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iMac too new to be this slow!

seh80

seh80

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 2, 2005
257
1
Chicago, IL USA
I've got an intel core 2 duo 2.16GHz iMac with 2GB of ram. 57GB of HD space open.

It is running slower than my old g4 mini. Things in the dock are taking around 15 bounces to open. Safari is freezing at least twice a day (from random sites, but they are my normal sites, I'm not surfing new sites). At least once a day I am losing internet. I'm wired, have tried to unplug the modem and router, that never works, but a restart always gets my connection back. Going wireless didn't solve it, nor did plugging the iMac directly into the modem. Only a restart ever gets me back online.

Should I wipe the computer out and start from scratch? It seems to get slower every day, so at this point I don't mind doing something drastic.

Thanks for any help!
 
Have you checked your iMac's hardware with the Apple Hardware Test or Techtool? I suppose your RAM or other hardware may be defective. In my experience, OS X has naver caused such severe problems.

To compare: iTunes opens on my iMac in 5 seconds. Hope this helps.
 
I am new to Mac myself so will bow to the guru's but I would say it depends on your sense of urgency. If you can afford to take the time to investigate it I would suggest taking a look at "Activity Monitor" and if need be post screenshot here for others to take a look at.

If it's really urgent then splat it and see what happens.
 
seh80 said:
Should I wipe the computer out and start from scratch? It seems to get slower every day, so at this point I don't mind doing something drastic.
Click to expand...

Yes, but do a backup first ;)

EDIT: Brain Fart, yes MagicUK is right about Activity Monitor.
 
Thanks very much for the replies. I'm not sure which screen in the activity monitor to get the shot of, but here is one. Please let me know if I should post another.

screen shot

ETA: I purchased the computer with 1GB ram, added the second myself. It worked great and really gave it a boost, apps would open with one single bounce. That was several months ago, and all of the recent slowness began I suppose 2 or 3 months ago and has gotten progressively worse.

Oh, and I just restarted about 30 minutes before taking that screen shot. The page in/outs were really high prior to doing so (outs were higher by a few thousand I think).
 
seh80 said:
Thanks very much for the replies. I'm not sure which screen in the activity monitor to get the shot of, but here is one.
Click to expand...

Press Command-Shift-4 and then press Space. Then click on the window, we need to see the processes above your screenshot.
 
Do you have any apps running that use Rosetta? If you do a "Get Info" on an app and it says (PowerPC), you are going to use Rosetta to run it, which takes a lot of memory and CPU cycles. If you have one of these apps that runs in the background, this could be your problem. Palm Desktop is an example of an app that is PowerPC only and starts a background process when you log in. It caused me problems similar to what you describe, although my machine didn't require reboots.

Activity Monitor is in Applications->Utilities.
 
daveL said:
Do you have any apps running that use Rosetta?
Click to expand...

I actually thought of that this morning, and checked. I had just one, ended it, and it didn't seem to help. I too thought that could be a big reason for the slow down...

ETA: The one rosetta app was for my HP printer.
 
Did you install Application Enhancer or Logitech Control Center (contains parts of Application Enhancer)? Those two can cause some weird problems in my experience.
 
seh80 said:
ETA: The one rosetta app was for my HP printer.
Click to expand...

Mac's come with printer drivers built in ;), don't install the HP software unless you HAVE to to get it to work.

EDIT: Can you sort the processes by CPU Usage or make the box bigger we can't see all the processes.

TBH If you have your stuff backed up try a reinstall, if you done that at the beginning you'd have a fast iMac by now ;).
 
Try doing something such as repairing permisions. Or, even try doing the system maintnance command in the terminal:

Code: 
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

That does alot of system maitnance. OS X usually automatically does it if you leave your computer on (i think its like 2am), but worth a shot anyway.
 
