MacBook unusably slow.

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MacBook unusably slow.

At the beginning of this year my MacBook essentially died. Whenever I tried turning it on I would just be faced with either the grey screen with the apple logo and the grey spinning loading disc. Or I would be greeted by the grey screen with a grey folder icon with a question mark on it. After much time spent searching for a way to recover my MacBook I decided the best plan of action was to reboot from my original Snow Leopard install disc.

So I have have a fully functioning MacBook although it is painfully slow. Applications take between 5 and sometimes 15 minutes to open and trying to load a webpage is near impossible. Even trying to open a folder takes over 5 minutes.

I have tried using the Disk Utility to diagnose a problem but it says that the drive is fine and that there is 487.92 GB free (the drive is 499.76 GB).

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 2, 2013 12:42 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 2, 2013 1:39 PM in response to ThisIsStapes

The question mark on boot means your Mac can't find a system folder to boot from.

So you would startup your Mac while holding down the Option key. That should prompt the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk then click Restart.

If the startup disk does not appear, that's an indication that drive is failing or has failed and since you are experiencing problems,

"Applications take between 5 and sometimes 15 minutes to open and trying to load a webpage is near impossible. Even trying to open a folder takes over 5 minutes."

I strongly recommend backing up all your important data just in case.

A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac

When you run Disk Utility to Verify the disk, do that from your install disc. Make sure at the bottom of the Disk Utility window S.M.A.R.T status says: Verified

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