El Capitan slowed my iMac down.

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 one 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.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

This procedure will delete certain temporary and cache files. The files are automatically generated and don't contain any of your data. Occasionally they can become corrupt and cause problems such as yours.

Please back up all data.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

/var/folders

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Open

from the contextual menu.* A folder with the odd name "folders" should open.

Inside "folders" are several subfolders, each with a two-character name. Drag all the subfolders except the one named "zz" to the Trash. Don't delete the subfolder named "zz". You'll be prompted for your administrator login credentials.

Restart the computer and empty the Trash.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

jojowindmill wrote:

Hello,

I am followed "

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

/var/folders

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

but I am not getting the option "Services and option" at all.

Are you sure you did it right? Highlight that entire line, then hold down the Control key and right-click on it. You should see the following:

Please use the alternative method to open the folder.

jojowindmill wrote:

I get this coming up when I control-click (not right click)

I don't know what you're doing, but it's not what Linc Davis asked you to do, because no matter what I do to try and replicate your results, I'm not getting them. I've attempted every permutation of right-clicking, highlighting, and holding down the Control key, and every time, I get the sub-menu you're supposed to see.

Please restart the computer.