What do you do if your mac is getting constant lag and rainbow beach balls?

Answer 1

Hi.. my mac is getting messes up.. it all started when

It was a normal day, my computer had been having to previous problems, until one morning when i opened up my laptop. It was starting up when i suddenly got this folder with a ? mark inside a picture of a folder. I turned my computer on and off several times and it would appear over and over again. Finally, i took out the battery from my computer and put it back in. WHen i started up the folder wasnt there. I logged into my account and everything seemed fine. THen i started getting consitent rainbow beachballs and lag. Since then i have had to consitantly turn my computer off and on again because the raibow circles always comes up and doesnt go away. Today, i decided to runa disk utility check while my computer was having only minor lag. It said that the disk, "appeared to be ok." 5 minutes later the rainbow circle came up when i switched to another application. The circle was there for atleast 30 seconds before it disapeared. I decided to verify my disk again while it was lagging really bad. It took a while to open disk utility because whenever i clicked on something it froze for a while. After it ran i got a message saying "The volume blank needs to be repaired, Error:Filesystem verify or repair failed" I got this the second time i tried verifying the disk. WHen my computer isn't freezing, it says its ok, when it is, i get that. I just want to know what that means and how to stop my computer from getting these constant rainbow circles.. help?

Note- i have trying logging into another account, and i get the same problem