-
All replies
-
Helpful answers
-
Jan 26, 2015 6:36 AM in response to ronaldfromcroydonby CellarDwellr,Hello! Then it's likely that your 2009 iMac was slowed down for reasons of software malfunctioning.
I’ve offered the steps below to similar posts in the past and they helped out getting to the solution (or at least find the cause). I suggest them to you too in this case. It will take you about 30 minutes or less to do these, depending on how bad the problem on your Mac is.
The goal here is to boot your Mac to the so-called Recovery partition where you’ll have a chance to repair the disk and the disk permissions using the Disk Utility and Password Utility. This might solve your issue and even if it doesn’t- it’s still a decent maintenance step to perform. These steps won’t erase your data or reinstall your Mac in any way if you follow instructions carefully.
Here’s how:
1/ Make sure your computer is completely shut down.
2/ You’ll have to be quick next: Press the Mac’s power button. As soon as you either hear the loud chime, or see the display light up - usually after a second or 2 - on your keyboard press [cmd] + [r] Keep these keys on your keyboard pressed until you either see an Apple Logo with a loading bar or a spinning gear.
After a few minutes, you’ll be presented with a Utilities screen. This is the Recovery partition. If this step is already giving you problems, try using a USB-keyboard. It doesn’t have to be an Apple-keyboard. If you have a Windows-tailored keyboard laying around, use the “Windows-flag” key in stead of the [cmd]-key and it should also work.
3/ Choose Disk Utility and click [continue]
Disk Utility will display your computer’s harddrive in the left column. The default name for it is “Macintosh HD” and is usually the second one from the top. Click on it and click on the [verify disk] button. This will check your “Macintosh HD” harddrive partition for errors. If found, click [repair disk] unless you have a Fusion drive in your Mac and it says [fix] instead of [repair disk] please tell us before you continue! For a screenshot of what I mean, check this article from Apple: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202574
4/ Once done with the verifying or repairing of your “Macintosh HD” click [repair disk permissions]
This will check your partition for permissions errors. A common myth about this feature is that it will fix all permissions issues on your Mac, which is not true, but it will fix most systemwide issues. Also, here is a list of error messages that you can safely ignore if they pop up:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203172
5/ Lastly we shall do a permissions/Access Control List repair on specifically your user’s home folder with a somewhat hidden tool in the Recovery partition. Close Disk Utility and find the menu called “utilities” in the top left corner of your computer’s display. It’s in between the menus “edit” and “window” Don’t be confused with the menu called “os x utilities”
Choose Terminal. A somewhat old-fashioned looking window will pop up, waiting for a text command from you. This is the Terminal.
After the # type: resetpassword and press return. Note that there is no space between ‘reset’ and ‘password’
What you’ll see next is an rectangular window that gives you the option to reset passwords. We are not going to that, however. Instead, click on “Macintosh HD” at the top. In the pull-down menu below that, choose your user's accountname. Skip all the rest and at the very bottom click the [reset]-button.
A spinning gear will appear and may stay on for a second or several minutes. It’s hard to predict exactly how long.
If you have multiple users on your Mac, I advise you to repeat this step for all your users.
We’re ready to reboot your Mac now. Click on the Apple Menu and choose “startup disk” Choose to boot from “Macintosh HD” Please let us know if this solved your issue, or if the steps above did not work, or could not be performed for some reason.
NB- lastly, if you do these same steps on your 2009 iMac it might function correctly again as well
-
Jan 26, 2015 7:08 AM in response to CellarDwellrby ronaldfromcroydon,Thanks I'll try this as soon as I have time, but one point, the 2009 mac is running fine after I removed most of the unneeded software ( I'm giving it to a relative) . so I went through the software on the new mac and removed the unnecessary, but still faulty, so it may be due to software.
-
Jan 26, 2015 7:14 AM in response to ronaldfromcroydonby CellarDwellr,★Helpfulronaldfromcroydon wrote:
Thanks I'll try this as soon as I have time, but one point, the 2009 mac is running fine after I removed most of the unneeded software ( I'm giving it to a relative) . so I went through the software on the new mac and removed the unnecessary, but still faulty, so it may be due to software.
Fair enough.
One extra thing: if you're giving the Mac to someone else, it's highly recommended that you erase and reinstall the mac to factory defaults. if not, your Apple ID purchases (which might include OS X itself) and iCloud account might still pop up all the time for the new owner, hindering them in installing their own apps and OS X upgrades.
-
Jan 26, 2015 9:49 AM in response to CellarDwellrby h2vh,An hour ago I ran the procedure described here:
CellarDwellrJan 26, 2015 6:36 AM
Uneventful until 'repair disk permissions'; after completing that step I did a 'verify disk permissions', which returned:
"System/Library/CoreS..." - should be: drwxr-xr-x - are: lrwxr-xr-x
"Applications/Safari.ap...l" - should be: lrwxr-xr-x - are: -rwxr-xr-x
I tried to go through the list:
Mac OS X: Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions messages that you can safely ignore - Apple Support
but it was too long!
