Slow performance, cannot find cause.

Question

I have a white Macbook that was purchased new in the spring of 2008. Recently it has been having problems. It takes a very long time to open applications and cannot do as many things as it should as quickly as it should given that it has 4GB of RAM. When online it loads pages painfully slowely, often hanging on the "connecting" or "transferring data" stages indefinitely. Sometimes it loses connection completely or cannot find a webpage, eg: google, and then offers website suggestions... which include google. Even more frequently it gives the error that the server "www.google.com" could not be found, as if I weren't connected even though I am.
My father has the exact same model computer as mine and does not have this problem. I cannot find any difference in the settings between his and mine, though I don't know too much about computer workings so I may not have checked everywhere.
My father took my computer to a tech support guy at his work that specializes in Macs. He said the HD was running slow, though he didn't have enough time to check out why or much else. He said it could possibly be a virus.
I've run three different anti-virus programs and none of the scans picked up anything.I've done disc repair to repair the permissions (the disc checked out fine). OnyX also verified that the SMART status of my HD was fine, and the disc itself was fine. I cleared all caches with OnyX and then with Cocktail, to no effect.
My computer is still under warranty, and I plan to send it to Apple to have them look at it. However if anyone knows or has an idea of what's going on I would greatly appreciate the input. Please let me know if you need any additional information.
Message was edited by: Huffy

Answer 1

Hi, Huffy,
sorru for your problems.
some people here maintain that there are no viruses for Macs. Thus, we should look for another problem.
first of all, try to eliminate obvious hardware problems. Run the Apple Hardware test - look here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509. A bad Harddisk should show up, i think.
Next,it looks to me s if all the problems you describe are in fact internet connection problems; those should in first instance not depend on a slow disk, but on a connection problem. How are you connected? wireless, I suppose. Can you, just for a test, get connected directly by ethernet cable? if things are working fine with ethernet, then it's not your Macbook, but the wireless connection (possibly with the airport within your MB...) If you are connected wireless: what signal strength do you have? my experience is that from 2 or 1 fat bars, the connection is slow to bad. three bars is the minimum for good performance.
Please, report back on these questions, and some people can help you further.
Thomas