IMAC Woes Problems with current IMAC

[2MacalypseNow]

Here are the stats:


Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz


The problem is my browsers are beachballin/pinwheeling frequently. They just lock up. Netflix seems to be freezing as well when I use video stream feature. This week I decided to defrag and also to use mackeeper. It's too soon to tell if the browser is going to freeze/lock on me. My questions are,

1) I bought this refurbished in 2007, is it time for a new one?

2) If it's not, what steps should I do to get away from these beachballing/pinwheeling browser locks?

Currently I have 48 GB's free & I have 250 GB hard drive. No idea what happened in the last year or so. Everything has just been getting worse in turn of browser lock ups. One interesting thing is it's not crashing though when before it would crash if it couldn't handle something at a specific time. I have lots of music files but that won't effect my browser performance, right? I guess I could move over more files to an external drive. Just want to get this corrected this month. Just wondering what causes browser lock ups & the remedies for this.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I use Flock currently as my browser. But it happens with all the browsers eventually. Any suggestions would be helpful. Even if it means buy a new refurb'd IMAC and just save yourself the stress and time. If that's the case, what is the best way to avoid this browser lock up? Is it system performance speed that could be causing this? Thanks again for any suggestions to my current MACrisis

Update: Right after I posted this and left to get some food, guess what happened? Beachball/Pinwheel screen freeze jubilee It isn't that bad right now but it gets progressively worse as the week rolls by.

 

[Consultant]

I suspect you broke it. OS X does not need defrag.

What I would do
0- create another user and test
if it works fine in another user then you have installed something that messed up the main account, if it still does not work

1- backup all data on external drive, confirm that it works
2- format drive
3- reinstall OS X. Create user not the same name as regular account, update OS X.
4- test browser & apps
5- use migration assistant to transfer your old user back from external drive
6- if there's a problem after you transferred then it's your user account, look for info to transfer files manually.

 

[smithrh]

Actually this sounds like HD failure to me.

Open Console and see if you see any "Disk I/O" error messages. If you see even a single one, your disk is on the way out.

This would impact browsing as any browser will be caching content to the HD.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Memory: 1 GB

Buying and installing more RAM would probably be a good start.

 

[drewyboy]

Buying and installing more RAM would probably be a good start.

Amen to that! I've rocking a early 2007 macbook on 1 gig of ram and holy crap I want to cry sometimes, but I just can't justify buying more when I know the next update to the iMac, I'm probably going to bite. By the way, same experiences as the OP, it's the 1gig of ram.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Mac os never needs defraging and what did you run with Mackeeper?

 

[biggd]

All of the above are correct

Also, go into system prefs, user accounts, and make sure u you don't have too many programs running at startup
Make sure you also have more then 12% free hard drive space
Download and Run onyx on ur system to clean it up. (helped me)
And u may also have spyware

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

You may what to try Sophos anti virus to see if any rogue programs are installed.

 

[Paulywauly]

If your hard disc is fine im sure your you'll most likely need more ram. I had the same model and same amount of ram, it did the same thing before i maxed it out to 3GB which stopped it.

My new ones doing the same thing too on 4GB and it happens when all the ram has been used and its doing alot of Page Outs to disc.

 

[skyvueone]

Seen this and fixed it.
If you have snow leopard, do a clean install of your original OS ( 2007 should be Leopard ) and your problems should be solved. I had the same problem. Did a clean re install with snow and the beach-ball came back within 24 hres .Clean install again without snow and no more beach-ball , it s been 2 months now.
it worked for me
good luck