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My MacBook Pro hangs for 5 to 10 seconds intermittently. Basically, when I either click or type, the computer just hangs and then the spinning beachball shows up and it takes about 5 seconds to respond even for the simplest tasks.

Here are the computer specifications:

  • Macbook Pro 13-inch, Mid 2012
  • OS X 10.8.5 - Mountain Lion
  • 8 GB RAM
  • Intel HD Graphics 512 MB
  • 240 GB SSD (same problem occurs with the original 500 GB HDD)

Here is what I tried:

  • Reseting PRAM
  • Checking the console log for errors. No indication of errors.
  • Reinstalling the operating system
  • Upgrading to El Capitan. The upgrade "dies" in the middle of the process
  • Deleting all caches with Onyx software
  • Replacing the hard drive with a brand new SSD
  • Checking for bad sectors, disk permissions and SMART status with Disk Utility
  • Installing Windows 10 with bootcamp. It actually works perfectly, which makes me think this is a software related issue

Any help would be very much appreciated. I've checked all kinds of forums for a similar problem but no one seems to lead to a solution.

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2 Answers 2

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I ended up taking the laptop to a Apple Store and they said that the hard drive bracket needed replacement. They agreed to do it for free since it is covered by the Apple Quality program. Apparently, the hard drive bracket is something that breaks in this model and Apple has the decency of repairing it for free despite being way out of warranty. One thing I will never know is why Windows performed well despite this hardware error. Anyway, my computer runs smoothly again, specially with the new SSD.

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The thing I would do is wipe the computer entirely (make a backup if you need) and then install the OS.

If you can't install a clean new OS on to an erased drive, you can know a hardware repair is needed. You can try installing the OS onto an external drive if that's faster than swapping the internal drive. Hardware repair is basically a process of:

  • get a test you can run and fails consistently
  • change one thing
  • repeat the test until you know the one thing that caused the failure

You've got a great test in "install the OS" - and if you haven't wiped your preferences / account / changes - that's the next "one thing" I would change. Hopefully it's a bad preference and not something you have to fix.

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  • Thanks for the suggestion. I did a clean install of the OS X and also tried Windows through Bootcamp which works without a problem but makes this situation very ambiguous.
    – Jorge
    Commented Jul 2, 2016 at 14:49
  • So if a clean OS install is fast and snappy - are you able to bring back all your apps and then just install apps only by one to see if the problem comes back? @Jorge
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jul 2, 2016 at 15:10
  • what I meant is that I clean reinstalled OS X and its still slow, but on the other hand I installed Windows 10, as an experiment to see if it failed too, and this last one works fine.
    – Jorge
    Commented Jul 2, 2016 at 15:39

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