Spinning pizza wheel ...

[Rhisiart]

I recently had to re-install El Capitan onto my 2009 MacBook Pro due to a 'frozen screen'. No problems getting the OS installed, however, now the laptop is so slow!

I am constantly seeing the spinning pizza wheel and some programmes (like Pages) seem to take an eternity to load.

I have used First Aid in Disk Utility, ran Diskwarroer 5.2 and have done some spring cleaning using Onyx, but all to no avail.

Can anyone advise me, please? Thank you.

 

[DeltaMac]

Do you still have the spinning HDD in your 2009 MBPro?
I suspect that your MBPro is still slow, because you still have the same hard drive.
If that is the original hard drive, it's 10 years old. Probably caused the original frozen system.
Replace now, even if the drive tests OK. IMHO, it fails the ultimate test - day-to-day use.

I replaced a hard drive for a friend last month, same 2009 MBPro. Replaced the old "spinner" with an SSD.
Makes an enormous difference.

SSD prices continue to go down, although a 1TB is often more than US$150. Consider less storage space. I just purchased a 250GB SSD at BestBuy for less than US$30.

 

[Rhisiart]

You may be on to something here DeltaMac, except that the hard drive was replaced in 2014 with a larger one. That said, I will look into replacing the current hard drive. Many thanks.

 

[Satcomer]

You may be on to something here DeltaMac, except that the hard drive was replaced in 2014 with a larger one. That said, I will look into replacing the current hard drive. Many thanks.

I would go with a semi large SSD as a replacement! You will see a drastic improvement and use a good external to your quickest port to move you iTunes and pictures to the new external to save space!