You will want to first open Disk Utilities, which can be found in the Applications folder under Utilities

• Or you can take the shortcut and use Spotlight!

Once opened, you should be presented with a window that looks like this.

• You will want to select the name of your Mac OS X Startup disk in the left column.

After clicking on the name of your Hard drive, you will be presented with a few different options at the top.

• The First Aid heading is what you will want to be under.

Click on the Verify Disk Permissions, starting the process.

This usually will take anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes. The best thing to do is to wait.

As time progresses, you will see information pop up in the window highlighted.

• This is good, it means that it is seeing the problems that may be keeping your computer from running well.

After verifying the disk permissions, go ahead and select repair disk permissions to start that process.

During that time, which again should take anywhere from 3-10 minutes, feel free to get up, walk around for a few minutes, or go pet a cat.