell GP to scan your entire hard drive and then it will display a graphical representation of the files stored on your hard drive as squares in a grid. The larger the square, the larger the file it represents. The grid is interactive and when you find a file that you don’t need, GP can reveal that file in the Finder and you can delete it.
Perhaps the best part of all is that it’s free!
Short of that, the advice that Andre gave is a great place to start. It sounds like this laptop was a hand me down of sorts. Checking the Activity Monitor is a great way to see if there are any stray processes that were installed by the person who was using it before you.
Also, which version of the OS are you working on and have you checked for and downloaded all of the available software updates?
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Thanks, will give all the above a go.
Thanks for your help.The OS Version on this mac is 10.6.7
Sarah
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Get “DiskWarrior” from Alsoft, your directories need repair.
Cheers
Alexander
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