Can I easily restore a slow MacBook Pro?

[DeviceVice]

It’s only 5 years old and is painfully slow. Loading up safari tool all of 4 minutes before I cleared memory. But it’s still slow. It does a lot of rainbow ball twirling whenever I do a command. It improves slightly if an app is already opened but still isn’t great.

I’ve cleared memory and have 100+ GB free now (out of total of 250GB). It’s made a small Difference but still not enough. So I want to clear the whole thing and start again.

Is it idiot proof easy enough?

[PippiLongstromp]

How much memory as in RAM have you got? My husbands MacBook Pro is also painfully slow and I have realised it only has 4GB when we could actually have 8 installed.

[DeviceVice]

We have 4gb too. Do I need to take it somewhere to have more added?

[PippiLongstromp]

Yes good question, I will be finding that out also! I think you can do it yourself, but will need to buy the extra ram. Not sure yet where you get that from or what it looks like!

[DeviceVice]

How do you know the increased RAM will do the trick?

[whitehandledkitchenknife]

Are you logging out and shutting down regularly? I didn't realise that you should and like lots of Mac users, just closed the programmes I was using. I am totally not techie minded but when this started happening, I googled solutions. I don't pretend to understand but apparently, lots of stuff stays in the background, loading and doing goodness only knows. Over time everything gets sluggish. By logging out and shutting down, something magical happens and things get cleaned up. You can also do a safe boot. Check google again for instructions.

[DeviceVice]

I don’t logout no. I restart about once every couple of months, and make sure it logs everything out when it comes straight back, rather than reopen all apps automatically. Does that count or do I have to actually turn it off for 10 minutes or something? I can go days, even a week, without waking it from its sleep.