Weird graphic before login screen and laptop is VERY slow

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Level 1

9 points

Weird graphic before login screen and laptop is VERY slow

Hello,

So I have an Early-2011 MacBook Pro 17". Lately (past 3 months) the computer has been slower (which is normal, it's getting older) but now it is just unbearably slow and for seemingly NO reason. I have meters on the menu bar that say there is pleny of RAM left and the processor is running at 2%-6%. I can't figure out for a single reason why this is happening, but it is EXTREMELY frustrating, since only 2.5 years ago I paid 3200$ for this computer.

Now there is a weird graphic that appears RIGHT before the login screen appears. I have attached a photo. I currently own an iPhone 5, iPad 4, iMac 20" (2008), MacBook Pro 17" (early 2011), and an iPod Touch 3rd Generation. I have had problems with almost all the products, but yet have remained a die-hard Apple fan. I'm beginning to question my affinity to Apple, because I could have purchased a 17" Windows computer for MUCH less and then just replaced it this year. Instead I thought this piece of junk would last me 6 years.... This is hardly looking like it will be the case, as I can barely do anything on it as of now.

It's an early-2011 MacBook Pro 17", with a 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM and a 750GB Western Digital Black hard drive running at 7200RPM.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB RAM

Posted on Feb 16, 2014 7:42 PM

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Answer 1

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Feb 17, 2014 9:42 PM in response to justinjsc

justinjsc,

I can’t explain the weird graphic, but I can offer something to try regarding the slowdown. Boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery mode by holding down a Command key and the R key as it starts up. Once the Mac OS X Utilities menu appears, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Did this make any difference?

In case the slowdown is due to a problem with your hard drive, do you make regular backups? If not, you might want to consider buying an external drive to use as a Time Machine backup destination.

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