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Very slow iMac.

C

Colster20

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2010
14
0
Ireland
I have a 21.5 inch Late 2009 iMac with 12 gab Ram running OSX 10.8.5, 500GB hard drive with approx 131 free. Can take five minutes for iTunes to open up, also very slow safari with regular crashes.
Can anyone give me a recommendation as to how I can speed my iMac up

Thanks
 
What have you done so far to fix the problem? Have you cleaned out all the items in your browser cache? What's consuming your RAM? I use Clean My Mac 3 to fix that and other problems that could be impacting your performance. It was also just written up in the latest issue of MacWorld. Given the age of your iMac, your Directory could also be a culprit. Have you run Apple's Disk Utility? If those two don't work, I'd use DiskWarrior 5.0. It does things Disk Utility doesn't. It can assess the efficiency of your directory.
 
Colster20 said:
I have a 21.5 inch Late 2009 iMac with 12 gab Ram running OSX 10.8.5, 500GB hard drive with approx 131 free. Can take five minutes for iTunes to open up, also very slow safari with regular crashes.
Can anyone give me a recommendation as to how I can speed my iMac up

Thanks
Click to expand...
Just to clarify, it was not like this before and is now slow launching apps like you described? If that is the case, it sounds like a failing hard drive.
 
Disk Utility. Check hard disk then repair permissions.
 
My iMac is from 2009. I replaced the hard drive with an SSD last month and it’s much, much faster – it may as well be a new computer!
 
I ran Disk Utility to repair permissions, I downloaded Onyx and ran the clean up tools in that and it makes very little difference. I deleted some other programs that I wasn't using such as Steam (and its related games), I also had downloaded Battle.net application and a couple of games from Blizzard, (Starcraft and Diablo 3), I have since deleted both of these in the hope of freeing up some space and speeding things up and it is still pretty much the same. The SSD seems like my best bet without having to replace the iMac, massive pain, as I have a lot on my hard drive, Itunes music, photos etc.
 
New HDD for data only and an SSD as the boot drive. You will then have a machine much faster than when it was new. :D
 
OP:

Just something to try.

Go to the Users & Groups pref pane, and choose to create a NEW administrative account.

Give it any name you wish, as you're creating it only "for test purposes".

Once it's created, log out of your current account and into the new one.

Do things still run as slowly, or do conditions change when logged into this "temp" account?

Aside:
If nothing changes, you can just delete the entire temp account.
If things run faster, then it could be something "localized" in your "regular" account setup that is slowing things down...
 
Good advice from Fishrrman, above. :)

You could also backup all your data, and, in a moment reminiscent of a Windows PC user, format the HD and reinstall everything LOL :D
 
Ok, I have now got a new Hard drive, not an SSD but a 1TB HDD and I have upgraded to 16gb ram and still things are slow.
Could this be a software issue would an upgrade to El Cap make any difference.
 
Colster20 said:
Ok, I have now got a new Hard drive, not an SSD but a 1TB HDD and I have upgraded to 16gb ram and still things are slow.
Could this be a software issue would an upgrade to El Cap make any difference.
Click to expand...
Can you define slow? That is a six year old computer on a hard drive, so it won't be a speed demon. You said before it took five minutes to open iTunes and you were getting crashes. Is that part fixed?
 
A little better than it was, but the new hard drive didn't make a huge difference to be honest, i do have a new issue, now when i play a movie through iTunes, there is no sound. But if I stream to my apple tv there is no problem.
I also can't get into Facebook web page in Safari and twitter defaults to the mobile version.

I'm still running Mountain Lion, would an upgrade make a difference on this machine.

Thanks again
 
Colster20 said:
A little better than it was, but the new hard drive didn't make a huge difference to be honest, i do have a new issue, now when i play a movie through iTunes, there is no sound. But if I stream to my apple tv there is no problem.
I also can't get into Facebook web page in Safari and twitter defaults to the mobile version.

I'm still running Mountain Lion, would an upgrade make a difference on this machine.

Thanks again
Click to expand...
Often times, no matter the promises from Apple, a new OS will slow things down. My favorite was Snow Leopard. After that, each OS just seemed to consume more resources. A new hard drive was a mistake. Everyone here said to get an SSD, and you didn't. So we'll try again. Get an SSD (large enough for OS, programs and data -- 500GB) AND do a full clean install of your OS. Then just install the programs and files you actually need. Use the new hard drive for back up in an external USB2 case.

Just to be clear, any other solution than the one above (or purchasing a new computer) is a sub-standard choice and will lead to sub-standard performance. If you want to cheap out, you have to live with poor performance. But as the poster above said, getting an SSD is like getting a new computer. And getting one too small (just for applications) is folly given you need to eek out every drop of performance possible.
 
Did you install the new system from Time Machine or something similar? To me it sounds like something other than the HDD/SSD problem. I agree with everyone else - a SSD is the only way to go and it would be better for you to get one yesterday than tomorrow. However, it sounds like something else in your system is wrong. It could be a virus or a corrupt file somewhere causing the problem. I think that if you restored the computer from a backup, that your best option is to try to start from scratch. Meaning install a clean version of OSX and then reinstalling applications and copy data over. If it where me I would give that a shot. Yes it takes a while, but it could be worth it.
 
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