Computer Running Extremely Slow & Trackpad Issues
Hi,
So I have a couple questions. I'm completely new to repairing computers and doing anything myself. First of all, my Macbook Pro has had issues for about 3 years now. It runs really slow and takes forever to load applications, and when it does those applications often stutter and have issues staying open. I've monitored my Ram usage and it often goes down to <10 mb Free Ram. I don't have tons of extraneous applications running. In fact, I recently reformatted my hard drive to see if that would work. Even with nothing but base applications running, the computer is still having these issues.
I run both Windows 7 and Mac Mountain Lion OSX. Both operating systems have the same issue. Originally my Windows partition only had 100 gb, but now it has 300 gb (with my Mac OSX having the converse amount of 500 gb total). Originally my Windows partition only had 20gb free, so I thought that could be an issue, but it's still running the same with roughly 300 gb of free space on it.
On the Mac side, though it hasn't occurred for years, there was about a year period of time where it was constantly having kernel panics, so I don't know if that's relevant or not. The Mac has 4gb of Ram at the moment.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on? Would it be worth it to try to install 8gb ram with maybe a 1 Tb Hybrid harddrive, or would that be useless? I'm looking to make it a Windows only computer as I have another Mac because of this previous one's issues, but I can't afford to drop around $200 for these upgrades if they won't do anything.
Finally, the trackpad is having issues. It had it before and the Apple store fixed it when it was under warranty. Essentially the trackpad is kind of lifting outside of the computer and it is pretty hard to click (you have to press really hard). They told me it was just a screw that needed to be adjusted, but I can't find any guide specifically for this (just for replacing the trackpad altogether).
I should also mention that this same computer used to run Windows 7 in VMWare and play games like Age of Empires 3 with barely any issues (it could get a bit laggy, but overall was a pretty %#*@ smooth experience). It can barely load the VMWare software nowadays.