Slow Intel Imac...

I just bought an Intel Imac, after crashing my Powerbook G4 10.20.8 ( did not like earl grey tea!)
I choose to boot up the new machine from the back-up of my laptop on my external hard drive - That could be where the big boubou lies....-
So while I am enjoying my retrieved files and my previous settings, the Imac is performing very very slowly. Applications are spooling, hanging, slow to open, slower to close. It takes for ever to log off and on. I am really not enjoying working on it, darnit!
What are my options? Should I consider a clean install, and so how?
Thanks for the help!

This is more and more common with people switching from PPC machines to intel machines and mass migrating settings, apps, start-up items and the rest. It could be any number of things.
Restart that intel machine on a stand-alone basis (meaning sans peripherals unneccessary to its functioning - or in other words, your keyboard, mouse, ethernet and power only). Play around for a bit doing your normal stuff, then open your activity monitor and let us know what's what in your active processes.
As is often the case, you might have migrated something over that is sucking the life out of your system resources. The only applications that come with the install disk of the intel machine are universal. Anything you migrated over from your laptop is PPC. For all I know, you might be running all the standard apps (Safari, iTunes, etc.) as PPCs instead of those built for your intel machine.

Similar Messages

Slow Intel iMacs

Hi we have recently installed two new intel iMacs on to our system and they seem to be quite slow in comparison with our existing G5 Imac.
I realise there will be a problem in certain applications until they get native versions, but our slow problems seem to be across the board, and particularly at times in the Finder.
Is there anything we can do to up the performance of these machines a little?
Thanks
Jez
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

If u didn't update them, then remember that updating firmware (whatever that is) must be done manually. Meaning, you have to search your internet browser for the firmware update file(s), and double-click everything yourself, instead of using Mac OS X's "Software Update."
What apps in particular are slower? Check to see if some1 accidentally replaced the native versions with the PPC versions by opening the app, and looking at its type in Activity Monitor, found somewhere in Macintosh HD>Applications>Utility.
Maybe you have the best of the best of iMac G5s upped with maximum RAM and everything else, comparing to the weakest iMac Intel available. Maybe this is a reason?
So, to reiterate, intels' are probably slower b/c of
a) un-native apps
b) not enough RAM
I have 512MB RAM, everything runs great (except when multi-tasking while burning DVDs), but that's comparing to a G4 466Mhz digital audio tower, which is an extremely huge difference.
Hope this helped
peace

My intel imac is running very slow

I have a 20" intel imac and recently it has started to run very slow. It takes ages to start up and once started it takes forever to start any application. i have tried various software to clean it up but still no better. When starting it in safe mode it seems to be a lot better. Any ideas what to do next. i have over 150gb left so space is not an issue. HELP.

Hi Mathew
{quote}I have a 20" intel imac and recently it has started to run very slow. It takes ages to start up and once started it takes forever to start any application. {quote}
Have you ran Repair Permissions from Disk Utility?
Use this ☞ [How to repair disk permissions|http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/05/14/how-to-repair-disk-permissions -in-os-x> article to assist you!
{quote} i have tried various software to clean it up but still no better. {quote}
You don't say what software you have tried?
I also use ☞ [Onyx|http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html] it allows me to run the system maintenance options like repair permissions, run the periodic scripts and optimize the OS X.
Dennis

Intel iMac 17"s slow - even after SU and firmware update

Just got 3 Intel iMacs (w/512MB RAM) to upgrade 3 users at my company, and have found basic startup (and later, opening apps) to be cripplingly slow. I have already:
Run Software Update;
Run the EFI Firmware update;
Repaired permissions;
Run Repair Disk vis "fsck -fy" from the console...
The only things I have not messed with are the USB peripherals.
Any ideas?

If you have the 17" iMacs with the 1.83 GHz chip you don't really even have 512MB of RAM. That model shares RAM with the video chip, which uses a minimum of 80 MB. Leaving only 432 MB, at most, for the Mac OS and any software you are running.
If you are seeing the spinning beachball of death you don't have enough physical RAM and the Mac is using virtual memory and constantly accessing the hard drive. You won't be happy until you have a minimum of 1 GB.
Get more RAM.

