Help! My iMac is getting slow!!

[smokey982]

I've got a 27" iMac that I bought 3-4 years ago. It's been a great computer over the years but lately it has become really slow. I've got thousands of photos and music stored, but the hard drive isn't nearly full yet. It's the first and only Mac I've ever owned. Is there anything I can do to bring some zip back? I know on windows systems you have disk clean up, defrag, etc. is there anything similar on the Mac?

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[jrp]

There are some defraggers out there, Micromat makes one, but I don't know how effective they are. What Version of OS X are you running?

 

[lparsons21]

If your hard drive isn't nearly full, then I doubt a defragger will do much for you.

Take a look at what is running all the time. Select the apple icon at the top and then 'force quit'. It will show you a list of some of the stuff running and won't force quit anything until you tell it to. If that looks good, then run System Monitor and see if it can give you some clues as to what is slowing things down. System Monitor is located in 'applications-->utilities'.

One of the biggies for slowdowns is anti-virus software. I don't use them any more as I don't think there is an real need.

 

[Voyager6]

One of the biggies for slowdowns is anti-virus software. I don't use them any more as I don't think there is an real need.

You are being facetious right? The only time you DON"T need AV is if you are not connected to the internet and even then I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[RandallA]

Go to the disk utility and run Repair Permissions and Repair Disk, then reboot it. You could also reset the NVRam.

Shut down your Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (?), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

That helps most of the time.

 

[Hall]

No anti-virus software here on a Mac either....

Defragging the hard drive isn't necessary - it uses a different filesystem design. Also, a lot of files on the hard drive does not slow down computers (Mac, Windows, etc). Now, if it's 99% full, it will have issues as it needs to write temporary files all the time while it's in use.

How much RAM does it have ? If you don't know or don't know how to check, click the Apple in the upper-left, About This Mac and it's there.

 

[lparsons21]

You are being facetious right? The only time you DON"T need AV is if you are not connected to the internet and even then I wouldn't recommend it.

I haven't had anti-virus software on my Mac in a very long time. Removed the last one when it was causing more issues than it helped. Never had any malware in all the years I've been using computers and that is way before the internet even existed. On the Mac, most experts in the field don't see the need to have AV software though there are some that disagree.

Frankly the only thing AV software does for the Mac is keep me from getting Windows malware and infecting my Windows using friends in some way!

 

[Hall]

AV, malware, etc on Macs is simply a numbers game. The percentage of Macs out there vs PCs is low enough that it's not worth the time/effort to target them.

 

[lparsons21]

Does it matter why? To me not at all. I don't care if they aren't in the wild because they can't get them to work or they just aren't writing them.

That said, I run a minimal AV software on Windows too as I tend to not go to places that are known malware providers.

 

[smokey982]

No anti-virus software here on a Mac either....

Defragging the hard drive isn't necessary - it uses a different filesystem design. Also, a lot of files on the hard drive does not slow down computers (Mac, Windows, etc). Now, if it's 99% full, it will have issues as it needs to write temporary files all the time while it's in use.

How much RAM does it have ? If you don't know or don't know how to check, click the Apple in the upper-left, About This Mac and it's there.

Processor: 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3
Memory: 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
And I still have over 700GB of hard drive space left.

 

[smokey982]

There are some defraggers out there, Micromat makes one, but I don't know how effective they are. What Version of OS X are you running?

I'm currently running Mavericks.

 

[Hall]

I would definitely consider increasing the RAM. You should feel an improvement but I don't think it will be a night and day difference. I added a 2x4gb (8gb total) to the existing 4gb and it's better. I was concerned about incompatibility with the old and new but haven't had a glitch yet (it's been a couple months and I don't anticipate anything now).

 

[smokey982]

If your hard drive isn't nearly full, then I doubt a defragger will do much for you.

Take a look at what is running all the time. Select the apple icon at the top and then 'force quit'. It will show you a list of some of the stuff running and won't force quit anything until you tell it to. If that looks good, then run System Monitor and see if it can give you some clues as to what is slowing things down. System Monitor is located in 'applications-->utilities'.

One of the biggies for slowdowns is anti-virus software. I don't use them any more as I don't think there is an real need.

When I force quit. The only things running is Safari and finder. I also opened system monitor. But to be honest, I have no idea what I'm looking at.
And I'm not running any anti-virus software.

 

[DRCars]

You may not be seeing all the processes that are running. There is a setting in "Activity Monitor" to "Show All Processes." You may be amazed at how much will be listed there. The trick then becomes figuring out what to stop and how to stop it so it doesn't come back. I wish I could be of more help but I don't have a MAC. My daughter does and she is continually trying to combat computer slowdowns and looking into this kind of stuff.

DRCars

 

[ronton3]

Onyx

Go to https://www.macupdate.com/ download "Onyx" which will help delete caches and such that you may have never maintained. When you say it is not zippy if you are talking about the browser you may want to try "chromium" again on Mc update. It is much faster than safari(in my opinion) and you do not need a google account to use it as you would chrome. If you google speed up your mac you will find many articles from Mac Magazines that may be helpful. Occasionally it may be wise to reinstall OSX. It is not the chore it can be on windows and the Mac magazines can give directions. ron

 

[jrp]

Sometimes a simple reboot makes a difference.

 

[Hall]

...and you do not need a google account to use it as you would chrome.

You don't need a Google account to use Chrome



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[Foxbat]

Every Mac is a PC, and nowadays every PC (even Macs) have a MAC.

My experience with slow Mac HDD performance led me to replacing our Mac Mini's 5,400 rpm, 3 Gb SATA drive with an OWC Mercury 6 Gb SATA SSD.

This Mac normally hibernates since the standby power usage is minuscule, but when we would wake up the system, it would not respond to input for up to 30 seconds after the screen came on. I scanned for problems using the OS X Disk utility, but it never found anything that pointed to a failing hard drive.

Since I put in the SSD, however, the wake from sleep is under 5 seconds. System boot from power off is also much better, but it never took more than 30 seconds before.

Swapping the HDD for a SSD was pretty easy considering the number of fasteners that needed to be removed, but the guides at iFixit and on the OWC website made it much easier.

If your iMac is over two years old, this might be a good option to explore. The iMacs that came out in Late 2012 use double-sided foam tape to fasten the screen to the aluminum case and it requires new foam tape to reassemble your iMac when you're done.

 

[avg1joe]

If it was a pc I'd tell you to run a boot time scan with avast and then a quick scan with malwarebytes. Since its a mac run a boot time scan with avast and a quick scan with malwarebytes (do they make a malwarebytes antimalware for mac?). You can tell me that it was pointless after you come up clean.

 

[Foxbat]

With root kits I don't trust booting from the PC's disk. I take the drive out, connect it to an external USB drive adapter, and run a full scan. Make sure the Auto Action is disabled before plugging in the drive.

With a Mac, you could boot in Firewire mode (Command-T at boot) and connect via Firewire to another Mac to run the scan.