Strange behavior - slow typing, scrolling, etc

Question

Level 2

196 points

Strange behavior - slow typing, scrolling, etc

Lately my OS has been behaving strangely. If I re-start my laptop things go back to normal, but after a little while the problems return. Slow and somewhat unreponsive two finger scrolling on the trackpad (and it's the same with my external bluetooth trackpad, so it's not the hardware); slow/un-responsive one finger click; and overall sluggishness with all apps. Spinning colorwheel too. Like I said, re-starting gets things back to normal, but only for a little while. I find myself having to restart a few times a day.

I've run disk doctor and it says the HD is "ok". I also repair permissions on a regular basis. How else can I try to diagnose what's going on? I'm interested in upgrading to Mountain Lion - is there a possibility that performing the upgrade will solve this performance problem? Or should I try to get this fixed before the upgrade?

Thanks

Scott

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 4GB RAM

Posted on Jul 31, 2013 12:56 PM

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Answer 1

CMCSK

Level 6

11,452 points

Jul 31, 2013 3:19 PM in response to Scott F.

Scott F. wrote:

- is there a possibility that performing the upgrade will solve this performance problem? Or should I try to get this fixed before the upgrade?

Thanks

Scott

No & yes

How large is your hard drive and how much hard drive space do you have left?

Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball

Disconnect all peripherals from your computer.

Boot from your install disc & run Repair Disk from the utility menu. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.

Select your language.

Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.

Select Disk Utility.

Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click First Aid.

Click Repair Disk.

Restart your computer when done.

Repair permissions after you reach the desktop-http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963 and restart your computer.

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Answer 2

Scott F. Author

Level 2

196 points

Jul 31, 2013 3:35 PM in response to CMCSK

Thanks. My HD is 1TB and I have 95GB free, so I should be ok. I think it needs have 5% to avoid problems, right?

I read the article about the spinning ball, but didn't find it that helpful.

I'll try repairing from the install DVDs, but DiskUtility didn't say the disk needed repairing, so not sure why that would help.

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Answer 3

ds store

Level 7

30,705 points

Jul 31, 2013 7:28 PM in response to Scott F.

Why is my computer slow?

..Step by Step to fix your Mac

https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

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Answer 4

Scott F. Author

Level 2

196 points

Aug 5, 2013 7:41 PM in response to ds store

Thanks for the reply. I'm looking through all of the instructions. But the main thing I want to get clarity on is regarding free HD space. I always thought it was only 5% of the HD that needed to be left free, but in one of the articles you linked to it says that the boot drive shouldn't ever be more than 80% full. Is this really true? Since my internal HD is 1TB that would mean leaving 200GB free, which seems like a lot.

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