My Late 2013 iMac 21.5 inch using OS Catalina has Become non functional & unusable
15/1/2025
In November 2013 I contacted Apple support about some apparently trivial issue I immediately forgot about . But after that the Apple support person then randomly (& irelevantly) asked me if I had ever "maintained or cleaned up my hard disk". When I said no he then told me I ought to 'clean up my hard disk as errors and junk always appear on it over time'.
I then followed the step by step instructions in the disk utility which said the hard disk was OK and then asked me to restart the imac in recovery mode. I did that & it commenced booting up. Then a message appeared saying it could not access the Apple website to load an operating system.
This left me with an unbootable mac that would not work at all. So I phoned Apple support again & they told me to take it to an Apple shop. I did, explaining to them what had happened & all I needed was the OS that I had been using; then the computer would function again and all my files & information was still on the computer at that point. I was told there would be no charge for this.
When the Apple shop returned my computer they told me 'something odd' had happened as when they turned on the computer it was completely empty except for the OS they had put in. They also charged me £69 !!! I had a time machine full backup which I then used to re-install all my files back into the computer. The computer was now slow & clunky & something was obviously wrong. Apple support then told me to install the latest OS a late 2013 iMac could use which was Catalina 10.15.7.
I then installed Catalina 10.15.7 only to find the computer was very clunky & slow and it got slower and slower over time until now a year later it is virtually unuseable.
When I contacted Apple support they were derisory and told me I should not expect a 2013 iMac to work at all as it was now 'antique' ! They told the only solution was to buy a new computer.
Can anyone tell me what on earth is going on here ? And how can I fix it ?
