Repair Disk Permissions Issues

You can ignore those permissions per support article

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21090

Since you brought up iMove, I suspect your storage is nearly full as this most certainly causes the computer to slow down. video files are the biggest culprit.

Look in your Activity Monitor and reduce the drive space by copying to a external, Disk Utility HFS+ formatted external powered drive of unnecessary files so your boot drive is ideally below 50% filled (yea I know but the computer slows down after that) and not more than 75% filled.

Once you have done that. Get another newer external powered HFS drive and download the free Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the internal drive to the external.

Hold option and boot off the external clone, test it out then use Disk Utility to erase the internal and then reverse clone the external onto the internal, this will defragment and optimize your drive so the OS and programs are on the fast part of the drive, not the slow parts.

Reboot into the internal and run off of the free OnyX's maintainence and cleaning aspects and reboot.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/

Sir speedy machine here we come!

Now of course you may have other issues that could be causing your slow down, like not enough RAM or some sort of failed process or leftover program, tweaks or simply a slow Internet.

You can opt to simply reinstall OS X 10.6 ( by holding c and booting off the installer disk ) over your installed version (doesn't touch files or programs) then immediatly Software Updating until clear, that will clean anything hanging out in OS X.

If you still have slowdowns, then it's in what geeks call "User land" basically something installed outside of root, like a program or only runs in user, not in OS X.

For that you need to create a new user, transfer your files via the Shared Drop and wean yourself off the old user and finally delete it. Also install all new versions of your third party programs removing the originals first.

That should do it.

serenity99 wrote:

Hmmm, not sure it is a disk full issue. I have 500 gb and 381 gb is free.

Not a full disk issue then.

If I reinstall OS X is it easy to do? I assume I switch off the computer and when I turn it back on hold C and have the installer disk in? Will it automatically boot to OS X and reinstall? I am afraid I do something wrong and erase everything lol

First things first, copy your user file folders to a exernal drive (Music, Documents, Pictures etc) and disconnect.

This is optional as reinstalling OS X does not delete user files, but your taking your chances with no backup anyway as we don't know what the problem is, your drive could be dying. So grab those files!

Then hold c boot off the 10.6 disk and second screen in simply reinstall OS X and reboot, easy as pie.

When you log in, immediatly repeat Software Update until clear (sometimes there are more updates)

See if that clears it, next download and run ALL (check everything) of OnyX's cleaning and maintainence aspects (also run the intial checks) and reboot.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/

If there are any issues when OnyX runs, please state those as it's a indicator of more issues. (backed up your user files yet? right?)

You didn't install something strange like MacKeeper or anything that said you had malware right?

Just put MacKeeper in the forum search bar and you'll find plenty of threads on the subject of that junkware. I suggest you read those, because uninstalling doesn't remove all it's insidious little files and there is advice among them on what to look for.

Presence on the app store is, unfortunately, no guarantee of quality or even usefulness. While the app is technically legit, much of it's behaviour is as close to malware as makes little odds.