My MacBook Pro is currently running the latest OS it has 750GB HDD 8 GB memory. It has currently got 350GB of free available space
It has started being slow about two weeks ago and slow enough that all the applications take too long to open and make them not respond.
Is there anything that I can do that will fix this problem?
MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)
1. be sure you have up-to-date backups, as that is a symptom of a failing Hard drive.
Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime, affect performance, and increase heat and fan activity
I am currently in activity monitor and it shows that it is using 6GB of the 8GB would that be the problem and how can I fix it?
This related article is better for looking at RAM use:
Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
The most important items to look at are not the most obvious:
PageOuts: This is a cumulative count (since last startup) of how much stuff had to be moved around when you got COMPLETELY out of readily accessible memory, and had to do really time-consuming stuff to compensate -- write something OUT to have room to read something IN.
Swap Used: This is a cumulative count (since last startup) of how much stuff from a suddenly-backgrounded task was written out wholesale to make room for a new or suddenly frontmost task.
^Listen to that^
No doubt. Your hard drive is a dedicated storage unit and is not made to be a scratch disk.
How to fix slow response on MacBook Pro
