EtreCheck Hard Drive Failure

Nora Jenkins wrote:

Thanks for your quick response. Can you tell me why exactly? I am trying to put Norton on now b/c I haven't had any virus protection on this and my husband has extra licenses. Not sure what Synaptic is and how it got on the iMac.

You have very effective malware defenses with macOS, including ongoing scans.

Add-on anti-malware won’t help with the low performance of this Mac, either. It’ll make it worse.

Removing the add-on anti-malware likely won’t resolve the underlying performance problem here, however.

Why is this Mac slow? You have too little physical memory, a very slow storage device, and the bottom-end Intel processor.

This combination didn’t perform well when new, and has only gotten slower as local and app and macOS requirements have increased.

For more details on why this particular Mac is slow, see this:

Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community

That includes a link to how to use an external SSD as a means to speed up the performance here, short of replacement with an SSD iMac. Any of the current 24” iMac models will be vastly faster here, too. Pending that or another replacement, an add-on external SSD can be a cost-effective work-around.

And best leave the add-on anti-malware unadded, yes.

You're welcome.

See this article: Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community

If you're behind a router then you don't need to activate the Firewall. However, if you have a laptop and travel with it is wise to activate the Firewall so you're protected when you use public WiFi to access the internet. But at home behind a router you don't need it.

Also, as you're already been advised to do, uninstall all Norton/Symantec software according to the developer's instructions.

You have both Synaptic End Point Security & Norton 360 installed. You need to get rid of both.

You're welcome.