User profile for user: Eric Swanger
Eric Swanger Author
User level: Level 1
30 points

My iMac is running insanely slow all of the sudden!

Overnight my power must have went off, so I had to restart my iMac. When it restarted, it was running insanely slowly, taking 5+ minutes to get to the desktop screen, and apps taking 5+ to open individually at startup. I decided to store more of what was on the iMac to the cloud, with hopes that it would run faster. Now, not only does it not run faster, when I try to run Music, it gets stuck on the prompt "Searching Music Library." Also, apps seem to be running even slower. I couldn't even get Safari to open.


I am at a loss at how to fix this!


I am downloading 14.2.1 right now, with hopes that the iOS update will help, but anybody have any other suggestions?

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Dec 25, 2023 2:36 PM

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User profile for user: rkaufmann87
rkaufmann87
User level: Level 10
148,624 points

Posted on Dec 25, 2023 4:07 PM

Hopefully a simple Safe Mode restart helps, however if your system has a hard drive installed the hard drive may be damaged which could have occurred when the computer lost power. If the Safe Mode restart works, then great. If it did not then download DriveDX (the free evaluation version) and run a report on the internal HD. If that drive shows any errors then it's bad news, the drive is damaged and should be taken out of the equation.


If you have a 2017-2019 iMac it likely has a traditional HD or a Fusion drive which is a combo of a small SSD and a HD, the HD is the achilles heel of the system.

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User profile for user: rkaufmann87
rkaufmann87
User level: Level 10
148,624 points

Dec 25, 2023 4:07 PM in response to Eric Swanger

Hopefully a simple Safe Mode restart helps, however if your system has a hard drive installed the hard drive may be damaged which could have occurred when the computer lost power. If the Safe Mode restart works, then great. If it did not then download DriveDX (the free evaluation version) and run a report on the internal HD. If that drive shows any errors then it's bad news, the drive is damaged and should be taken out of the equation.


If you have a 2017-2019 iMac it likely has a traditional HD or a Fusion drive which is a combo of a small SSD and a HD, the HD is the achilles heel of the system.

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User profile for user: Allan Jones
Allan Jones
User level: Level 9
79,352 points

Dec 25, 2023 3:06 PM in response to Eric Swanger

I am downloading 14.2.1 right now, with hopes that the iOS update will help, but anybody have any other suggestions?


I cannot recommend that either.


Jack's recommendation of a Safe is spot-on. Based on some experiences with the SSD in my MacBook Pro, I would let the computer sit unused in Safe Model for about an hour before doing a restart. This was suggested to me by our very astute Grant Bennet-Alder and made a different in full recovery.

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My iMac is running insanely slow all of the sudden!

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