No responsive MacBook pro

Question

i have had my MacBook pro for approximately 1.5years and in the last month I have been having problems with the systems responsiveness. at first I thought that I needed a system update and that the lag was do to my heavy application use and an error with Safari, but recently it has gotten much worse. music playing through iTunes would skip, my browsers (safari or firefox) would freeze, quit and freeze again upon restarting. for work, I am frequently running a browser, my finder, preview, iTunes and imaging program and Excel. prior to this month the simultaneous use of these applications has never been a problem. today, after many browser/application freezes and forced restarts (upon the system freezing and sitting for more than 5 minutes, I would shut down with the power button), the system would not reboot. currently, it plays the opening jingle, white pin wheel "thinks" then goes to a Mac version of BSOD. the mouse icon is sometimes visible and the screen sometimes changes shades. I am dreading taking it to the apple store and have no idea what the problem is so I am open to suggestions and insight! thanks much! (I also apologize for any errors... I'm typing this on my iPhone...)

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
It's hard to say what's going on here, but a good place to start would be to run the extended version of the Apple Hardware test and see if you get anything in the form of an error code. If you do, then that would indicate a hardware problem that you would need to address.
Freezing can be either software or hardware related. A common cause is a hard drive that has started to fail, so probably the first thing you should do if you haven't already is to make a good up to date backup of your data and keep it up to date.
You can open Disk Utility and check to see that the SMART status is verified. You can also run SMART Utility:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartutility.html
SMART will give you a more comprehensive analysis of your hard drive and may be able to detect impending hard drive failure sooner. You can download the demo and run it several times for free.
It may also help to boot from your install disc and repair your boot disk. It's important to do this when you've been forced to shut down using the power button.
You can also try reinstalling the OS, but have a good backup first.
Also, check your RAM and be sure that it is all recognized and working.
If you go to the Apple Store, they can run a hardware test from their store feed, and if your mac isn't working well enough to troubleshoot yourself, this would be a good option.
Good luck!