TroMy iMac is slow and has weird stuff in the trash

[mtbsafari]

My iMac has been running very very slowly for about 2 weeks. I am talking very very slowly. It seems to be processing time. I will be in word, move the cursor and it will take a few seconds to get there. Sometimes I have to wait a minute after I click on something for the cursor to catch up, and (hate to say it) even 2 minutes. That's like a millennium in Mac time. Sometimes total freeze.

It is an iMac 7.1 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 667 MHz DDR2. I am running OS X 10.6.2 and mostly simple business software (MS Office for Mac 2008). I also have MYOB and some Adobe stuff (DW CS4 and PSE 8). I don't use graphics in my day to day work ... hence the off-the-shelf configuration.

Yesterday I did a secure empty trash. All good, just took its time. This morning there is new stuff in the trash. It is in a folder called "Recovered files". Inside are things I know not of ... "15089Office 2008 12.2.7 Update", "16807Office 2008 12.2.7 Update", ... "dftmpHNHPMOIMklkkkkkk-----", ... etc. All looks innocent enough, but I don't recall moving anything there.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but with the slowness and now stuff turning up mysteriously, I am worried about the health of my Mac.

Anyone have any thoughts on this, or can lead me through a rebuild.

All software on here has been downloaded from legitimate vendors (Apple, MS, Adobe). The last thing I bought was iWork from Apple, which just so happens to be about the time everything started going wrong.

I have looked at memory usage, and all seems good. iStat Pro says CPU usage is OK. I'm not very technically mined, so don't know what to do next.

Geoff

 

[TMRaven]

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB 667 MHz DDR2

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


You can do everybody a favor, and pull up activity monitor after a good days' use of your everyday tasks in which you experience the lag. Then show us your page ins and page outs under system memory.

Also, tell us your available space of your HDD.

 

[mtbsafari]

I will run this tomorrow as today is a short day. Melbourne Cup - race that stops a nation - Australia.

If I run Activity Monitor today, here are a couple of screen shots (2 attachments). But I have only just started after a full shut down.

 

[rkaufmann87]

I will run this tomorrow as today is a short day. Melbourne Cup - race that stops a nation - Australia.

If I run Activity Monitor today, here are a couple of screen shots (2 attachments). But I have only just started after a full shut down.

Based on your activity monitor at the point of time you ran it you're pretty much out of RAM. Upgrading the RAM to the most it will accept will help you out a lot.

 

[mtbsafari]

Thanks TMRaven and rkaufmann87. I will head off to Apple Store tomorrow morning and get it sorted. Today has been horrible. So slow that I have resorted to trusty MacBook Pro.