Eraserhead said:
Mac's come with printer drivers built in ;), don't install the HP software unless you HAVE to to get it to work.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it work until I did install the horrible software. :confused:

Eraserhead said:
EDIT: Can you sort the processes by CPU Usage or make the box bigger we can't see all the processes.
Click to expand...
Sure, here is half and here is the other half.
 
Luigi239 said:
Try doing something such as repairing permisions. Or, even try doing the system maintnance command in the terminal:

Code: 
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

That does alot of system maitnance. OS X usually automatically does it if you leave your computer on (i think its like 2am), but worth a shot anyway.
Click to expand...

I've tried repairing permissions, will go try the maintenance code right now. Thanks!
 
I haven't had to run maintenance scripts manually on any of my Macs since Tiger, so I really don't think this is a solution to your problem. As far as your Activity Monitor posts, you'd really need to sort the processes by %CPU for us to see what's going on. Even so I notice EyeTV sucking up almost 20%, which seems awfully high. Also, if you're getting frequently dropped Internet connections, this isn't at all consistent with CPU load issues.

More information needed, such as how long it takes to have issues after a restart.
 
IJ Reilly said:
I haven't had to run maintenance scripts manually on any of my Macs since Tiger, so I really don't think this is a solution to your problem. As far as your Activity Monitor posts, you'd really need to sort the processes by %CPU for us to see what's going on. Even so I notice EyeTV sucking up almost 20%, which seems awfully high. Also, if you're getting frequently dropped Internet connections, this isn't at all consistent with CPU load issues.

More information needed, such as how long it takes to have issues after a restart.
Click to expand...

Also Safari is using up 390MB of Real Memory... Quite a bit...

I can't remember if you said this or anything, but is everything all up-to-date software-wise? Probably wouldn't make much difference... But it's worth a shot!
 
IJ Reilly said:
I haven't had to run maintenance scripts manually on any of my Macs since Tiger, so I really don't think this is a solution to your problem. As far as your Activity Monitor posts, you'd really need to sort the processes by %CPU for us to see what's going on. Even so I notice EyeTV sucking up almost 20%, which seems awfully high. Also, if you're getting frequently dropped Internet connections, this isn't at all consistent with CPU load issues.

More information needed, such as how long it takes to have issues after a restart.
Click to expand...

In order 1 and 2.

After a restart (which takes 2-3 minutes now), programs load slowly (around 15 dock bounces each) right away. I lose internet every 12 to 24 hours (but not at the exact same time each day). Some programs such as address book load faster, in 3-5 bounces (though that still seems high since it used to be like half a bounce!).

Safari freezing and losing my connection are more annoying than the speed. I do keep a lot of programs open... most of the time I have safari, mail, rapidweaver, eyetv, and newsfire (rss reader).

Thanks for everyones help!
 
JPT said:
Also Safari is using up 390MB of Real Memory... Quite a bit...

I can't remember if you said this or anything, but is everything all up-to-date software-wise? Probably wouldn't make much difference... But it's worth a shot!
Click to expand...

Is there anything I can do to have Safari take less? All of my software is up to date.
 
The only comment I have is that you are running a hell of a lot of processes. Compare that to my iMac G5.

Picture 5.png
 
Did you use the "transfer" feature in Tiger to move everything from your old mac to your new one? If that is the case, you are better off doing a fresh install. For some reason, every core duo that used this feature has a few issues. Just my experience, I hope this helps...
 
Try rebooting the system and screen shot activity monitors before you fire up any of the applications. Would be interesting to see what this uses before you start doing anything.
 
I tried to use SuperDuper to get everything from my mini to the iMac, but only some of it worked. IIRC it was a mess.

I'm doing an archive and install right now... wondering if that was a mistake and I should have totally wiped it out?

Thanks for all of the help!
 
seh80 said:
I'm doing an archive and install right now... wondering if that was a mistake and I should have totally wiped it out?
Click to expand...

I don't know. If it helps, great as you don't have to reinstall your applications, otherwise do an Erase and Install.
 
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