I have been a very iMac user since 2008 and now my iMac, iMac (24-inch, Early 2008), keeps freezing very often causing me to reboot it.
I have tried different methods, but none helps me. Does anyone have had similar experience?
Thank you for any support.
Yusuf.
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
Hi Yusuf, can you be more specific about what you mean by "freezing". Do you mean you see a constantly spinning beachball, or something else? Does this happen at any time, or is it only when you use a specific program, such as Safari? You need to give us more information.
It might also help to solve your problem if you run Etrecheck, a free piece of software that is designed to produce an anonymous (personal details will be removed) list of what's on your system that can be pasted into a reply here. You can get it here:
Yeh Dude
What Justin-T said, you need to give more info.
Is this SSD,HDD storage or RAM storage?
How big is your hard drive or your Ram?
What do you mean by freezing?
Yes. First of all, I always have the iMac to sleep when not used instead of shutting it down. After installing the Maverick OS X, when working on the iMac out of no where, the mouse changes to the spinning colored wheel and it stays that way until I force reboot. When the wheel is spinning, I cannot access any application. The system is freezes. After forcing reboot, everything goes back to normal until out of no where the issue repeats itself.
I also noticed, that if I leave the computer for a while and it locks me out, when I relog back in, the spinning wheel appears again and I have to force the reboot ones again.
I have now just spent about a half a day cleaning the environment using a tool called 'CleanMyMac2', which so far has done a good job. Since you guys are the experts, i'm not sure if the cleaning tool I use is ok or not. I have read that, for example, mackeeper is no good.
Is the above sufficient for you to help me please if the issue reappears again?
Thank you for your support.
-Yusuf.
How much RAM do you have on your iMac? Do you use and work intensive applications such as large games, video editing software, music production software. Do you run another operating system on it such as windows?
It would help us to get a profile of your system, including basic hardware you have and which software you're running. An easy, free & quick way is to run EtreCheck and post the results here. The results won't include any personally identifiable information. Here's where to get it:
This site has tips on what is causing some of the problems - apparently one is the eye candy translucent desk top eyecons
The content of the computer's hard disk drive, includes storage of your created works
files you made, images or music files, and the likes of which some flakey application
such as 'cleanmymac' won't really help with. To clear the problem, you'd have to invest
in an externally enclosed hard disk drive, and move/copy those items you sought to keep
to the external drive, then trash the originals from the computer's hard disk drive.
Or upgrade the internal hard disk drive to a larger capacity, and have an expert move
the content from the old drive into the new one, if you aren't skilled to do that task.
Also, the lack of free or unused hard drive capacity can be a problem with systemwide
performance; that is because the hard drive free space is usually available to the OS X
for use as Virtual Memory on an automatic level, in cases when there is not enough
actual chip RAM installed. The slower read-write to/from the hard disk drive takes the
place of suitable memory chip capacity, at a poorer rate of return compared to real RAM.
If your computer has less than 15% unused hard drive capacity, it will have issues; this
may vary depending on what you are using the computer for, & your open applications.
Back to RAM memory chips, if your computer has less than 6GB RAM installed, it may
be able to see a slight measure of performance gain (after removing excess files to
an outside hard drive) by upgrading this by use of suitable quality RAM chips. The OS X
versions after Snow Leopard 10.6.8 prefer more than 4GB and up, to work adequately.
•iMac: How to remove or install memory - Apple Support
Maximum Memory 6.0 GB (Actual) 4.0 GB (Apple)
Memory Slots 2 - 200-pin PC2-6400 (800MHz) DDR2 SO-DIMM
{the link above suggests less than factual upgrade capacity, so to
expand that to more than 4GB, you could use one 2-GB chip and
one 4-GB chip for a total of 6GB; or choose two 4-GB and not be
able to really see a gain from the rounding up to 8GB in your Mac}
Most credible Mac user advice, says to not use Mackeeper, Cleanmymac, or those
other non-productive third-party products; they don't really help the overall issues.
And they are very hard to completely remove; their remaining bits do affect OS X
performance and do more harm than good. So there are a few advice sections
in these ASC discussions where removing those kinds of badwares are mentioned.
Information can be found about adware, malware, and performance issues on the
pages of http://thesafemac.com and note the Tech Guides; plus link to adware medic.
You may be due to have the hard disk drive in the iMac replaced, if it's an original part.
They do wear out and when that happens, your data can all be lost. So address that
by the best means available. An iFixit.com repair guide for the build model year iMac
you have is online and can be used for free. You'd need to see it, though, when or if
the computer in use is taken offline for the procedure. Or let an expert do the upgrades.
In any event...
Good luck & happy computing! 🙂
imac keeps freezing due to low storage space
