My IMAC seems sluggish

My Imac is sluggish, what can I do?
Model Name:          iMac
Model Identifier:          iMac9,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          6 MB
Memory:          2 GB
Bus Speed:          1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:          IM91.008D.B08
SMC Version (system):          1.36f3

Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard and should not be installed.
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc. Other utilities are also available such as Onyx, Leopard Cache Cleaner, CockTail, and Xupport, for example.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Backuplist
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
iBackup
JaBack
Silver Keeper
MimMac
Retrospect
Super Flexible File Synchronizer
SuperDuper!
Synchronize Pro! X
SyncTwoFolders
Synk Pro
Synk Standard
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.

Similar Messages

IMac seems sluggish

I have a 20 in intel iMac with a gig of ram (2 megahertz core duo). Everything seems slow lately. I have repaired permissions but can't remember what else to do. Any input? Thanks. . .Jim C
IMac (intel), macbook Mac OS X (10.4.6)

peter, you look qualified to me to answer this...why do i lose the internet connection when my imac core2 goes to sleep & then awakes?? if you read my post regarding this you will see i have tried multiple things to solve this..no help yet!!is anyone out there that knows about this...not any Apple help people can solve this...& they have tried
i sleep my new imac core2duo and the internet not connected window comes on..signal is strong & then possibly comes back up & connects in 5-10 seconds..or NOT!!
now we have trashed pref. plists/ safari plists..done all sorts of things...when it was not wireless it connected fine after waking?? this is driving me NUTS!! free BEER for anyone that can solve thisthanx in advance

IMac Seems slow and lots of disk access.

I bought my first iMac a few months ago. However recently the iMac seems to have got really slow. I use it for Lightroom and Photoshop.
Without either of these 2 programs open for example I can just try opening entourage or any other program even Safari sometimes and the disk will just go mad and churn away and it can take ages for the program to open.
How do I find out whats causing the system to go slow? or is this just something I have to live with?

I think the problem could be excessive memory usage.
Just from looking in activity monitor when I have a few progs open.
Photoshop 1.96GB
Lightroom 539MB
Safari 236MB
Also under system memory it says ;-
Free : 27MB
Wired : 762MB
Active : 2.17GB
Inactive : 1.07GB
Used : 3.98GB
Page Ins : 1.41GB
Page Outs : 1.36GB
Swap Used : 3.14GB
Does it look like my mac is paging to the disk excessively?
Message was edited by: blackforce

My 24" iMac seems to gets the spinning colored ball a lot, seems it is running slow a lot more than it did before any suggestion?

My 24” iMac seems to gets the spinning colored ball a lot, seems it is running slow a lot more than it did before any suggestion?

Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
In the Memory tab, are there a lot of Pageouts?

IMac is sluggish

My iMac is sluggish and stalling, needs to be rebooted often? This just happened suddenly last week and now it happens everyday.

Back up all data immediately as your boot drive may be failing.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CReq 'Chann|GPU D|I/O' | tail | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal 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. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Normally the window will be empty. If you get output like this:
kernel[0] <Debug>: disk0s2: I/O error
the boot drive is failing, or there's some other hardware fault in the storage subsystem.
If you get output like any of this:
kernel[0] <Debug>: ** GPU Debug Info Start **
kernel[0] <Debug>: ** GPU Debug Info End **
kernel[0] <Debug>: NVDA(Private): Channel timeout!
kernel[0] <Debug>: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!
there's a fault in the graphics processor or logic board. The two kinds of output are not mutually exclusive, but if you get both, a logic-board fault is likely.

Since I upgraded to maverick, My iMac got sluggish specially when it wakes up ; anyone got a solution?

Since I upgraded to maverick, My iMac got sluggish specially when it wakes up and for instance, opening Iphoto. I suppose the new approach to more energy saving features could have something to do with this, but nevertheless, i wish I could choose to make it faster. Any clues?

When you next have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an 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. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
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 (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. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough. It is never necessary or helpful to post more than about 100 lines. "The more, the better" is not the rule here.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

My Imac Seems to have developed condensation under the screen does anybody know why or how to help this ?

My Imac Seems to have developed condensation under the screen does anybody know why or how to help this ?
seems to have happned very suddenly.

I've had my 24" iMac for about 4 years now and yesterday was the first time I ever saw condensation building up in the lower right corner. I completely freaked out, but after doing some online research, found that it wasn't uncommon to have this happen. I live in Florida and we had a lot of rain that day and the temperature has been whacky... But I never thought I'd ever see condensation in my computer! )c: I shut my computer down while freaking out and the condensation quickly disappeared. I read some people are just leaving the computer on and it will also disappear. I didn't want to take the chance of it getting worse, so I turned it off. I'm kind of worried about turning it back on again. Has anyone found anything else out about the problem?

My imac seems to be getting slow on the internet. sometimes its good sometimes it acts up. is there anything that I can do to speed things up ?

my imac seems to be getting slow on the internet. sometimes its good, sometimes it acts up. is there anything that I can do to speed things up ? Is there software available to tune up my imac?