Intel iMac suddenly Slow

Hello all,
My Intel iMac that I've had for just about a year and a half has suddenly started moving really slow (almost like it fell into molasses). Anything I do gives me the spinning beach ball first.
I reinstalled the OS and it took almost 10 hrs to do so. I have a 500 GB G-Drive for back up and it's now just as slow copying files from it (9 Hrs to copy 9 GB of files for example).
Any ideas as to what may be wrong and how to fix it?

If you purchased Apple Care then you have a 3 year warranty however if you did not purchase the additional Apple Care then you have the standard 1 year warranty which would have been up this January 08. There is also a Utility you can use to check your hard drive called TechTool Deluxe that would have been included with your Apple Care box if you have it.
Otherwise running Apple Hardware Test would probably be a good thing to check and make sure there are not any other hardware issues. Insert the original gray iMac install disk, restart and hold down the "d" key. Run the Extended test.
George

Intel imac slow to to to sleep since 10.6.8 update

Since upgrading my Intel iMac to 10.6.8 a few days ago, it is slow to go to sleep. After clicking on sleep, (or using Opt/Command/Eject), it takes between 20 and 30 seconds to go to sleep. Same problem when shutting it down. Restart is still as fast as before. I used Disk Utility to check the permissions and had to run Repair, because the permissions were so messed up. Restarted it after that, but sleep problem continues to exist. I want to upgrade to Lion, but wondering if I should figure this problem out first. Any ideas? Thanks!

Got the answer on another question - consider this solved! (i was using older keystroke commands).

Importing Slower on Intel iMac than Pentium 4 Laptop

I've had my Intel Dual-core iMac (2 GHz) for a couple of months now. What really annoys me about it is that Importing CDs to mp3 files (160 kbps) only proceeds at 3.2-6.0x speed whereas doing the same conversion on my sister's old Pentium 4 laptop proceeds at around 28.0x.
I phoned up Apple support and was told to trash the Caches folder in my Home folder. This helped for about a day but the import would still start at around 3.2x speed and then accelerate slowly up to 24.0x by around the 10th track on the CD. I have run a hardware check using the install DVD that came with the iMac and it did not report any problems with the superdrive. I have also repaired permissions on the hard drive and run the maintenance and cache cleaning scripts in Onyx but this doesn't seem to help. I understand that as the superdrive is only able to read CDs at a maximum of 24x the import is unlikely to be able to exceed this speed no matter how fast the processor is.
I keep my iTunes Library on an external firewire hard drive so as not to clog up my boot drive and it contains 5760 items, 22.32 GB. Could this be the reason for the slow down?
2 GHz Intel iMac Mac OS X (10.4.6) 1 GB RAM, 256 MB ATI Radeon X1600

Your optical drive has more to do with this than your processor. The processor really only comes into play inasmuch as concerns the on-the-fly conversion/compression to MP3. It could well be that the MP3 encoder Apple uses is not as highly optimized for Apple hardware as it is for Windows. Actually, most lossy compressors run much more slowly on Macs than on PCs for similar reasons.
If the high-speed ripping is your ultimate goal as opposed to high-quality digital audio extraction, then I hope you find a permanent fix to this problem. I rip most of my CDs on my Windows machine with EAC because I want the most accurate rips possible, and even though my Plextor drive reads CDs at 52x, the actual ripping speed is generally about 5-7x because of my secure ripping configuration (all data is read multiple times, drive cache is flushed, etc.). The only way to achieve high-speed ripping is to completely ignore any kind of quality control measures.
If you disable (if applicable in your case) "Use error correction when reading audio CDs), you might be able to slightly increase your ripping speed, but again, there's the matter of MP3 encoding slowing things down anyway. You'd likely notice a substantial speed increase if you encoded directly to WAV or AIFF so no compression is being done as you rip.

