Q: 2010 iMac slower than a tortoise stuck in mud after swallowing glue
Ever since upgrading to OS X El Capitan (from the factory 10.6 Snow Leopard), my poor iMac has been incredibly slow. To the point where eventually it would not even boot up.
Since I have everything of importance on an external hard drive, I just went ahead and booted from the install disc, going for a clean install.
It took multiple attempts for the system to boot from disc (Startup holding C) before eventually reading the disc and loading the language choice screen. It took nearly three days to go through the clean install process. And I mean days! Each step taking several hours. I had two sleeps during this horrendous process!
Finally, I got registered and through to the desk top. At which point it was still so slow that I felt a shut down was in order. I left it off for the day. Have just come back and pressed the power button, and have been watching the grey screen with apple logo and daisy spinner for the last 30 minutes.
Does anyone have any ideas why this could be. I appreciate it's a six year old machine, but my experience of Apple computers over the last 15 years has been such that I don't expect one to die after only six years.
My guess is that it's a hard drive problem of some kind? But if anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks in advance.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), iTunes version: 11.0.2 (26)
Posted on Sep 27, 2016 10:18 AM
CMD+C/R or holding down OPT or any other startup command work 1 in 10 attempts
Is your keyboard wireless? If so, do you happen to have a wired Apple USB keyboard?
If you can start up from Snow Leopard installation disc using Command-C or through Startup Manager (Option key), on the first Installer screen (after selecting language), go to the menu bar under Utilities and select to run Disk Utility.
Does the internal drive still appear in Disk Utility's sidebar? If it does, select the drive, NOT the volume indented below drive, in sidebar. For an internal drive, its SMART Status should be available along bottom of Disk Utility window. It normally says Verified.
You can do a "stress test" on the internal hard drive by erasing it in a particular way. With internal drive still selected in sidebar, click Erase tab. Click Security Options button, and set to Zero Out Data. This option writes zeros over the entire hard drive media, serving as a good test. Use the default Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format and name it Macintosh HD. Click Erase button. This takes much longer compared to a regular erase, but you should see steady progress on the bar. If it errors out, or stalls "forever," the hard drive is probably faulty.
If the zero out data erase completes successfully, quit Disk Utility and install Snow Leopard again. See if there's any improvement after it restarts into the fresh system on a freshly re-initialized drive.
Posted on Oct 1, 2016 12:14 AM