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Hi - I have just upgraded my OS on my iMac (late 2011) to Catalina OS and everything is working so slowly - it has almost made my computer unusable. Please can anyone offer any advice to get my system back up and running?
Thank you
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
From what OS did you upgrade? Mojave should have been just as slow.
Both Mojave and Catalina were designed to run from a solid state drive (SSD). Running either on a spinning hard drive will be slow. However, slow is relative. Yours sounds like it is more than just the slowness of running from a spinning hard drive.
Are you sure it is a late 2011 iMac? The specs say it isn't compatible with that Mac. Your device description shows a 2012 which is compatible.
There is also a lot of optimization and other rebuilding going on in the background when you first install. If Photos is running, it will re-analyze the entire photos library, which will slow other things down while it completes that task.
If that isn't the issue, then you may have old, incompatible system modifications causing issues.
You can run EtreCheck to see what may be causing the problem. Not guaranteed to find anything, but it may help.
The report it generates was really designed to post it here and let those of us who are used to interpreting it help you, so use the Share Report button to copy report, then paste it into the Additional Text area (document icon), here in the reply window toolbar.
From what OS did you upgrade? Mojave should have been just as slow.
Both Mojave and Catalina were designed to run from a solid state drive (SSD). Running either on a spinning hard drive will be slow. However, slow is relative. Yours sounds like it is more than just the slowness of running from a spinning hard drive.
Are you sure it is a late 2011 iMac? The specs say it isn't compatible with that Mac. Your device description shows a 2012 which is compatible.
There is also a lot of optimization and other rebuilding going on in the background when you first install. If Photos is running, it will re-analyze the entire photos library, which will slow other things down while it completes that task.
If that isn't the issue, then you may have old, incompatible system modifications causing issues.
You can run EtreCheck to see what may be causing the problem. Not guaranteed to find anything, but it may help.
The report it generates was really designed to post it here and let those of us who are used to interpreting it help you, so use the Share Report button to copy report, then paste it into the Additional Text area (document icon), here in the reply window toolbar.
OK - I have located the CPU and can see the following tasks running / using the greatest CPU%
Photoanalysisd 18.7 (this goes up to 87% at times) - is this part of the Catalina installation set up process?
photolibraryd 10.5
mdworker 14
deleted 10
Windowserver 12.8
Googlechrome
What do you think?
Thank you
Photos re-analyzes the entire library to identify faces, objects, scenes, etc. It may take a while to complete, but I would think it would finish over night if you left it running.
mdworker is Spotlight indexing the drive. Again, it will run for a while, but should complete over night, also.
Hi
Please can you take a look at the EtreCheck report attached - as it shows my computer is running something that is a Major issue. A solution would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Sarah
Hi - yes sorry my iMac is late 2012. I am running the EtreCheck now. - Thanks
Open Activity Monitor and sort the CPU tab by %cpu.
What process is using a high percentage of CPU?
Hi can you tell me how to find the CPU activity?
Click on the CPU tab.
Click on the CPU% header to sort. Click again to switch sort direction
Sorry I dont know where the CPU tab is :)
Those tasks are still running but now there is another process taking up 60% of the CPU capacity - nsurlsessiond. What is this doing and how can I stop it?
Many thanks for your help.
Sarah
It's a framework in the OS that manages uploading and downloading data from Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
You shouldn't need to stop it.
Just upgraded to Catalina and now my iMac is soooo slow