New iMac 2.33 GHz w/2GB RAM VERY SLOW... slower than my non-intel iMac

So I just purchased a new Intel iMac with a 2.33GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. Seems like this thing should scream. I ran Migration Assistant upon starting the thing up in order to load on my 25ish software applications, 10,000 photos and numerous documents. Everything looks pretty good except that the computer hangs like crazy. On my old iMac which is only 2.0 GHz and 1GB of RAM I can have Photshop, Keynote, iPhoto, Mail and Safari all open at once, switching betwen them in order to get my work done. It's never been a problem. For some reason however, this new machine doesn't seem to be able to handle such tasks. Even the finder is slow. I'll click on a folder and it will take seconds for the items in that folder to show up. I just don't get it. The only thing that's faster is that the system boots much faster than my old iMac. Is it that all of this software isn't written for the intel chip? Is there some way in which I can test my system in order to be sure it's operating at full steam? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ben

How long have you actually had the Mac? How many hours has it been actually active?
When an iMac is brand new Spotlight has to index the entire HD. Not just the Mac OS and Apple software pre-installed, but everything you have migrated as well (10,000 photo)! If it doesn't have some quiet time, a few hours depending on how many Gigs it needs to index, to accomplish this on it's own then the whole system will run slow as you force it to do what you want to do and it tries to do what it wants to do, both at the same time.
There is also plenty of evidence that Migrating more than your personal account and personal files, photos, music, videos, docs, etc. can indeed mess things up. The majority of PPC apps run OK with Rosetta, but there are a few incompatibles. It is almost always best to do fresh installs of PPC apps from install dicks or fresh internet downloads. Also have you checked if there are Universal binary updates available for any of your PPC apps.
Kappy (the Cobbler!) wrote a pretty good Migration user tip article. Maybe you should familiarize yourself and see if you made a mistake or two.
A Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel-Macs

Slow Intel Core i7 iMac on boot

I have a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 iMac, 4 GB of Memory, 1 TB HD with 740 GB free. Whenever I log into my iMac, the harddrive IO spike (lots of reading) and it slows down my iMac to a crawl.
How do I fix this?

Your welcome!
My neighbor's across the street were suffering the same problem on two of there earlier Intel iMac's with far less resources than your i7. I couldn't actually get any-one person to admit (just grin's all around) to setting a bunch of App's to open at Startup/Login, but they now have two snappy iMac's and I had a great piece of homemade apple pie.

Slow iTunes Import with Intel iMac

Since getting my new Intel iMac, I have not been able to import CDs into iTunes at anything above 9X. My old G4 Powerbook could routinely import at 15X. All import settings are identical.
Is this typical with Intel machines?
Cheers, Bob

OK, so let me ask the question another way ...
What import speeds are YOU getting with your machines? I'm just looking for some benchmark information.
Cheers,
Bob

Performance issue with brand new intel iMac extreme

I am at a loss to explain a problem I've been having and I thought I might put it out to you guys.
In September I purchased a macbook Pro (2.4 ghz, 4 GB RAM) to use in video editing with Final Cut Pro, and for the most part I've been thrilled. I use 1TB LaCie external drives connected via FW800, and perform Multiclip editing with 4-5 video streams at a time and only on occasion have dropped frames during the editing process.
In December I determined that I needed to have an additional system, and thought a 2.8Ghz Intel iMac extreme would be an excellent choice, since for the same price I could get a little more power in the processor, more hard drive space and a bigger screen to work on. When we picked up the new system in the store (The Grove Apple Store in LA), we had them upgrade the memory to 4GB.
Since day one we have had performance issues, including problems playing streaming and DVD video, severe delays mounting and unmounting drives (firewire and USB) and application images, and freezing while doing even simple tasks like printing or checking email. These problems occur even while there are no external drives are connected. I have none of these issues with the Macbook Pro, which has virtually an identical set of programs installed, and both running the same version of Leopard.
I already took the original iMac back to the store, and they exchanged it, but did not have 4GB sets of RAM in stock so they took the RAM from the original machine and put it in the new one. They said if I continued to have problems then it was most likely the RAM and I should come back when they got more in stock. I DID have the same problems with the new machine, and took it back to the Apple Store and they swapped the memory. It seemed to improve the issue, but now I'm seeing the same severe performance issues again.
All tech support can do is tell me to do a PRAM reset, which seems to improve things very temporarily (but that may be my imagination) or have me restart, which at least has the ability to make the printing of documents capable.
What I'm wondering is if it is likely that the RAM is the issue and I just got another bad batch, or if the iMac has some weird glitch that isn't present in the macbook Pro...?? Or could I have possibly gotten 2 bad systems in a row? It's extremely frustrating, and I KNOW it shouldn't be this way! It's so bad I get better performance out of my single-core G5 tower! How do I get a good working system that operates like it should? Am I better off getting another Macbook Pro? I'd rather not for several reasons...
I have xbench on both the MBP and the iMac and can provide test numbers if they'll help, as well as any other info.
Thank you so much for reading my novella of a post and also for any insight you have!
Best,
Travis

