Getting bad hangs/lag after several hours

[Princess Cake]

I'm using a 2012 21'' iMac with a regular non-SSD hard drive and 8GB of ram and up until installing High Sierra I've never had a single complaint about performance but well.....

Once I installed 10.13 (still happens on 10.13.1) my system will start to lag BADLY after a while, sometimes its an hour after booting, sometimes several. Almost any action I do results in the spinning beachball and basically everything on-screen freezing. It feels like all the memory has been eaten up by something but I've run activity monitor and I've had 5GB or more free at times when this occurs. If I reboot everything will be fine again but eventually the lag returns.

Does anybody have any idea whats going on here? I installed the APFS update as well which I kind of regret but don't think THAT is whats causing this.

 

[chscag]

Boot to Recovery (command plus r) and run First Aid on your Macintosh HD (lower entry). You could be experiencing a failing hard drive. The symptoms you describe indicate a failing hard drive although it could very well be something else. It's possible with all the activity of installing High Sierra and the update to it may have caused the HD problems.

 

[Princess Cake]

I have run first aid on the drive recently and it turned out fine. I've also used OnyX to repair permissions etc and clear all the old caches/garbage out. As I said this only started once I installed High Sierra (which was about 2 weeks ago) I never had this type of hanging problem on Sierra 10.12.

You know whats really weird? If I spend hours upon hours working in Parallels I'll never even encounter this lag... but once I come back to macOS it's pretty much a sure-thing >.> I don't run anything weird on the Mac side, just Safari, iTunes and the occasional Photoshop really

 

[chscag]

Try running in Safe Mode for a while to see if the hangups occur and/or the spinning beachball and freezing. If your hard drive is not cause, then it's possible that software is the culprit.

 

[Princess Cake]

How would I even know? xD Safe mode makes everything laggy and slow to begin with

Joking aside, I might try that but if it turns out to be software its gotta be something in MacOS itself as I've turned off every single user process when it happens and it doesn't help.

Another symptom of this problem I've found is that if I have an iTunes song play it will stop playing for a few seconds then resume... it happens over and over.

 

[Princess Cake]

Jeez, guys.... I have no clue here... I even ran S.M.A.R.T. and the hard drive checks out fine :/ I really don't wanna format the drive, re-install everything from a time machine backup only to have this happen again.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

It's the internal hard drive that's slowing you down.
It's a platter-based drive.

Hard truth about the modern Mac OS that Apple doesn't tell you:
It's designed to run on either SSD's or fusion drives.
The OS will still "run" on an HDD, but from the standpoint of the user (YOU!), it will seem more like the OS is "walking" instead of running.

There is a relatively easy and cheap fix:
Buy a USB3 external SSD, plug it into a USB3 port, and set it up to be "your external booter".

Something like this would do fine:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00ZTRY532?tag=delt-20
You can velcro a drive like this to the back of the iMac's stand, it will be out-of-the-way and out-of-sight.

Get either the 250gb or 500gb size (whichever meets your budget).
Then...
Install a fresh copy of High Sierra onto it.
Use setup assistant to "migrate over" your apps, accounts, data.

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION:
You may need to leave "large libraries" of stuff (movies, music, pictures) "behind" on the internal drive.
This is not a problem, because these libraries really don't need "speed" and you can set the apps that use them to access them directly from there.

If you want the iMac to run "up to speed", the above is what you need to do...

 

[chscag]

I believe one problem with that drive is that it's not a regular size drive like the ones that are used in the 27" iMac. The drive in the 21.5" 2012 iMac is the same 5400 RPM drive used in some older Apple notebooks. My 2013 27" iMac has a 7200 RPM regular sized drive and is not laggy or slow. Not as fast as an SSD of course, but fast enough for me until I replace the machine with a later model that has an SSD.

As for the advice about using an external SSD via USB 3, it probably will be faster than the internal drive. Ultimately, you might want to think about replacing the machine with a later model that is equipped with flash storage. Of course that means spending more $$$.

 

[Vriesdiep]

I think its software related because after installing High Sierra my Mac Pro mid 2012 with 500GB SSD freezes on a blank screen when he was idle for some hours. So every morning I have to start up again and then he freezes again en I have to use disk repair to keep going again. De start up time is at least ten times longer as before installing high Sierra and now I have another problem: I started Path Finder accidentally and it gives a beach ball so it is not compatible with High Sierra but worse is that by cancelling and even removing Pathfinder my desktop is gone. completely empty not showing any disk anymore and not showing the maps that I put there before. Of course I still can reach it as a desk top map in de finder but not on my desktop! Any one a suggestion to solve this problem?

 

[chscag]

Sounds like your SSD is failing if you have to use disk repair to keep going again, not some software. SSDs can fail without warning unlike spinning hard drives which usually give an indication. Also, Pathfinder is fully compatible with High Sierra, I use it all the time on my iMac with High Sierra.

 

[Princess Cake]

I'm starting to think my problem is being caused by Safari >.> I've been on Parallels all day and not 15 minutes after I exited out and went to go browse online I started getting hangs again...

 

[xgman]

I think its software related because after installing High Sierra my Mac Pro mid 2012 with 500GB SSD freezes on a blank screen when he was idle for some hours. So every morning I have to start up again and then he freezes again en I have to use disk repair to keep going again. De start up time is at least ten times longer as before installing high Sierra and now I have another problem: I started Path Finder accidentally and it gives a beach ball so it is not compatible with High Sierra but worse is that by cancelling and even removing Pathfinder my desktop is gone. completely empty not showing any disk anymore and not showing the maps that I put there before. Of course I still can reach it as a desk top map in de finder but not on my desktop! Any one a suggestion to solve this problem?

