My macbook is running really slow. It's sluggish and takes forever to attach anything. The soft ware is up to date. Any ideas how to get things moving again?

Question

My MacBook is sluggish.  Everything is up to date and it isn't my wifi because the other computers in the house run fine.  Does anyone have any ideas to help performance?

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
You don't mention which applications are running slow, or which MacBook you have.
Did you perform a recent upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or perhaps OS X 10.7 Lion?
Do you let your computer run 24x7?  Be sure to reboot occasionally.  There are also maintenance scripts that run processes like disk cleanup and spotlight indexing overnight when you leave your computer on 24x7.  They will not run if you shut your computer down every night, and then must run during the daytime, slowing performance somewhat.
Is your hard disk nearly full? Less than 10% free space is not recommended, because the system slows down as the hard disk 'finds' free space.
Use Disk Utility to verify and/or repair permissions on your hard disk.
If your hard disk is going bad, that will also slow system performance as the drive retries multiple times to retrieve and save data.
Less than 2GB system RAM memory installed? Open Activity Monitor and check System Memory in the bar at the bottom of the screen.  If Page outs and Swap used are in the Gigabyte range, it's a good indication that you need to purchase and install more system RAM memory.