iMac Super Slow - Beach Ball of Death always spinning

Question

iMac Super Slow - Beach Ball of Death always spinning

I am new to all this. My iMac is on a wireless network at home and has been running uber slow. I checked under Activity Monitr and see that the pie Chart under the System Memory tab, has a small green sliver of available memory. there is a HUGE red portion which says Wired: Total amount of physical memory that cannot be paged to disk.

What the heck does that mean? How do I see what is contained there and I can I delete some of it? The only thin running is my printer, mouse (wireless) keyboard and Time Machine back-up up disk.

I appreciate any help.

Ann

iMac (24-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jul 19, 2012 10:18 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Jul 19, 2012 10:58 AM in response to moonstruck1008

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

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Answer 2

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Jul 19, 2012 12:29 PM in response to moonstruck1008

How much free space do,you have left on your startup drive?

Select the drive icon, on your desktop, then hold the command-I keys on your keyboard to bring up the info pane for your startup drive.

It sounds to me like you need more RAM memory.

Your iMac can take a max. RAM amount of 6 GBs.

Here's a reliable Mac RAM seller

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac

And here's the procedure for installing it into your iMac

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1423

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Answer 3

Jul 19, 2012 12:51 PM in response to moonstruck1008

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

Maybe you have too much going at the same time? Do you have some memory-hungry application running or open that you aren't actually using? Does it do the spinny even after a restart? Do you have something set up to open at startup that shouldn't?

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Answer 4

Jul 19, 2012 1:29 PM in response to MichelPM

Thanks for the quick response. It says capacity: 499.76 GB

Available: 428.45 GB

Doesn't sound like I am using a lot. You think I should get more RAM?

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Answer 5

Jul 19, 2012 1:33 PM in response to Sludgedragon

All that launches at Startupis Mail iCal and Google Chrome. Says I have 499.76 GB Capacity and am only using 71.32 GB.

It does spinny thing when I try and do a google search, opening Facebook. The computer is purely a play thin, meaning I do no work. I just don't understand what the big red section in the pie chart of Wired means. What can be wired if I am on a wireless network.

Can my sons' Xbox have anything t do with it, although it does this when he's not on.

Thanks for your quick reply.

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Answer 6

MichelPM

Level 10

81,541 points

Jul 19, 2012 4:40 PM in response to moonstruck1008

The "Wired" part of the pie chart is how RAM memory has been capture or allocated in order to run your iMac smoothly.

If the majority of this is being used

If the left over isn't much, then you need to add RAM!

The XBOX could be an issue if the amount of data you pay to stream, isn't enough to stream live or active data across multiple internet devices that can slow your Internet speeds down.

Also, other issues can slow your Internet speeds.

Think of the Internet as a rapidly flowing river, if enough people tap off water/data all at once from the rapidly flowing data stream, they amount of taps can slow the speed and volume of data that will eventually reach your tap or connection.

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