If this is Internet related, the slow downs can be caused by increased user activity on your ISP's server.
The more people on your ISP's server doing things on the Internet, the slower your connection will be.
Is there certain times of the day when you notice the Internet is slow?
If so, that's probably the reason.
Also, do you share a connection with anyone else? Either on WiFi or Ethernet?
That will slow your connection, too!
Do you know what your Internet download speeds are?
Not a high enough bandwidth and slow downs will be more evident.
If on a WiFi, is the router you are you using 802.11 B, G, or N speeds?
Might be time from a newer, faster router?

My iMac seems to be running slower lately. Is there anyway to make it run faster?

My iMac seems to be running slower than when I first bought it. Is there something I can do to make it running faster? Also can anyone recommend a good antivirus software for Mac. Thanks.

The best antivirus application is none at all, keep OS X up-to-date and educate yourself about Malware by reading Viruses, Trojans and Malware - Prevention and removal: Apple Support Communities.
In order to speed up your iMac we need to know some basics about it first such as what version of OS X is installed, exactly which iMac you own, how much RAM it has, what size is the HD and how much free space on the HD. Without those fundamentals we would only be guessing.

My imac seems to be running slow

My iMac seems to be running slow. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Hello Patrick, see how many of these you can answer...
See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free Disk space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.
In the Memory tab of Activity Monitor, are there a lot of Pageouts?

HT6114 My iMac seems to have frozen during the update- how long should I expect the update to take? The 'installing software update' bar is still showing itself working but has been stuck in the same position for over an hour.

My iMac seems to have frozen during the update- how long should I expect the update to take? The 'installing software update' bar is still showing itself working but has been stuck in the same position for over an hour. Any thoughts?

Update2: There is something very wrong with wireless on mountain lion recovery. I don't know what the problem is, but this link may explain:
http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/10/os-x-mountain-lion-10-8-1-beta-released-for-dev-t esting-may-include-wi-fi-fix/
Wireless recovery would start out with over 25 hours estimated and kept on failing. It turns out to be a two step process of downloading a few Mbytes then a 4Gbyte .dmg file, but I couldn't even download the Mbyte file. I bought the thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet adapter, plugged it in, restarted recovery and download of a little more than 4Gbytes took less than an hour. My limiting factor was probably comcast home internet rate of 12Mbps. The wi-fi wireless connection should be able to do over 100Mbps, so wireless shouldn't be much slower than wired, except wi-fi wireless is broken. Now that ML is installed and updated, wi-fi seems fine now, as I am using it right now, but I haven't tried downloading a big file yet.
Don't use wi-fi wireless for Mountain Lion recovery.

ITunes on my iMac seems to think my iPhone is connected and tries to sync even even when it is not.

iTunes on my iMac seems to think my wife's iPhone is connected and tries to sync even even when it is not. This has been going on for a couple of years now and I am finally trying to stop it. I launch iTunes manually to sync any number of devices we have in the household and, at least every third time I launch iTunes, it pops up my wife's iPhone and start spinning around as if it is connected and syncing but it is not. This happened to me today when my wife and her iPhone were not even in the house or even the same city for that matter! Oddly, she recently (finally) upgraded from an iPhone 3 to a 5 assuming that would finally stop it but it just kept on happening. Anyone have any idea how to stop this? Thanks!
- Matt

You might start with:
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time, then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
If the above reveals nothing helpful, then create a new user account. Log out of your account and log into the new account. Do the problems cease?

IMac seems frozen in that following start-up, sun flower just keeps spinning on a blank screen (only Aplple logo on white screen)

IMac seems frozen in that following start-up, sun flower just keeps spinning on a blank screen (only Aplple logo on white screen). Turning off and on not helpful. Any ideas?

What iMac is it and what version of OS X are you running?
Try an SMC reset: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3603
If that doesn't help, try a Safe Boot: restart holding down the Shift key until you see a grey progress bar - you'll need to input your admin password during boot-up - and once booted, restart as normal from the Apple menu.

My IMAC seems to have died after power surge. It shut down and won't start. What shall I do?

my IMAC seems to have died after power surge. It shut down and won't start. What shall I do?

I would recommend you try an SMC reset at this point:
Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
Resetting the SMC for Mac Pro, Intel-based iMac, Intel-based Mac mini, or Intel-based Xserve
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord.
Wait fifteen seconds.
Attach the computer's power cord.
Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.
If that fails to solve it, it is probable that the power surge damaged some of your iMac's hardware components, and will need to be repaired at an Apple Authorized Service Center.

Is FF 7.01 fully compatible with MacOS Lion? Seems sluggish.

Navigating through FF 7.01 using an iMac with Lion OS, it seems that FF is sluggish in responding to common commands like "Back," "Forward," "Reload," that are on the right-click menu.
Same for newest version of TB.

Yes, but adding RAM is something you can do yourself. You can install a maximum of 6 GBs using two - 200-pin PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 SO-DIMMs. You can purchase them from various online vendors such as DataMem or OWC. The latter may even have a video tutorial on how to do it. Also, the user manual for the computer has a chapter on how to add RAM. It's not too hard, and you'll save money doing it yourself.
I would suggest going directly to at least 4 GBs because you will have to purchase two modules. Might as well do that once.

My IMAC seems sluggish

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