Fix apple macbook pro 10.6.8
On the assumption that your laptop is as old as the last Snow Leopard OS (10.6.8) that makes it 7 years old, and well into the age where it can be expected to stop working without warning. Browsers that ran on Snow Leopard are no longer supported by many websites so if you want to keep using it, you will be limited to mail, documents and basic internet usage.

So yes, whoever said your laptop was ancient was correct. Time for new hardware. 

Good news is performance is way up, and prices are down. For example, My Air boots in 8 seconds and runs for 12 hours on the battery.

Do you have a backup of your laptop? My guess is No. Go buy an external drive and run Time Machine before your 7 year old internal drive decides to quit on you.