iMac Running Slow - Etrecheck report included

Hi there!

To begin, the Kaspersky and Surfshark antivirus utilities should be uninstalled. Antivirus and similar types of software can interfere with macOS and potentially cause issues. Here are some links that describe Apple's built-in malware protection, which are typically better for your Mac:

• macOS - Security - Apple
• Protecting against malware in macOS - Apple Support
• Protect your Mac from malware - Apple Support
• Ways to avoid malware and harmful apps on Mac - Apple Support

Next, your USB 3-equipped Mac with a hard disk can have dramatically improved system performance by connecting to an external solid-state drive (also known as an SSD). An external SSD as a startup disk can give your Mac additional performance for system responsiveness, apps, startup, and more. To learn more, see: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community.

Hope this helps!

-Jack

Kaspersky & Surfshark, both antivirus apps, consume significant system resources and are tripping over each other. You really do not need them anyway; you should remove both.

You have a slow (5400rpm) hard drive; it was slow the day the iMac was even built. GIven the results from your Etrecheck report it would also appear to be close to failing. The only fix would be to replace it with a faster HDD or an SSD. But opening one of these iMacs is not for the inexperienced user to do.

You have only 8GB RAM. That's about enough for Monterey to run but not much more. Unfortunately it cannot be upgraded.

Google Chrome is a known resource hog. Performance will be better if you remove Chrome in its entirety and use Safari or Firefox instead.

The simplest way to extend the life & improve performance of this iMac would be to install macOS on an external USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt 2 SSD drive; then boot from the external drive.

I do not see an external backkup drive in use. That is critical right now because these data points:

Performance:

    System Load: 2.45 (1 min ago) 2.14 (5 min ago) 1.85 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O usage: 0.41 MB/s

    File system: 85.37 seconds ⚠️

    Write speed: 32 MB/s ⚠️

    Read speed: 40 MB/s ⚠️

...suggest a very sick hard drive. A healthy drive of the same config as yours should be posting scores in the 70-80MB/sec range when new, and still doing 60-70MB/sec after years of use. Your scores are roughly half that. You are on the verge of losing data.

The other red flag for a sick drive is File System. Most healthy mech drives post in the 25-35 second range. Yours is closing in on the 120-second limit where EtreCheck stops that test.

It is possible that removing Kaspersky and SurfShark might improve drive performance, but 70-80MB/sec will still feel "glacial" with today's macOS versions. The option that our very wise Jack-19 offers will, in its least expensive incarnation, do at least 400MB/sec and will make your computer feel almost new.

Unload any other AV apps. Good that Kaspersky is gone. When I worked in law enforcement, we called these "clues;"

Diagnostics Information (past 60 days):

    2024-05-26 14:30:02 kavd - Crash (4 times) 👎🏻

        Executable: /Applications/Kaspersky Anti-Virus For Mac.app

and

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

    Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

    kavd 67.22 % (Kaspersky Lab Switzerland GmbH) 😱

    Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) (18) 37.08 % (Google LLC)

    WindowServer 14.78 % (Apple)

    EtreCheckPro 12.66 % (Etresoft, Inc.)

    kernel_task 11.33 % (Apple)

And Kaspersky is still in the news with this recent April 2024 article:

www.cnn.com › 2024/04/09 › politicsKaspersky: Biden administration preparing to prevent ... - CNN

Don't let the new Swiss address fool you.