Internet Recovery to reinstall. CMD R I think at boot. Something is way wrong with your system.
[doublepost=1509981160][/doublepost]

I'm starting to think my problem is being caused by Safari >.> I've been on Parallels all day and not 15 minutes after I exited out and went to go browse online I started getting hangs again...

Well then stop using safari and use firefox or chrome or anything for a while and make sure safari is off and see if it improves.

 

[Vriesdiep]

The Desktop problem is solved! It was the hide Desk Top item that caused it before the application hanged. A newer version solved the problem. The rest of the problems are still there and of course I already did a reinstall. Just waiting until Apple solves the problems.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I'm starting to think my problem is being caused by Safari >.> I've been on Parallels all day and not 15 minutes after I exited out and went to go browse online I started getting hangs again..."

Nope.
I explained what your problem is in reply 7 above.
Do what I suggest, and your problems will be solved.

 

[Princess Cake]

OP wrote:
"I'm starting to think my problem is being caused by Safari >.> I've been on Parallels all day and not 15 minutes after I exited out and went to go browse online I started getting hangs again..."

Nope.
I explained what your problem is in reply 7 above.
Do what I suggest, and your problems will be solved.

You're acting like High Sierra is a highly intensive demanding OS upgrade that requires a beefmachine iMac to run... I was running Sierra fine from launch day until HS launched. I don't see a single feature that would require more resources in any way except for this idiotic APFS crap that barely works and shouldn't have been released yet (super fun when your HFS external time machine blows its brains out trying to interface with the new APFS file system and your whole computer locks up for 2-3 minutes)

But you are right, it wasn't Safari. It happened again as I was offline just running OpenEmu, but I stand by the notion something in macOS is causing it as I was running Parallels for hours and hours and didn't encounter this bologna.

 

[Princess Cake]

So as an update, I recently formatted the hard drive, did a fresh install of High Sierra, and restored my Time Machine backup and I don't seem to be having the problem anymore. I get iTunes lag for a few seconds now and then but its usually just once or twice and it goes away...

I guess its my fault for not doing a clean install since Mavericks >.>

 

[yellowscreen]

I'm also experiencing the same kind of lag. upon quitting safari, it disappears. any ideas other than reformatting? thank you

 

[Princess Cake]

I'm also experiencing the same kind of lag. upon quitting safari, it disappears. any ideas other than reformatting? thank you

If its the exact same thing as me then your only real option is to backup your data, format the HDD and reinstall High Sierra. I also suggest NOT installing the new APFS+ file system until its been worked on a bit more, it isn't even compatible with Time Machine for pete's sake!

-Spinning beachball cursor every several seconds and after every action
-iTunes music suddenly stops playing, resumes, then stops again
-Entire system stops responding except for the cursor for upwards of 10 seconds repeatedly
-Boot times become idiotically long (5-10 minutes or more!)

 

[Phil in ocala]

I think its software related because after installing High Sierra my Mac Pro mid 2012 with 500GB SSD freezes on a blank screen when he was idle for some hours. So every morning I have to start up again and then he freezes again en I have to use disk repair to keep going again. De start up time is at least ten times longer as before installing high Sierra and now I have another problem: I started Path Finder accidentally and it gives a beach ball so it is not compatible with High Sierra but worse is that by cancelling and even removing Pathfinder my desktop is gone. completely empty not showing any disk anymore and not showing the maps that I put there before. Of course I still can reach it as a desk top map in de finder but not on my desktop! Any one a suggestion to solve this problem?

___________________________________________-
I agree there are many, many problems that Apple is ignoring on High Sierra.....

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote in post 15 above:
"You're acting like High Sierra is a highly intensive demanding OS upgrade that requires a beefmachine iMac to run.."

The short, simple answer:
It is.

 

[Phil in ocala]

Did apple disclose up front that this was the case so people could know this before they installed it on their mac....If so...i did not see it.

 

[leventozler]

check https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/any-news-about-the-macbook-pro-nvidia-gpu-lag-yet.2088300/

nvidia's driver fixed this issue for me.

 

[stooovie]

I'm using a 2012 21'' iMac with a regular non-SSD hard drive and 8GB of ram and up until installing High Sierra I've never had a single complaint about performance but well.....

Once I installed 10.13 (still happens on 10.13.1) my system will start to lag BADLY after a while, sometimes its an hour after booting, sometimes several. Almost any action I do results in the spinning beachball and basically everything on-screen freezing. It feels like all the memory has been eaten up by something but I've run activity monitor and I've had 5GB or more free at times when this occurs. If I reboot everything will be fine again but eventually the lag returns.

Does anybody have any idea whats going on here? I installed the APFS update as well which I kind of regret but don't think THAT is whats causing this.

In NO WAY should you convert a spinning drive to APFS. There's MUCH more overhead and fragmentation that aren't bad for SSDs but completely kill the already laughably slow 5400 RPM drive.

 

[Princess Cake]

In NO WAY should you convert a spinning drive to APFS. There's MUCH more overhead and fragmentation that aren't bad for SSDs but completely kill the already laughably slow 5400 RPM drive.

Well it's lovely that Apple gives you some warning not to do it to a Non-SSD drive >:O being an Apple users typically means you upgrade to whatever the latest features and don't have to research it much. If its such a danger to do so why does the HS Installer tool even ALLOW you to upgrade a Non-SSD to APFS?

 

[stooovie]

Well it's lovely that Apple gives you some warning not to do it to a Non-SSD drive >:O being an Apple users typically means you upgrade to whatever the latest features and don't have to research it much. If its such a danger to do so why does the HS Installer tool even ALLOW you to upgrade a Non-SSD to APFS?

I don't think HS installer offers conversion to APFS for HDDs. It surely doesn't for Fusion drives and HDDs are even less eligible.