MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro2,1 Running Very Slow Under Mavericks

Question

I have been having extreme slowness issues with lots of SBOD spinning delays since upgrading my older MacBook Pro to Mavericks last month. It takes forever to "see" and run a back-up on my G Drive Time Machie drive, which has been historically very speedy and reliable. It should not take 5 hours to back up to the daily Time Machine drive, which at most took 20 minutes, maybe 30 if I installed new OS X software upgrades or updates. Sometimes when I run my third party software (much of it from MicroSoft Office, FileMaker, and the second to latest Adobe Master Collection Suite), I get more SBODs and some hiccuping until the software/document boots up. As recently as Mountain Lion, this was never an issue before, normal things that just ran seemlessly without thinking. Very occasionally even when shutting down, the finder loses track of what it is doing. When I do the Force Quit thing because third party software or the Finder Launcher has become "not resposive," even this can take a long time. I am wondering if this has to do with Mavericks bug/feature of rationing out unused memory, which my memory chips may not like on my bottom of the compatibility bracket machine spectrum. Is there perhaps a need for a more up to date firmware version for my model?
I have tried all available software testing options, and I found nothing that seemed amiss in the software end at all. I cannot access anything like Apple Hardware Test to assess and hardware problems either via my proprietary Mavericks-installed bootable OS X and Utilities partition or via the Apple Support Site to see if a dying hard drive is the culprit.
FYI About this Mac, which Apple's Support Site swears will work with Mavericks.
Model: MacBook Pro, MacBook Pro3,1 (late 2007 - early 2008) (17", 2.6 GHz)(Built as an online order, to my specifications)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
Hard Drive: 250 GB (SATA Disk) (64.83 MB Available To Me, Remainder Taken Up By Apple OS X proprietary partition)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB
Built-In Display: 17" (1920 x 1200)
Memory: 4 GB 667 MHrz DDR2 SDRAM (2 Banks of 2 MB each) (Full complement)
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP31.0070.B07
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-001EC2127516
SMC Hardware Version: 1.18ƒ5
Current Version of Mavericks: OS X 10.9.2, Original Installed Version: Mavericks OS X 10.9.0 (13C64)
When I installed the new system software from the App Store, I did remember to disable my Norton Security Suite, so the download and installation should have been clean and unimpeded. There were no reported problems with the installation or the upgrade process. I chose the option at original installation to upgrade my laptop using the "migrate from my latest Time Machine Backup feature" to preserve the third party applications and settings.
My Firmware was all up to date, according to the Apple Support Page articles relating to my model. All permissions checked out OK as did all verification tests on the Mountain Lion Apple Partition (the one accessed via restarting with Command-R) before I started.
Since Apple has not been willing to release its system core software to the third- party makers of my Optimizing software (Disk Warrior, Alsoft), I have not been able to optimize the contents of my hard drive since the version that came out with Lion OS X 10.7; this may be a possible source of my problem. If my files are badly fragmented, it is difficult for the Finder to find and work with Apps and Documents, most especially with any great speed. I attempted to do likewise with TechTool Pro 7.x (MicroMat); likewise they could not optimize or check out my whole hard drive volume. A suggested solution of installing a Bootable drive into Apple's proprietary OS partition sounds like it would erase the Mavericks OS X/ Diagnostic Drive rather than be added to it. Could Apple work with Alsoft and MicroMat, so they can make current Boot-Up disks that would again allow me to optimize my entire HD volume? Otherwise, could Apple write its own optimization suite to help speed up my hard drive, if it is unwilling to share its operating code with third-party diagnostic software developers?
Then I thought of using Apple Hardware Test using the familiar Command-D from the Apple proprietary partiion (that was expected to still be included with the OS X Mavericks original upload from the App Store. I found it was not installed despite following the Apple Support Page directions and nothing including ethernet connected. When I tried to connect via the alternate method from the Apple Support Cloud using Option-D, my laptop found nothing at Apple's end. Does such diagnostic software still exist, or has this been scrapped. It would be an imptant tool to use to see if the source
I rerun Permissions and Verification in Command-R mode periodically since upgrading to Mavericks., and all permissions and disk integrity from this test have been corrected and updated as of today. Everything checks out as just fine in terms of software. I am out of ideas of what else to check from my end. Unless anyone in the Apple Support Community has any other good suggestions as to what might be wrong (other than an Apple software tweak) that I can do at my home office, I will have to take my poor laptop over to the nearest Apple Genius Bar and turn my older laptop over to a hardware technician at full cost (Applecare has long since run out).
All suggestions for fixes are welcomed.
— Sally Mayer

Answer 1

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.