Strange 15" PB Behavior
The last few days have been a trying time for me with my 15.4" PB. I have the Superdrive model with 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB 5600 RPM HD. A few days ago the Finder became extremely sluggish and would often times not respond at all. Applications would hang, and the laptop took over an hour to boot up. This was not normal behavior so I backed up my files and wiped the hard drive and started from scratch.
After putting everything back on, including the new iLife and updates offered by Apple, I fired it up and it appears to be working fine again. When I go to open up iPhoto (I have just over 1000 photos) it's extremely sluggish and even editing photo's becomes a drawn-out experience. I exported 58 photos to a folder and that in and of itself took quite some time.
I'm at a loss trying to figure out what this could be. Is it a possible RAM issue? I've had this laptop since they first came out. This is the first time I've had any trouble with this laptop and I'm surprised it would act up after all this time. Is it an iLife issue that I'm unaware of? I'd like the add, that at no time in the past months have I been online with my PB.
I know this isn't the best way to diagnose a computer but I'm on temporary duty out of the US and can't just drop by an Apple store for help. Any ideas or help any of you can offer will be much appreciated.
Thanks In Advance,
Brian
After putting everything back on, including the new iLife and updates offered by Apple, I fired it up and it appears to be working fine again. When I go to open up iPhoto (I have just over 1000 photos) it's extremely sluggish and even editing photo's becomes a drawn-out experience. I exported 58 photos to a folder and that in and of itself took quite some time.
I'm at a loss trying to figure out what this could be. Is it a possible RAM issue? I've had this laptop since they first came out. This is the first time I've had any trouble with this laptop and I'm surprised it would act up after all this time. Is it an iLife issue that I'm unaware of? I'd like the add, that at no time in the past months have I been online with my PB.
I know this isn't the best way to diagnose a computer but I'm on temporary duty out of the US and can't just drop by an Apple store for help. Any ideas or help any of you can offer will be much appreciated.
Thanks In Advance,
Brian
Comments
Originally posted by Brian Green
...15.4" PB.... an 80GB 5600 RPM HD...
There are some troubleshooting steps you should take and most of those are outlined in the sticky at the top of this forum. If you haven't already, try clearing out the cache on your computer. The easiest way to do this is to download Cocktail (search macupdate.com for it) and have it do all the regular maintenance scripts as well as clearing out the caches on your computer. HTH.
It's making me ill watching my $3300 laptop become a paperweight before my eyes and it's giving all the Windows users quite a laugh at my expense as well. I'm out of ideas.
Take the added RAM out and see what happens. You might find that things run a little faster and you won't have the quirky problems you have been.
Is 1000 pictures too many? I deleted 500 of the older ones that I knew I had backed up on CD and just kept the ones I'd taken recently. I tried exporting them to a folder on my Desktop and I got a warning telling me that I didn't have enough disk space to do it. That's absurd when I still have 60GB free. So I went direct into the iPhoto folders and took the pictures out and dropped them into the desktop folder just taking the pictures, no folders.
When I was done with that, I deleted all the iPhoto pictures folders basically taking it back to a brand new iPhoto. I imported the 500 or so pictures from the folder on my Desktop and now, without any common sense at all, everything seems to be working just as snappy as it was before!
What would have caused this? Is this an isolated case? I certainly hope so, so that no other Mac users have to face such a hair pulling experience as watching the beach ball for an hour waiting for Finder to advance.
Furthermore, I wanted to tell everyone that I appreciate their help and I also wanted to describe how I managed to fix the problem on my laptop just incase some other unfortunate soul happens to have the same problem.
Thanks Again,
Brian