HELP!!! My mac is running slow

LizzieMay2116 · #1 August 11th, 2008, 03:16 PM

HELP!!! MY MAC IS RUNNING SLOW

So my fairly new MacBook Pro has been running slow the past week and I dont know why. It was working well when I was at school and then when I got home is started to move slower then ever. I keep getting the watch symbol or the spinning rainbow circle. I am new to a mac and I know those two things are not the best to have popping up but i dont know how to fix it.

I am not sure if my computer is running slow because of how much i use Adobe CS3 or what. I have notice though If I am not running a CS3 program it runs a little faster, but I didn't have any problems in the previous months with my computer running slow while working with CS3.

I do make sure I keep a minimal amount of work on the computer (to ensure there is free space). I frequently clean out my cache in safari and I will run the program Onyx once a week to clean it up some more. I dont install a program unless i am going to use it a lot (no point in having unused programs on the computer).

Can someone please help me fix my slow running computer???

I have a MacBook Pro: Bought it Dec 2007
• Running Mac OS X
• Processor : 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• Memory : 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

nixgeek · #2 August 11th, 2008, 05:21 PM

It's always best to make sure that you have at least 10-15% free space on your hard drive. Once you start getting to that point or below it, your Mac is going to start running slow because it needs space for virtual memory and other temporary files. So you might want to start using a tool like OnyX or Yasu which will help you with maintaining your system and cleaning out old files and system caches. If that doesn't help clear out some space, then you might have to look at offloading rarely-used files to some sort of external storage.

LizzieMay2116 · #3 August 11th, 2008, 05:34 PM

Thanx Nixgeek
I do use Onyx and find that it helps out... Is there any way to change the Virtual Memory settings??

nixgeek · #4 August 11th, 2008, 06:20 PM

That I know of, no. That's done dynamically by Mac OS X. If you're already using OnyX and still having the problems, you might have to resort to offloading some unused files to external storage. As a matter of fact, I have to do the same thing on my iMac G5, but the task just seems daunting enough with all the files I have that I keep putting it off.

LizzieMay2116 · #5 August 11th, 2008, 08:16 PM

Thanx for the help nixgeek....
I will give it a try =)