iMac 2017 Running very Slow

Question

Level 1

8 points

iMac 2017 Running very Slow

Hi guys, over the couple weeks my iMac has been running increasingly slow and apps have been crashing forcing me to force quit them at times when they begin beachballing. My FL Studio 20 program keeps crashing and there is a message in the program saying 'Low CPU!', but I am barely running anything on my desktop and certainly nothing taxing.

At times, Safari and Firefox will work really slow and Safari will get stuck on tabs- I'll create a new tab, but it won't show at the top of the screen, I'll also delete tabs, but they won't disappear. I also get messages saying that I need to force quit apps that are running in the background and the message won't disappear until I only have 1 app left.

It's a 2017 iMac and I'm running MAC OS High Sierra 10.13.6. I've run an EtreCheck if that's helpful? What can I do to speed up my baby and stop these infernal crashes? It's way too young ot be experiencing these issues.

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

Posted on Sep 20, 2018 9:09 AM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,856 points

Sep 20, 2018 11:17 AM in response to calenwb

calenwb wrote:

Should I really need to buy external RAM when I'm at most running a music producer program, a browser and Spotify in the background? I'd understand if I was using multiple taxing programs at once, but I'd expect my Mac to be able too handle this

Possibly, but only you can answer that question. You can use Activity Monitor to see what RAM you have is being used and how to manage it. AM is pre-installed on your computer already. To learn how to use it please click How to use Activity Monitor on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Sep 20, 2018 9:12 AM in response to calenwb

We are flying blind without the results of an Etrecheck report. No personal data is shared from that report.

Thanks!

Click here > https://etrecheck.com/

Then click: Free Download

Only takes a second or two to download. Then go to your Downloads folder and double click EtreCheck then follow the instructions then copy and paste the results in your Reply to this discussion.

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Answer 3

calenwb Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 20, 2018 9:32 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

EtreCheck version:4.3.6 (4D041)

Report generated:2018-09-20 16:55:28

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime:3:36

Performance:Good

Problem:Apps are crashing

Description:

Some of my 3rd party apps keep crashing like FL Studio 20 which will suddenly start beach balling leading me to have to force quit the program. Spotify also occasionally crashes or takes ages to respond. My Firefox web browser and Safari have also been running slowly lately and I keep getting messages that there isn’t enough CPU or memory to keep all my apps running despite me only having say Firefox and Spotify open at the time.

Major Issues:

Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.

No Time Machine backup- Time Machine backup not found.

Minor Issues:

These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems.

32-bit Apps- This machine has 32-bits apps that may have problems in the future.

Abnormal shutdown- Your machine shut down abnormally.

Hardware Information:

iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017)

iMac Model: iMac18,2

1 3 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-7400) CPU: 4-core

8 GB RAM -Upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR4 2400 ok

BANK 1/DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR4 2400 ok

Video Information:

Radeon Pro 555 - VRAM: 2048 MB

iMac

Drives:

disk0 - APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E632 1.00 TB (Mechanical)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 [Core Storage Container] 499.36 GB

disk1 - Macintosh HD (Journaled HFS+) 499.00 GB

disk0s3 - Recovery HD (Journaled HFS+) [Recovery] 650 MB

disk0s4 - B******P (NTFS) 499.48 GB

disk0s5 500 MB

disk2 - Disk Image 165 MB (Disk Image)

External Disk Image

disk2s1 [Partition Map] 32 KB

disk2s2 - F*****x (HFS+) 165 MB

disk3 - Disk Image 24 MB (Disk Image)

External Disk Image

disk3s1 [Partition Map] 32 KB

disk3s2 - Flash Player (HFS+) 24 MB

Mounted Volumes:

disk0s4 - B******P 499.48 GB (452.10 GB free)

NTFS

Mount point: /Volumes/B******P

disk1 - Macintosh HD 499.00 GB (448.39 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /

disk2s2 - F*****x 165 MB

HFS+

Mount point: /Volumes/F*****x

Network:

Interface en0: Ethernet

Interface en1: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

One IPv4 address

Interface en4: Bluetooth PAN

Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

iCloud Quota: 5.00 GB available

System Software:

macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G65)

Time since boot: About 16 days

System Load: 1.54 (1 min ago) 1.71 (5 min ago) 1.69 (15 min ago)

Security:

System	Status
Gatekeeper	Mac App Store and identified developers
System Integrity Protection	Enabled

32-bit Applications:

One 32-bit app

System Launch Agents:

[Not Loaded]	8 Apple tasks
[Loaded]	158 Apple tasks
[Running]	57 Apple tasks
[Killed]	69 Apple tasks
[Other]	2 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:

[Not Loaded]	40 Apple tasks
[Loaded]	162 Apple tasks
[Running]	71 Apple tasks
[Killed]	60 Apple tasks
[Other]	2 Apple tasks

Launch Agents:

[Other]

com.adobe.ARMDCHelper.cc24aef4a1b90ed56a725c38014c95072f92651fb65e1bf9c8e43c37a2 3d420d.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-02-17)

Launch Daemons:

[Running]	com.adobe.ARMDC.SMJobBlessHelper.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-02-17)
[Loaded]	com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing.plist (Apple - installed 2018-07-04)
[Loaded]	com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-08-27)
[Running]	com.adobe.ARMDC.Communicator.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-02-17)

User Login Items:

iTunesHelper Application (Apple - installed 2018-07-10)

(/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)

Firefox Application (Mozilla Corporation - installed 2017-12-26)

(/Volumes/F*****x/F*********p)

StartUpHelper SMLoginItem (Spotify - installed 2018-09-18)

(/Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/StartUpHelper.app)

Internet Plug-ins:

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: (installed 2018-09-17)

FlashPlayer-10.6: (installed 2018-09-11)

QuickTime Plugin: (installed 2018-09-03)

AdobePDFViewer: (installed 2018-09-17)

Flash Player: (installed 2018-09-11)

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Flash Player (installed 2018-08-27)

Time Machine:

Time Machine Not Configured!

