iMac running very slow

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Level 1

8 points

iMac running very slow

I’ve tried everything except for a full reset of the OS (latest). Programs start very slowly. Intel i5, 8GB RAM, SATA drive with plenty of space. Here is the EtreCheck report:

EtreCheck Report

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Sep 10, 2022 4:43 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jack-19

Level 8

46,008 points

Sep 10, 2022 5:45 AM in response to Macouger

Hello,

The reason your iMac may feel slow is due to the 5400-rpm hard disk. While this hard disk found in your Mac is perfectly suited to light tasks, such as email and web browsing, but for more advanced tasks, and for users who want the maximum performance from their Mac, this hard drive does have its limitations. However, you can use an external SSD as your startup disk to run macOS and access your data. It will make your Mac 10 to 40 times faster for storage, and in turn, make your entire Mac much faster and even better.

To learn more, see: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community.

Jack

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

151,977 points

Sep 10, 2022 6:55 AM in response to Macouger

In addition to Jack-19's excellent comments, your Mac does not have enough RAM to run multiple apps simultaneously ... at least, not at the time you created this report.

How do I know? By this section in the report:

Virtual Memory Information:

Physical RAM: 8 GB

Free RAM: 28 MB

Used RAM: 5.23 GB

Cached files: 2.74 GB

Available RAM: 2.77 GB

Swap Used: 768 KB

This value should be zero. What is happening, is that macOS is temporarily moving one or more apps from RAM into your Mac's hard drive ... which is much slower. This is one of the reasons that your Mac is running very slowly.

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Answer 3

Mal-S

Level 5

4,978 points

Sep 10, 2022 8:18 AM in response to Macouger

Uninstall Clario, antivirus apps are not required and slow things down as well as messing with the OS.

Don’t have Malwarebytes running in the background, just run a scan as needed and shut down afterwards.

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Answer 4

Macouger Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 16, 2022 11:43 AM in response to Mal-S

Thanks for the suggestions!

I agree that doubling the RAM and switching to an SSD would greatly improve things. She does tend to keep too many programs going at one time, but even when nothing is open, it's taking too long (bouncy icon!) to start simple programs like Word or Safari. It is a wee bit faster than when I first started diagnosing it. Her husbands similar machine with the i3 processor and similar specs is much faster. And he has Trend Micro running! (I removed it from hers)

I did uninstall Clario. I'm going to wait until she can give up the computer for a few days, backup data, reinstall the OS.

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iMac running very slow

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