need help with spinning rainbow

[MacM4ODA]

HI Folks, new here, i have had this iMac OS X ver: 10.5.4 for a year, i use FoxFire as a browser, i have many Bookmarks, now my iMac has slowed to a crawl and i get the spinning rainbow for several minutes before it gives me the URL i select from the Bookmark menu.

what do i need to do to get my iMac to respond the way it did when new ?? and get rid of the spinning rainbow ?

do i have too many Bookmarks or do i need more memory ?

thank you all in advance for your help and concern.

 

[bizzle]

Check your drive's health. You can do that by using SMART Utility, which has a free trial located here: http://www.volitans-software.com/products.php

Second, assuming your hard drive is in good health, run your updates. I suggest you run the combo update to 10.5.6, not the incremental in Software Update, which is available here: http://support.apple.com/downloads/Mac_OS_X_10-5-6_Combo_Update

After that's installed, run Software Update for any other updates.

I would export your bookmarks, for backup, and run AppCleaner (http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/) and remove Firefox. This will clear all preferences for the application as well, which most likely are causing your issues. After that, reinstall and reimport your bookmarks.

 

[MacM4ODA]

thank you for your help, i'll have to call Apple today, nothing i try seems to work and appears to have gotten worse.

once more, thank you

 

[MacM4ODA]

i called Apple yesterday and it turned out to be some sort of corruption in Firefox, "option, command + esc" was the answer along with "spotlight" to clear the "permissions" log.

i am now back to speed, in fact the tech told me to do this at least once a month but once a week would be better.