Top Processes by CPU:

Process (count)	Source	% of CPU	Location
WindowServer	Apple	4
com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (7)	Apple	3
kernel_task	Apple	1
sandboxd	Apple	1
com.apple.WebKit.Networking	Apple	1

Top Processes by Memory:

Process (count)	Source	RAM usage	Location
com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (7)	Apple	1.12 GB
kernel_task	Apple	1015 MB
plugin-container (4)	Mozilla Corporation	654 MB
firefox	Mozilla Corporation	321 MB
mdworker (10)	Apple	130 MB

Top Processes by Network Use:

Process	Source	Input	Output	Location
mDNSResponder	Apple	51 MB	2 MB
Spotify	Spotify	1 MB	469 KB
netbiosd	Apple	529 KB	171 KB
com.apple.WebKit.Networking	Apple	288 KB	291 KB
apsd	Apple	93 KB	141 KB

Top Processes by Energy Use:

Process (count)	Source	Energy (0-100)	Location
WindowServer	Apple	3
mdworker (10)	Apple	2
mds	Apple	2
plugin-container (4)	Mozilla Corporation	1
Spotify	Spotify	0

Virtual Memory Information:

Available RAM	1.42 GB
Free RAM	15 MB
Used RAM	6.58 GB
Cached files	1.41 GB
Swap Used	561 MB

Software Installs (past 30 days):

Name	Version	Install Date
Gatekeeper Configuration Data	154	2018-09-05
Adobe Flash Player	31.0.0.108	2018-09-11
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (18.011.20058)	18.011.20058	2018-09-17
Safari	12.0	2018-09-18
Numbers	5.0	2018-09-18
Pages	7.0	2018-09-18
Keynote	8.0	2018-09-18

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):

2018-09-20 16:06:34 FL Studio 20.app CPU (5 times)

/Applications/FL Studio 20.app

2018-09-18 11:15:57 Firefox.app Crash (3 times)

/Volumes/V****E/*/F*********p

2018-09-03 23:36:59 Last Shutdown Cause: -128 - Unknown

End of report

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Answer 4

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,856 points

Sep 20, 2018 9:40 AM in response to calenwb

Your system may benefit by adding additional RAM, 8GB is now considered the bare minimum to running Mac OS 10.13.x. Doing so is extremely simple and does not require any tools. You iMac is capable of 64GB of RAM, I suspect if you upgraded to 12-16GB it would run okay. If you do decide to upgrade the RAM please only use Crucial.com or Macsales.com RAM, why because iMacs are sensitive to using quality RAM and both vendors provide high quality products, fair prices and have excellent service. Macsales.com even has install videos, here is the link:

How to Install Memory into a 27-Inch iMac with Retina 5k Display

Also, your computer has not been restarted for 16 days, consider restarting and see if that helps.

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Answer 5

calenwb Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 20, 2018 10:02 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Should I really need to buy external RAM when I'm at most running a music producer program, a browser and Spotify in the background? I'd understand if I was using multiple taxing programs at once, but I'd expect my Mac to be able too handle this

Reply

Answer 6

padams35

Level 4

3,307 points

Sep 20, 2018 12:42 PM in response to calenwb

Web browsers are (memory) taxing applications and you are clearly using all available memory and then some.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as external RAM, and upgrading the RAM on a 4K iMac is quite difficult since those lack a dedicated ram access door and require dissembling the entire computer. Most likely such an upgrade would need to be performed by Apple or an Apple Authorized Service provider.

One possible alternatives to buying a new computer or taking your computer in for a memory upgrade would be to reinstall the OS onto an external SSD and boot from that. An SSD is fast enough that you can effectively use disk swap space as virtual memory which might help.

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Answer 7

calenwb Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 20, 2018 2:32 PM in response to padams35

The iMac was working perfectly fine until recently and I haven't done anything to make things worse. I've got 8GB memory on this thing and was able to easily handle the music software, Spotify and the browsers open very easily beforehand.

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Answer 8

padams35

Level 4

3,307 points

Sep 20, 2018 7:06 PM in response to calenwb

1GB is probably normal. My copy is currently using ~500 MB for Firefox itself plus an additional 750MB in assorted Web Content processes with three tabs open (Pandora, reddit, nasaspaceflight) after an hour of browsing.

Honestly I would have expected 8GB to be fine for just 3 applications, but etrecheck was showing just 15MB of RAM free with 500MB swap used. At one point something was using a lot of memory to push that much swap to disk. All I have left to suggest is to restart your computer (to reset caches) and then the next time something stops responding open Activity Monitor to check CPU/memory use before force quitting.

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Answer 9

calenwb Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 21, 2018 2:44 AM in response to padams35

Ok thanks for the advice, I'll keep it running for a bit and see if anything else crops up so I can isolate the problem. I thought one of the main drawpoints of iMacs was their capabilities in terms of creative software, so I'm a bit surprised it's struggling like this

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