My iMac 21.5 with intel processor is running terribly slow. It takes tens of seconds to open another application or move from one open tab to another. How can I take fresh restart / reinstall Mac OS
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
You can do it yourself at home. No big deal. I was under Apple Care at the time and the phone support people were unsure what was going on. That is why I went to the Apple Store and had it looked at.
Make sure you ahve a good back-up, then you can do the following -
Boot up in Recovery Mode: Intro to macOS Recovery - Apple Support
Use the Disk Utility to do a test on your hard drive (just to be sure). Then erase your hard drive using the option in the Disk Utility. Then use the System Reinstall option and let it reinstall the system.
After reinstalling the system, it is like setting your machine up when you first got it. Donwload all of your apps again, either reinstall your data only from a Time Machine back-up or let it download from your iCloud account (I let mine download from iCloud).
Download and run Etrecheck. Be sure to give it Full Disk access before running.
Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.
Copy the report
and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.
Then we can evaluate the report to see if we can determine the cause of the problem.
You don't say how old it is, but I suspect the drive is dying,I hope you have backups, check that first
You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…
https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx
Thanks to Jack-19…
It may be wise to run SMART Utility to check the drives' health.
If those report good news...
We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...
EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.
Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…
Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...
Had a similar problem for around 6 months. Tried checking for application conflicts and such. Even running in Safe Mode it had long stalls and beachballing. Spent several calls with Apple Support. They finally suggested taking it in to the Apple techs. They erased the HD and reloaded a fresh (Ventura) system and tested it. It was running per specs.
They told me to go and reload my PERSONAL FILES from either iCLoud or Time Machine. Download fresh copies of apps and do NOT load the System Files from Time Machine. It takes a bit of time to complete, but since January my machine has been running like new. The suspect was corrupted system files that would be difficult if not impossible to figure out.
Forgot to mention. Always a good idea to run Apple Diagnostics on your machine before you start. Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support
Here are more details of my challenging iMac !
iMac21.5", 2017
Model Identifier : iMac18,1
Date of Purchase 01 May 2020
Processor 2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
Graphics Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 MB
Memory 8 GB 2133 MHz DDR4
macOS Ventura 13.3.1
Sounds good ...but it means taking it to apple service folks. Can i do something myself at home ? My imac was purchased May 2020 and even the memory usage (1 TB HDD is just 168 GB) and there is ample space on Macintosh HD
+1 for BDAqua's suggetiosn. This alone:
It takes tens of seconds to open another application
says "hard drive issue" to me.
My iMac is running terribly slow. How can I reinstall Mac OS?
