joenspa 26 Posted September 18, 2017 I have never had this and Adam if you have an answer this may be good for the show. I have an older 2008 MacBook Pro running 10.11.6. It started acting weird about a week or 2 ago. Ran real slow at times, longggg boot ups and eventually wouldn't boot. I got it to boot by holding down the power button a really long time. However it still runs slow. Very slow at times. I went to Disk Utility and tried fixing Permissions. It gets to one point and freezes. The progress bar stop just over half way and freezes there. I don't think it's just slow because I haver left it for 5-6 hours with no progress. I reinstalled the system and got the same result. Booting in Recovery Mode and and running Disk Utility shows everything ok. Any thought on what to do when good utilities go bad? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
johnfoster 49 Posted September 19, 2017 the hard drive is done. replace it with a new SSD. this will make that Mac new again. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joenspa 26 Posted September 20, 2017 3 hours ago, johnfoster said: the hard drive is done. replace it with a new SSD. this will make that Mac new again. You think an SSD will make much of a speed difference in a 2008 MacBook Pro? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
johnfoster 49 Posted September 20, 2017 yes. putting an SSD in a Mac of any age makes it into a different Mac. the boot up time will got from minutes to undo 20 seconds. every time I had a employee complain about a slow Mac then demanding a new one I put a SSD in the what they had. and every time the bitching about slow stopped. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joenspa 26 Posted September 21, 2017 Our guess was wrong. Any drive internal to the computer cannot have disk permissions fixed or be formatted. If I take the exact same drive and mount it externally it can be formatted. I fear there is something wrong in the controller on the motherboard and my poor computer has met end of life. I welcome any other things I should try. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
johnfoster 49 Posted September 21, 2017 it is just somewhere around $200 to replace the whole thing… Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joenspa 26 Posted September 22, 2017 You know it's interesting too that none of the startup shortcuts are working. Command R just boots normal, no recovery mode. Holding down D at start up does not take me to the diagnostic app. This is the second old Mac I have had this with in the last month. The other was a Mac Pro 1,1. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
