Macbook pro running slow

nick1234

Hi guys

I have a macbook pro about 10 years old running on the latest os software and had the memory/ram updated a few yrs back so i have 2 terabyte - am no where near this limit

However on startup and general browsing the laptop is really slow and sluggish, i have deleted stuff, closed down all programmes in the background and ran a few free cleanup tools from the net but nothing makes a difference. I could understand if i had tons of videos and files but i have enough spare space

Does anyone know how to make it quicker?

Thanks

grumpycrab

nick1234 wrote: »

had the memory/ram updated a few yrs back so i have 2 terabyte

I assume you mean disk drive rather than memory/ram. (OR memory/ram updated to 2 gigabytes ?)
How much of the disk drive space is utilised? This will then dictate how big a solid state drive (SSD) to buy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgGx9qx31SY

interstellaflyer

Kronkis wrote: »

Time to ditch and switch to a nice new shiny Windows 10 laptop with an SSD drive.

Windows 10 is awful, I've had nothing but trouble, I bought a Toshiba laptop 2 months before Windows 10 was released, made the mistake of taking the Windows 10 upgrade, a perfectly acceptable laptop turned into a laggy heap of junk, same with my Levono notebook bought November 18 and my HP Pavilion laptop bought March this year, both require constant restarts during the day otherwise they become so laggy they are unusable, both also sometimes won't come out of the lock screen.

nick1234

grumpycrab wrote: »

I assume you mean disk drive rather than memory/ram. (OR memory/ram updated to 2 gigabytes ?)
How much of the disk drive space is utilised? This will then dictate how big a solid state drive (SSD) to buy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgGx9qx31SY

When i look at storage it says 1tb SATA disk. 389gb available of 998gb

When i click memory it says 8gb installed

On “activity monitor” it says physical memory 8gb, memory used 4.14gb. Cached files 2.61gb

grumpycrab

nick1234 wrote: »

When i look at storage it says 1tb SATA disk. 389gb available of 998gb

When i click memory it says 8gb installed

Ok, so memory is fine. The disk. Could go for a 1TB SSD. Hotukdeals has these at about £100. If the MacBook is in a good condition it may be worth cloning existing disk to a SSD. The youtube video is an introduction to this.
I've no idea whether clean-installing this age of MacBook is possible/easy or not.

Frozen_up_north

interstellaflyer wrote: »

Windows 10 is awful, I've had nothing but trouble, I bought a Toshiba laptop 2 months before Windows 10 was released, made the mistake of taking the Windows 10 upgrade, a perfectly acceptable laptop turned into a laggy heap of junk, same with my Levono notebook bought November 18 and my HP Pavilion laptop bought March this year, both require constant restarts during the day otherwise they become so laggy they are unusable, both also sometimes won't come out of the lock screen.

That isn’t my experience looking after family computers -one desktop and 4 laptops. One laptop updated from Windows 8, one from Windows 7, all running Windows 10 Home 1903 and zero problems with any of them. There has been the odd glitch where a graphic card driver and a printer driver that needed re-installation after a Windows update, but nothing that was more than a minor irritation.

The desktop is a Dell, 2 Acer laptops and 2 Asus laptops.

You are either very unlucky or mess around.

Neil_Jones

If you turn the Macbook upside down it should have a five digit A number on it. Also how big is your screen? Do you know anything about the processor?

Macs are normally quite advanced machines compared to Windows machines of the time.

tempus_fugit

It does sound like the disk drive could be the problem, plus a lot of programs loading at startup. The 8GB RAM is perfectly fine, but the disk drive will be slow, and an SSD would speed it up massively. I think this is the route to take, and the solution suggested by grumpycrab. You don't want to go to Windows with its anti-virus etc unless you really have to.

datostar

My Late-2012 iMac with 16GB Memory and an i7 32GHz Processor also got very slow, taking ages to boot up and regularly showing me the spinning beach ball. I tried a program called DriveDX (has a website) which comes with a 30 day free trial. Using it on the internal 1TB 5400 rpm hard drive revealed 46 re-allocated bad sectors and a warning of likely failure. Replacing drives in iMacs is not a simple task so I installed an external 1TB SSD and cloned the old drive to it. Problem completely solved.

interstellaflyer

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

You are either very unlucky or mess around.

I don't mess around as I expect things to like computers to work as they should out of the box and I'm not techy enough to do so anyway. Funny how I have 2 windows 10 laptops with exactly the same issues, ok the Lenovo was pretty cheap but the HP Pavilion was over £400, by comparison, we have a 6 year old iMac that's never missed a beat

nick1234

Neil_Jones wrote: »

If you turn the Macbook upside down it should have a five digit A number on it. Also how big is your screen? Do you know anything about the processor?

Macs are normally quite advanced machines compared to Windows machines of the time.

Hi i will check this tonight and let you know

I do prefer windows but everything is now on mac and i have an iphone so syncing etc is easy