Forums | MacLife

I'd say bad ram...

You should run Apple Hardware Test before calling AppleCare again.
Disconnect all external devices,
Restart your Mac while holding down the "D" key,
Follow on-screen directions,
After the test runs, if it displays error codes, write them down so you will have them when you speak with the Apple technician.

I had problems with my MBP and using this test I discovered that the left fan was not running. This caused my CPU to overheat, which produced spinning beach balls, slow response and application crashes.

Let us know what you find, if anything.

One thing that strikes me about your post:-

icebook1 wrote:

This is a MacBook Pro Core2Duo (2.2), with the stock-from-Apple 2 GB RAM and 160 GB hard drive. It came with 10.4.9 and now runs 10.5.2.

Really? Is this a pre-release version downloaded from "somewhere"? A pre-release version that Apple deems not ready for the masses? Maybe that's the root of the problem.

Mmkay. Clarification / reporting time. Thanks for your suggestions guys.

I screwed up - it runs 10.5.1 (I thought we were waiting on 5.3 and 5.2 was out already, whoops).

Last night I removed each stick of RAM and the problem still persisted (I have 2x1GB), so I figured it was most likely not the RAM, unless somehow both chips failed at the same time.

I made a new user account and that account was zippy as normal. Therefore, it was something in my user folder. I dumped my user cache folder, and then took a peek in the Preferences folder. There was one that I didn't recognize (it wasn't a pref file, it was plain text) that when opened, had references to both iTunes and iPhoto, which had been acting up in the past few days. I deleted that as I figured it shouldn't be there. I also deleted all iTunes prefs (it wouldn't even open on my account but would on the test acct).

All seems to be working hunky-dory now (knocking ferociously on wood). I had to re-import my iPhoto pics as the XML file within the library was corrupted, but in hindsight it's not a huge deal compared to potentially losing so much stuff.

I do have a backup with Time Machine on an external drive. I'm not sure how to trust that yet, though... TM is still new and while it backs up regularly, this would have been the first time that I needed to access said backup, so I was semi-freaked there too.

Thanks so much for your help, folks. I'll keep posting if things get funny again.

I would consider doing a clone of your HD to the external now that it's all working, just so you have both the incremental TM backup as well as a master you can restore from if all hell breaks loose.