Beachballs make imac very slow

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Level 1

9 points

Beachballs make imac very slow

Hello, everyone,

I have a late 2012 27 inch iMac with yosemite 10.10.2. Over the last several weeks more and more beachballs have been appearing which makes the computer unresponsive. I tried everything I can think of. I moved stuff onto an external drive, I ran tech tool pro, reset the PRAM, ran disk utility. I even reformatted the internal drive and restored using carbon copy cloned I have on an external drive. I have two external usb drives along with the thunderbolt drive with ccc on it, an Epsom scanner and a hp laser jet printer.

The problem occurs doing doinfg the simplest things, like clicking an application in the dock or moving a folder or file in the finder. A beachball appears and grinds away for several minutes. I disconnected all the peripherals and the problem persists.

if anyone can suggest anything, that would be great. I am thinking my internal drive may be beginning to fail, or maybe the graphics card may be acting up. I did notice some screen drawing issues. I want to rule some of the simpler things first before I take it to the Apple Store, which is about two hours away

Joe

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), 2012 27 inch iMac, 32GB RAM, i5

Posted on Mar 30, 2015 6:38 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Mar 30, 2015 7:09 PM in response to radius688

When you see a beachball cursor or the slowness is especially bad, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

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Answer 2

radius688 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 31, 2015 4:49 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hello,

I tried restarting from the internal drive, but it hung about halfway through the thin gray progress bar. I restarted using the Recovery System and ran disk utility. It told me that the disk could not repair the drive. Now I am reformatting the internal drive and writing zeroes, and then will use a Carbon Copy Clone external thunderbolt drive I have to restore the system.

I tried restarting in Safe mode, but the imac just shut itself down.

Joe

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Answer 3

etresoft

Level 8

46,732 points

Mar 31, 2015 7:18 AM in response to radius688

If you hadn't already reformatted the drive, I could have directed you to a utility that might have told you if the internal drive is failing. It certainly sounds like it is failing, but it will be harder to definitely prove that. I suggest not using Carbon Copy Clone. Try to reinstall from the recovery volume. If that works, then you could use Migration Assistant to restore from the clone. If you experience any kind of failure during the process, then the hard drive has probably failed.

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Answer 4

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Mar 31, 2015 7:48 AM in response to radius688

The startup drive is failing, or there is some other internal hardware fault. Formatting it will have no effect, or only a temporary effect. It can't be trusted with data.

Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service provider.

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