Mavericks has ruined my Mac

Setup a genius bar appt. and they can help you roll your Imac back to your last OS.

In the future, the easy way around true easy no hassle roll-back (vs. time machine, which is involved and time consuming) is to always have an updated or week or so old CLONE of your internal HD.

You can boot from such a clone in case of HD failure or such an occurrence, or just install same (swap them) with the original HD.

using a free APP like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

😊

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6162

geocip if you are willing to perform a little troubleshooting you can probably fix what's wrong.

As you determined, restoring from a Time Machine backup will do nothing since it merely reinstalled everything that was already installed. Regressing to an earlier OS X version won't solve anything; it will just defer the effects of problems that already exist and will eventually need to be addressed. Buying a new Mac won't solve anything either, if you migrate apps and junk known to cause trouble. What's worse is that a new Mac will leave you unable to regress to an earlier version of OS X if that's what you decide to do.

If you would prefer to fix your problems now, search this forum for a place to begin troubleshooting, or reply here with your intentions.

.. have you tried repairing permissions.. or perhaps run fsck -fy ?

If you boot OS X Recovery and select "Restore from Time Machine Backup" it will definitely work.

Select the backup created immediately prior to upgrading and it will restore your Mac as if you never upgraded. The version number will be shown (e.g. 10.8.5 and a build number similar to the following screenshot).

Connecting your Mac to the Time Capsule or LAN with an Ethernet cable will ensure the restore will complete in the minimum possible time. If you're using an external hard disk (not a Time Capsule) it will already be as fast as possible.

Once restored, you can run EtreCheck and post its results if necessary, to help determine what corrective action should be taken prior to upgrading. You can do that now, unless your Mac has already become so slow it's impractical to do so.

One step you did not mention is to perform anSMC reset. It is justified for a number of reasons including poor performance that can't be explained any other way. Don't expect a miracle but it is harmless enough to try. Be sure to read the procedure carefully and follow all the steps exactly as written, even if they seem inapplicable or trivial.

when you boot up hold down the command and s keys until it starts to boot with UNIX scripts appearing on the screen.. then type in fsck -fy .. then after it finishes.. type in reboot..

No it should not, and may indicate a hardware failure.

After a reasonable amount of time force it to reboot by holding the power button. Ten minutes is more than reasonable.

Thanks for the update. Time Machine is priceless, wouldn't you say?

Use EtreCheck as a tool, and post its results if you need help interpreting them.

Thanks for the update. No one likes to learn their hard disk needs replacement, but the Apple Genius did you a favor by referring you to a repair shop. They probably charged much less than Apple would have.

Hard disks are wear items, and it's not unusual to expect replacement after six years. With a Time Machine backup, a potential disaster becomes merely an inconvenience plus a little expense.

For the benifit of others experiencing this problem, - I too "upgraded" from snow leapard to Maverics and it made my ~5year old iMac unusable. Very slow doing anything. Apparently apple forgot to make Mavericks compatible with Macs. After spending some time with Apple Support Chat they had me try some things and eventually told me to re-install Maverics OSX. This did not work, so don't waste your time. Stay tuned... I'm going to try the time machine restore also. I'll report back as to results....