MBP slower than ever...

Question

I just upgraded to Snow Leopard, then swapped a 250gb 7200rpm hard drive for a 500gb 5400rpm hard drive. Now my computer is slower than ever. It still works, but at a much slower pace. Often the screen will freeze for up to 10 seconds before becoming operable again. This happens when doing the simplest of tasks. I am only running about 5 programs at a time anyways. This never happened on the old system. And I don't think its a matter of the slower hard drive. I was running an old MB with a smaller HD, same RPM, same RAM, and there was no problem. What gives? What should I do?

Answer 1

OK. Let's proceed on the premise it's not the drive. Although, I swapped an 80GB 5400 drive on an iMac G4 for a 160 GB@7200 and noticed quite a difference.
How did you install, clean install with Migration Assistant, clone, Time Machine?
There are some simple troubleshooting steps you can take.
Create a new User go to System Preferences >> Accounts >> "+" (make it an admin acct) and test your apps in this new account, if they are faster the problem is isolated to your User and not systemwide.
If the issue is limited to your user account try starting up Safe Mode (It will take more time to startup in Safe Mode because it runs a directory check.)
If your apps functions faster that way, go to System Preferences >> Accounts >> Login Items, and remove them. Boot normally and test. If not go to ~(yourHome)/Library/Contextual Menu Items and move whatever is there to the desktop. Then do the same with /Library/Contextual Menu Items. Lastly, try moving ~(yourHome)/Library/Fonts to your desktop and restarting. Also, delete Users/yourname/Library/Caches. (on the first launch after this some apps will be slow until cache catches up.)
Log out/in or restart, if that sorts it start putting items back one at a time until you find the culprit.
If the issue is systemwide then, you may be able to repair this with the The 10.6.2 Combo Update This is a fuller install, as opposed to an incremental "delta" update so it should overwrite any files that are damaged or missing. It does not matter if you have applied it before.
Remember to Verify Disk before update and repair permissions after update from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
Let us know.
-mj