My iMac is suddenly Running Extremely Slow

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Level 1

4 points

My iMac is suddenly Running Extremely Slow

Hello,

My iMac has become increasingly slower for the past few months. I primarily noticed at the beginning of the year. It started with just Chrome running slow and I thought it was just bad Wifi but I soon realized that everything was running very slow. At first It was just a little inconvenient but now it is almost impossible for me to do anything on my Mac.

My iMac is a 20" Late 2006 Model running on OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I know it's old and out of date but I have had absolutely no problems with it for all the years I have had it up until now. I've been reading numerous discussions and trying to fix it myself but to no avail. I don't have Mackeeper installed, I have no startup applications, no antivirus software, time machine is turned off, all permissions have been verified and fixed, and I have used Onyx to clean everything up.

I also have 52.74 GB free out of 250GB. My processor is 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and my Memory is 2 GB 667 MHz. I've used the Activity Monitor and can't find anything using too much of the CPU. I can have nothing running and it will still be slower than a dead snail.

I know the easy solution is to just get a new one but that's not really a viable option in the near future, especially since I'm in the height of research paper and finals season. And a part of me is slightly paranoid that it has something to do with Mavericks, since it seems Mavericks came out around the same time as my iMac started getting slow but that's just me.

Is there anyone that can help me out or have any suggestions on what I could do?

iMac (20-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Mar 27, 2014 5:09 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,606 points

Mar 27, 2014 5:56 PM in response to Jmreedy

A good place to start in this kind of matter is to give us a look at your config. Download and install this free utility:

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

It is secure and written by one of our most valued members to allow users to show details of their computers' configuration In Apple Support Communities without revealing any sensitive personal data.

Run the program and click the "Copy report to clipboard" button when it displays the results. Then return here and paste the report into a response to your initial post. It can often show if any harmful files/programs are dragging down your performance.

For Activity Monitor to display the 'heavy hitters" in performance degradation, you need to change a setting. By default, AM shows "My Processes." In OS 10.6, look for the "Show" window in the upper part of the AM window:

If it is not set to "All Processes" as shown in the image, make it so.

Another AM tip: It will not show all the suspects right after a restart. Here's what I do:

<>Use the computer normally for about a day.

<>Quit any applications you have started so the computer is "idling" with only background processes working

<>Open AM

<>Highlight the "%CPU" column as shown in the image to bubble the most active processes to the top.

<> Watch the list for at least a minute--more is better. Processes swap in and out as they compete for resources.

You are looking for anything other than AM that uses more than about 10% of the CPU.

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Answer 2

MichelPM

Level 10

80,958 points

Mar 27, 2014 6:15 PM in response to Jmreedy

There is a possibilty that your hard drive maybe failing.

If you do not have a backup of all your important data, this will be a good time to create one while your hard drive is still functioning.

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Answer 3

Jmreedy Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 28, 2014 8:28 PM in response to Jmreedy

Thank you both for trying to help, unfortunately MichelIPM was correct and my hard drive failed last night. Luckily I was able to get everything backed up before it happened. I talked with my local Apple Store and because my iMac is from 2006 it is now a "vintage" model so they cannot do anything with the hardware. I haven't found anyplace around me that can replace my hard drive so I'm probably just going to have to get a new Mac. Anyways thanks again, and sorry for wasting your time. :/

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