beach ball unless I reset SMC

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Level 1

10 points

beach ball unless I reset SMC

late 2011 27" iMac i7, 12 GB RAM, plenty of HDD space, Sierra OS. Beach ball after just about every click. Really slow response. Practically unusable. Ran disk repair, hardware diags, safe mode, etc. Only thing that consistently gets the computer back to normal is resetting SMC (pull power...wait...re-power). However, this only works for the reboot immediately following the SMC reset. If I restart the computer, its back to beach ball mode. Ran estrecheck post SMC and if reported a couple of minor plists startups that I deleted. Rebooted...back in slow motion mode. Running estrecheck in slow motion mode as I write this. It seems like SMC is messed up after a shutdown. Has anyone seen anything like this?

Posted on Oct 5, 2017 6:01 PM

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Answer 1

SeaPapp

Level 7

26,492 points

Oct 5, 2017 6:13 PM in response to nollchr

Most likely a failing hard disk. To test install Mac OS on an external and boot from that, if the freezing and slowdowns stop you'll need to get the drive replaced.

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Answer 2

Oct 11, 2017 10:58 PM in response to SeaPapp

I have the same issue but I would be surprised if it was suddenly, without warning, my solid state drive. Was running perfectly fine before I did a clean install of High Sierra. Now I get the spinning beach ball after almost every click as well.

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