I am not a tech-savvy person at all. I very much need help. I have a 27-inch, Mid 2010 iMac, running on OS X 10.9.4 (13E28). It has a 3.2 GHz Intel Cor i3 processor with 4 GB 1333 MHzDdR3 memory. It is very, very, very slow. I bought DaisyDuck, to try to figure out if any programs or files are taking up too much space. But, I am also confused with that.
Should I add memory? Would that help my computer to work faster? Thank you very much.
More memory may help, but the more likely issue is the software you are running. For example, if you are using a Google Chrome browser instead of Apple's Safari, that would tend to hog your computer's resources.
You should download the (free) etrecheck software from here:
http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck
It will give you a diagnostic report, including what software you are running, that would be very helpful to many folks on the forum to solve your issue. Try running this and posting your results back in this thread.
Please describe the problem in as much relevant detail as possible. The better your description, the better the chance of a solution.
For example, if the computer is slow, which specific actions are slow? Is it slow all the time, or only sometimes? When did it start to be slow? Did you change anything just before it started? Have you seen any alerts or error messages? Have you done anything to try to fix it? Most importantly, do you have a current backup of all data? If the answer to the last question is "no," back up now. Ask if you need guidance. Do nothing else until you have a backup.
I have a Time Machine, which I bought and used until I moved. My current internet service provider has lent me a wireless modem and router all-in-one. Even though I would love to use my Time Machine to back up my slow computer, I do not know how to do so. Can you please tell me where I can find out how to do this?
I do store everything of importance on an external hard drive, which I back up to my desktop and to my laptop.
Once I back up everything, I am going to try to do what sberman said.
Sorry to jump on this thread, but I too am having the exact same problem as cindymc44, with exactly the same IMAC - mid 2010 i3 imac 11.3 3.2ghz. Intel core.
It's time to bring in the "Big Guns". Exactly the same issue ridiculously slow everything serious beach balls. Even on start up. Upgraded my RAM to 12GB, repaired permissions, repaired disc, even reformatted my HD. I've installed etrecheck but I can't even copy to clipboard.
I have everything backed up on a time machine, but haven't reconfigured. One particular issue with this model seems that I can't get a AHT tried start D and option D, it all comes up but then tells me in is not configured for this device? Intel issue?
I'll see how I can get my etrecheck on to forum, as I'm on the iPad...can't even access the discussion with the iMac just seems to be grinding to a halt.
cant seem to get safari working at all now!
I am having the same problem, i upgraded to 10.9.4 on my iMac with the following configuration
27" Mid 2010
Processor 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.9.4 (13E28)
And I am not running any spectacular software at the moment that would cause any different behavior than before, I have Sophos Virus protection and little snitch running to monitor the network traffic.
I have been using chrome for the last couple of years so please dont tell me that its my software or any other made up blah blah blah..
Lets be clear the only changes that I have made is the upgrade to 10.9.4 about 5 hours ago, now here are the issues that I am facing.
1. Fan is on constantly
2. Finder works at a snails pace and some applications that access the drives seem to either not be opening or opening so slow that it is unbearable.
3. Overall system seems to be slow and hard to work with.
Any suggestions or simple help would be greatly appreciated..
Thanks everyone..
Hi, can you start a new discussion with a link from here to the new.
- There may well be differing checks required to obtain the reasons for for the slow performance, and resolve them.
- So via your own discussion there will not be confusion.
Thanks.
Hi, can you start a new discussion with a link from here to the new.
- There may well be differing checks required to obtain the reasons for for the slow performance, and resolve them.
- So via your own discussion there will not be confusion.
Thanks.
I have a 20-inch, Early 2008 iMac and I've been upgraded to 10.9.4 for a few weeks. I did have the fan problem, but sorted that out, forget what I did but may be able to retrace my steps.
But, the machine is so slow now - really not tolerable. Every program I launch just takes a lot of time. Even launching Textedit that used to just flash up is sow. Safari is now very slow to launch. Google, which I use all the time and was normally slow, is now excruciating. Logging on, I have to wait a long time to even put in the PW. Once open, most applications are tolerable. But, like others have mentioned, the machine is just slower at everything. I watch "Activity Monitor" to see what's using what for memory and CPU, and nothing new with that compared to 10.6.8 except it's not as good giving me the information I want in an quickly readable form.
Do I need to just go back to 10.6.8, or is this Mac's hardware is not compatible with 10.9.4? It seemed that the upgrade was recommended for this machine.
I'd appreciate any thoughts, recommendation, suggestions. Thanks!
Please start your own, brand new posting.
Please do as Linc and sberman have suggested, but also for troubleshooting, can you go to Applications > Utilities and run Activity Monitor, and select the CPU tab?
Please tell us the top 5 items (processes) listed, and their CPU percent. and then the average System, User, Idle percent from the box on the bottom.
This is an attempt to see if some process is using too much CPU time. It's just one piece of the troubleshooting puzzle.
Example (from my Mac):
Dropbox 3.3
Finder 3.2
Window Server 1.0
Activity Monitor 0.9
kernel task 0.8
System 1.7, Users 2.2 Idle 95.6
(these are constantly changing - just try to catch a moment in time - we're especially interested in anything high)
PS - a short while ago, I had process backupd using 20% - that's a part of Time Machine and it's normal.
I am still struggling with connecting Time Machine. I think I really do need to back up my Mac as soon as possible.
The CPU keeps changing.
But, here it is, as of this moment:
Firefox 3.7
Activity Monitor 0.9
Firefox Plugin Process 0.4
netsession_mac 0.2
SystemUIServer 0.1
For some reason, my computer seems to be running a lot faster than it has been doing in the past several weeks. Maybe it is like my hair. It will look awful for weeks until the day I am supposed to go to my hair stylist...
Maybe it is like my hair. It will look awful for weeks until the day I am supposed to go to my hair stylist...
:-)
Those numbers look normal.
About Time machine - we're here to help, but we need you to tell us more detail about what you've done, and where it isn't going right.
So, you have an external drive plugged in, and you've re-formatted it to Mac OS Extended (journalled) using Disk Utility (where re-format is called "erase") ?
You've found the Time Machine preference pane in System Prefs?
I have ran this report and posted it but no feedback. Mavericks has made my imac unusable. It's slow and buggy. I have to constantly repair disk permissions only to run the disk utility on start up again and find the repair of disk permissions did nothing. This is so frustrating I have honestly thought about moving to a PC platform.
My Mac OS X 10.9.4 is running very, very slow
