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Question

Need laptop troubleshooting help

Jul 13, 2012 12:08AM PDT

Hi, I don't know if this is in the right forum, so my apologies in advance.

My laptop has been running very inefficiently for quite a few months. I often get the little rainbow circle spinning with websites. When I click something, there often is a pause, then the rainbow. With videos, the sound often works but the video ends up freezing in an attempt to catch up. (My solution for this is to press "pause" and allow things to sync up, but trying to activate the pause button often means nothing happens for 30 seconds until it actually activates). In fact, while typing this, I made a correction and the rainbow came up for LITERALLY a minute or more, then disappeared, and I had to wait an addition 2 minutes in order to type, which ended up being 10 minutes of this BS till I decided to cut and paste into a document so I could write without hassle. Truth be told, the latter is an anomaly, but considering Flash often crashes on my Safari, it may stand to reason?

And today I rebooted my computer after a night's sleep, so it's not like it's not fresh! I only have Word, an IM program, and my email open, if that says anything. My Safari has 5 tabs open.

So I wonder if my computer needs to be cleaned up? Or has the past few years been unkind to my computer, and the Internet is just too heavy for my computer's current capabilities?

And, on a related note, is MacKeeper worth it? I could be naive in that it's the solution to my problems, but their ads smack of hucksterism so I don't know.

I'm sure I'll need to give more info but here's what I can tell you now:

13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008
Processor 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)

Thanks a bunch . . . help me!

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
Follow-up
Jul 13, 2012 2:08AM PDT

What is a HDD? Hard Disk Drive?

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Good question but troubling to me.
Jul 13, 2012 2:47AM PDT

If a person is contemplating repairs they should learn about GOOGLE (HDD there finds the answer). Your question troubles me. If you don't know to use a common tool for simpler questions I fear I must change my answer to "take it to the Apple repair counter."
Bob

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There must be some mistake....
Jul 13, 2012 4:27AM PDT

I'm interested in your computer help, not your ego. Perhaps you have me confused with another person? Because Homey don't play that.

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Not at all.
Jul 13, 2012 5:39AM PDT

I hope you can see where you need to try a little harder if you are hoping to fix this yourself. Your statement about ego and such sadly makes me think you are not ready to dive into a laptop repair. Until you get better at searches about such things a simple issue could result in a dead laptop.

Until you accept these basics you should stay out of the insides of the machine.
bob

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Wow
Jul 14, 2012 5:36AM PDT

Wow... How long has it been since In Living Color went off the air? It's got to at least be over a decade, and still people are making references to it. I got curious, so I checked... Last episode of that show was in May of 1994, so that means it's been off the air what... 18 years now? I'm not sure what's worse, how old I feel now, or the fact that I got that reference so quickly after all this time.

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Ha!
Jul 15, 2012 6:50AM PDT

Jimmy, thanks for your answer to my question - it's much appreciated to find a chap willing to dispense his expertise in the spirit of helping others rather than displaying his ego.

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(NT) ???
Jul 15, 2012 9:56AM PDT
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Answer
Sounds to me like
Jul 13, 2012 12:37AM PDT

Sounds to me like you've got a bad HDD. Especially if the videos you are referring to are on your HDD.

Also, I know you probably didn't mean it literally, but electronic devices are not like humans. They don't have muscles that build up lactic acid that makes them feel weak/tired, and needs to be cleared away by the body. You shut a computer down, then turn it back on a couple seconds later, it's the same as if you let it sit all night long. Unless you're talking about CPU and GPU temperatures, but we'll save that for another time.

It honestly sounds to me like all you need is a fresh HDD, and your model is quite possibly one of the single easiest models to replace the HDD on. Just push the lever to release the battery cover, and there's the HDD, sitting right next to the battery. You don't even need to take the battery out (though it'd be a good idea, just so there's no possibility of live current zapping the new drive... Unplug the AC as well if it wasn't obvious). You need a PH00 and T6 screwdriver, but those are reasonably easy to find in precision screwdriver kits. Just be careful, because the SATA cable is easily damaged if you just go yanking on the drive once you remove the retaining clip thing. Then you just transfer the pegs from the one drive to the other (pretty sure that model had those pegs), and just reverse everything you did to take the drive out.

The only real gotcha moment you might have, is that you'll need to reinstall 10.6 if you don't have 10.7 burned to disc. Otherwise, the new drive won't have Apple's special recovery partition for reinstalling 10.7. You can also optionally buy a flash drive from Apple that basically has that recovery partition on it, but I wouldn't bother if you have the 10.6 discs handy, or you could optionally try burning a 10.7 disc before replacing the HDD.

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Answer
Can I be frank?
Jul 13, 2012 12:51AM PDT

I'd consider the age and pop for the new HDD, and while I was in there, get the canned air out and exit with a spotless interior. Also, I'd head to crucial.com to max out the ram.

Keep in mind the laptop is 5 years old so this is going to let you get by for another year if nothing else is amiss.
Bob