Slow/beachballing iMac

Hi Natasha. I have some thoughts to share with you. You say that you got rid of checkmymac etc. To be clear, did you completely remove all three antivirus apps? I recommend removing them using their uninstaller. Then all of the bits and pieces of each app is completely deleted. Sometimes when an OS is stressed the Etrecheck report will indicate a failing hard drive when it is ok. Yours was stressed. Having three antivirus apps running, having only 8 GB of RAM installed and having an old rotating hard drive can be too much when you also have several other apps open at the same time. Plus, you are running Catalina, which appears to use more RAM than older operating systems did. I suggest that you now rerun EtreCheck and see what it says. Also, you can run disk Utility to see what it says. I have feeling the reports will be ok now. Your Mac does not have RAM that is user upgradeable, so that may not be an option for you, but there are some things you can do that will make a difference

First, consider attaching an external slid state drive, then installing Catalina on it. Make it your start up drive. That will help a lot. The rest are things you can do to improve performance. I hope the following is helpful to you in dealing with a slow computer. These are “maintenance” steps which are often ignored by many people.

·      It is important to occasionally restart a Mac. Ideally, once a week or more often. This does some system cleaning.

·      Regularly clearing the history of your browsers can help as all the data is stored in RAM. Clearing frees up RAM for system use. The Chrome browser uses a lot more RAM than other browsers do, so you may not want to use it.

·      Some people seldom empty their trash. If you haven’t, then do so. Also empty your email trash.

·      Some programs use a lot of RAM. (Like many Adobe apps and games.) When using them, close any other apps not being used.

·      Doing a restart in the safe mode can clear a number of problems. This is done by holding down the shift key at start up. This process can take up to ten minutes while the computer is doing its maintenance and cleans the cache. You may then restart normally.

·      It is also a good idea to periodically run the Disk Utility app. If it reports some issues, then rerun it repeatedly as needed until the final report is ok.

·      On some computers such as yours the problem may simply be that there is not enough RAM installed for RAM hungry programs that are being used. Some computers like yours are unable to have RAM user installed. Those upgrades must be done by a qualified Apple service specialist , and the cost can be substantial.

I hope these suggestions are helpful and enable you to speed up your computer at least somewhat. Good luck.

Uninstall CleanMyMac per their directions , Restart then run etrecheck again to see what chaff it left.

On CMM…

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251370955?answerId=252661013022#252661013022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251442443?answerId=252814053022#252814053022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251464557?answerId=252841819022#252841819022

You have a slow 5400rpm HDD. Those are only marginally capable of keeping up with a clean install of Catalina. Piling on Google/Microsoft auto updaters, Dropbox file syncing, Antivirus, and residual CleanMyMac processes is too much.

I'd suggest uninstalling McAffee (security comes at the expense of performance, and MacOS is already resonably secure by itself), following the manufacture's instructions to uninstall CMM (it installs pieces of itself everywhere), and restoring your system onto an external USB 3 SSD.

Great to hear, take care my friend! :)