*************
"Skip all the rest and at the very bottom click the [reset]-button.
A spinning gear will appear and may stay on for a second or several minutes. It’s hard to predict exactly how long"
- the spinning wheel showed momentarily, and the [reset]-button greyed out. I suppose that means the the reset has been accomplished(?).
*************
It's too early to tell if the computer is working faster now - I'll report back when I find out
-
Jan 26, 2015 9:57 AM in response to h2vhby CellarDwellr,h2vh wrote:
"Skip all the rest and at the very bottom click the [reset]-button.
A spinning gear will appear and may stay on for a second or several minutes. It’s hard to predict exactly how long"
- the spinning wheel showed momentarily, and the [reset]-button greyed out. I suppose that means the the reset has been accomplished(?).
*************
It's too early to tell if the computer is working faster now - I'll report back when I find out
The spinning gear might only appear for a fraction of a second. By the way you're describing it, it sounds like the ACL repair was completed successfully.
Just let us know if this wasn't enought. There are additional things we can recommend you on top of deleting unnecessary apps like you already did.
-
Jan 26, 2015 11:53 AM in response to ronaldfromcroydonby Eric Root,If you are giving the computer to someone else, below is a list of things to consider so there aren't future problems.
Selling old Mac (4) Apple support
-
Jan 26, 2015 10:11 PM in response to CellarDwellrby ronaldfromcroydon,I carefully followed your instructions, but I'm afraid it didn't help. The coloured ball continues play with me.
-
Jan 27, 2015 2:41 AM in response to ronaldfromcroydonby CellarDwellr,ronaldfromcroydon wrote:
I carefully followed your instructions, but I'm afraid it didn't help. The coloured ball continues play with me.
Hmmm
We can do more permissions and ACL reset. This time from inside your OS X. That might help. This one is simpler since it's all packed into one terminal command:
sudo diskutil repairPermissions /; chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~; sudo chmod -R 700 ~; sudo chmod 755 ~; sudo chmod 755 ~/Public; sudo chmod 733 ~/Public/Drop\ Box; sudo reboot
Here is how:
Open the Terminal application, for example by typing ter into Spotlight, the magnifying glass in the top right corner of your computer's display.
Copy-paste the entire long command I quoted above, from sudo to reboot.
Please be aware that this command will auto-reboot your Mac without asking your permission. Save all your work before doing this command.
Also, Terminal will ask for your administrator/login password several times during this. When you enter it, you will not see any **** appear. It will look like you're not typing anything. Just blindly enter your password and press the return key.
-
Jan 27, 2015 2:49 AM in response to ronaldfromcroydonby h2vh,I tend to agree(?).
Additionally I removed my Antivirus (Sophos (free) Home Edition).
I feel that the general response is a little bit quicker - but if so I can't really tell if it was caused by the repair of disk permissions or the deletion of the AV software?
I'll give it a few more days and the report back again.
The computer is an iMac (intel) from 2010. It came with Snow Leopard and is now running Mavericks - my impression is that each and every OS update has slowed it down!
That's why I'm still very hesitant regarding Yosemite.
-
Jan 27, 2015 7:05 AM in response to CellarDwellrby ronaldfromcroydon,No, I'm afraid the problem remains. I'm going to try removing software, one at a time.
-
Jan 27, 2015 7:40 AM in response to ronaldfromcroydonby CellarDwellr,No, I'm afraid the problem remains. I'm going to try removing software, one at a time.
That sounds like a plan. You could also check the application called Activity Monitor to see if anything stands out.
Before removing actual applications that you use, you should do these two things:
- go to "System Preferences > Users & Groups > [login items]" and trash everything that there using the [-] button. Unchecking the boxes won't be enough.
- open the Finder and then the menu: "go > go to folder" and copy paste the line below in the box that appears, including the ~
~/library/
This will open your user library folder. Check and see if you find a folder called caches, one called launchagent and one called launchdaemons.
Trash the entire caches folder. It will have a lot of content but never mind that.
check the content of the other two folders - if you have them - and delete what you deem inappropriate from them. Whatever you delete will not crash your computer or the apps these files are associated with.
-
Jan 27, 2015 12:32 PM in response to CellarDwellrby Eric Root,Activity Monitor - Mavericks also Yosemite
Activity Monitor in Mavericks has significant changes
Why your Mac runs slower than it should
Things you can do to resolve slowdowns see post by Kappy
Try running this program and then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read.
-
Jan 28, 2015 7:55 AM in response to CellarDwellrby ronaldfromcroydon,Removed the Login items, except for one Which was unremovable, showed a greyed out - . showing Kind unknown, of a file that doesn't seem to exist.
Int the ~/library/ found Caches Do you mean completely remove the entire caches file?
Found LaunchAgents, but no Launch Daemons.
-
Jan 28, 2015 7:58 AM in response to Eric Rootby ronaldfromcroydon,★HelpfulTried most of these but checked OnyX, but it doesn't appear to be available for 10.10 yet.
I'll go over them further later.