Slow to boot and even open a folder

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Level 1

24 points

Slow to boot and even open a folder

My iMac (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of Ram; 320 GB hard drive with 160 GB available) running OS 10.6.8 takes almost 10 minutes to boot up. Even opening a file folder can take almost a minute. I reset the PRam last week and that helped but now back to slooooooow. I checked the Activity Monitor and I've got over 3 GB of ram free. Could my hard drive be dying? I have dual backup (external hard drive and Carbonite), so I'm not concerned about losing anything, but need this computer to work like it used too. Any ideas?
JDonS

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 24"

Posted on Feb 11, 2012 5:07 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 11, 2012 5:10 PM in response to JDonS

Try shutting down Carbonite as a test. See if with Carbonite shutdown there is any difference in performance.

I know a couple user who had problems with Carbonite using an inordinate amount of CPU to do nothing.

They evenually did as I suggested and dropped Carbonite all together when the powers kept coming back.

Allan

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Answer 2

JDonS Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 11, 2012 5:28 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Turned off Carbonite and no improvement. Takes almost 45 seconds to open a 1 page PDF document of text.

JDonS

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Answer 3

Feb 11, 2012 5:42 PM in response to JDonS

Have you tried a safe boot?

Allan

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Answer 4

JDonS Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 11, 2012 5:49 PM in response to Allan Eckert

No I haven't. I don't know how to do that. What will that tell me or show me?

JDonS

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Answer 5

Feb 11, 2012 5:50 PM in response to JDonS

Hold down shift while booting.

Allan

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Answer 6

JDonS Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 11, 2012 6:10 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Did the Safe Boot and it took almost 6 minutes to boot up. Still slow. Just to open System Prefs takes 2 minutes of spinning color wheel.

JDonS

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Answer 7

JDonS Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 11, 2012 6:31 PM in response to JDonS

Also, I do not get the usual "Chime" when the computer comes on. Am I losing my hard drive?
JDonS

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Answer 8

Feb 11, 2012 7:13 PM in response to JDonS

No chime indicates that the POST, Power On SelfTest, failed.

This is generally a RAM problem.

You can try to run Rember to test your RAM.

Allan

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Answer 9

JDonS Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 12, 2012 9:26 AM in response to Allan Eckert

I was able to download Rember and ran a 1 loop test on all memory and it came back saying all ram was good.

Shut down last night and tryied to boot up today and sat with spinning wheel for almost 15 minutes and never booted up. Powered it off and now trying to do a Safe Boot.

I'm at a loss on what the problem is and what to do. Any ideas?

JDonS

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