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It sounds like it just got filled up and your friend maybe ignored the "Startup disk getting full" warnings.
OSX needs at minimum 10% free space to function normally, add to that, SSDs also have the same free-space requirements to operate normally.
Do a backup, just in case the thing is dying and then move as much stuff as possible to an external drive. Update it to El Cap and see what happens. It's more than capable of running it but it sounds like storage-related issues, one way or another.
Well_is_it-
Thanks for your input..
Did a backup but did not upgrade to El Capitan just yet as there's compatibility issues with some programs my friend uses.
Freeing up some more space seems to have helped the thing run smoothly.
I also learned that while unsuccessfully repairing permissions that there's an official list of
messages that you can safely ignore.
salad
Helping a friend out, whose mid-2012 MacBook Air only booted to a blank, white screen, with occasional "startvolume full" complaint.
Booted in save mode, freed up space on and checked volume (120GB SSD), repaired permissions.. partly successful apparently - there's always a couple of entries that don't get fixed.
But now the thing boots up without complaints again - but still does feel laggy: like, fading-in the background image on startup does not happen smoothly.
Not being that familiar with the last OSXs -
is there something I can do to speed-up / clean / repair / check, or does one simply re-new the OS from recovery partion in cases like this?
Also is it advisable to upgrade to Capitan with a machine like that (1.8 GHz i5 / 4GB RAM) or keep Mavericks?
Thanks!