How I Fixed my MacBook Pro

Last Christmas, my loving wife gave me a copy of Snow Leopard.  After upgrading, my computer started running so slow that it was pathetic.  My hard drive died, and I thought that maybe that was the issue.

It wasn't.

I started surfing through the forums on 9to5Mac and Apple Support Discussions and found very little that I liked, most of it blaming coreaudiod (the core audio services).  I had tried defragging my hard drive before I had to replace it, and I wasn't satisfied with the results.

So, I tried a few things.  First off, I reset the SMC controller (on my MBP, you do that by shutting down the computer, unplugging it and removing the battery, and holding down the power button for 5 seconds).

Then, I booted up, shut down, and reset the NVRAM (on my MBP, you do that by starting up and holding the control+option+P+R keys and holding them down until the second startup sound).

It certainly feels faster.  Time will tell if this is a real fix.

The Next Steps

I a going to boot from my SL CD and Repair Permissions and Verify Disk.  Since I'm fearful that this could have had something to do with my last hard drive's death (although I think my fears should be unfounded), I am going to make sure I'm backed up first.

The 64 Bit Lie

The big issue I have is that my computer supposedly won't support 64 bit.  Until today, I was unaware that I had 32-bit EFI (firmware).  I'm somewhat annoyed by that, since I'm pretty sure a Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit processor.  It seems to me that Apple was a bit short-sighted when they did that.