Hi!
I got the same problem with my MacBook when it still was new in may 2006. It was supposed to be one of the faster Laptops around but it was soooo slow it drove me nuts. I can only advise to have a look if there is something hugging up your RAM and run some tests using these programs on your machine:
Xbench:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10081
MenuMeters:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10451
If they show any unusual results you might have your problem...
As to my problem with the MacBook: I did a complete re-install (writing the harddisk over with zeroes) and suddenly everything was just fine. (But be sure to back all your files before that, I learned this one the hard way.) I know it is just a standard answer, but it worked out for me this time...
Hope this helps in some ways.
Cheers,
Rene

Performance on intel imac - system almost unusable

I'm running iPhoto 6.04 on a 2GHz intel imac with 2GB of Ram.
When I launch iPhoto -- everything slows unbearably. Even the typing speed in other applications, the finder is unresponsive, applications quit, It takes forever to switch between applications, etc.
I run Menu Meters to monitor processor usage and they never show the processors maxed out during these spells. Often they're at about 1/4 full and the system has become completely unresponsive for 10-20 seconds or so.
When I load the library -- I'm only viewing a small subset of my photos (I have 32k photos) of 3k photos as I know that helps. Once I manage to switch over to iphoto and it has a chance to think for a bit, scrolling through the photos is quite speedy.
I've tried a full library rebuild (using all the options), repaired permissions, used disk repair utilities, etc. but to no avail.
Anyone else have any ideas on this? No Rosetta apps are running, menu meters currently says I have 700MB of free ram.
Any advice welcome, thanks,
Ben
Intel iMac 2ghz Mac OS X (10.4.7) 256mb vram

Hi
Thanks much for the reply.
I've deleted both
~/Library/Cache/iPhoto
and
~/Library/Cache/iPhoto Cache
(and restarted iPhoto of course)
In activity monitor I saw iPhoto spike as high as 124% while launching, but it was very momentary and went back down where it bounced between 40% and 4%. I didn't see anything else that looked unusual.
In the last few relaunches, it seems like the longer I keep iphoto open the faster it gets.
Real Memory is ~530MB for iPhoto, Virtual Memory is ~905MB
Switching between applications in the first few minutes a number of applications suddenly showed in Activity Monitor as (Not Responding), then 30-40 seconds later they would come back to life. I monitored these same applications when iPhoto was not running and they worked fine.
I had to force quit iPhoto once, usually it takes roughly 30 seconds to quit.
I did find some interesting stuff in the Console. I'll paste it here to see if it rings any bells:
2006-08-09 15:49:58.792 iPhoto[1109] * -[NSBundle load]: Error loading code /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SIMBL for bundle /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle, error code 2 (link edit error code 0, error number 0 ())
2006-08-09 15:50:57.691 iPhoto[1109] CFLog (21): dyld returns 2 when trying to load /Users/parz/Library/Contextual Menu Items/NoteBookCMPlugIn.plugin/Contents/MacOS/NoteBookCMPlugIn
2006-08-09 15:50:57.703 iPhoto[1109] CFLog (22): Cannot find function pointer NoteBookCMPlugInFactory for factory E10A17EE-6ED1-11D7-B4CE-000393A34A42 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x2f3890f0 </Users/parz/Library/Contextual Menu Items/NoteBookCMPlugIn.plugin> (bundle, not loaded)
2006-08-09 15:50:57.746 iPhoto[1109] CFLog (21): dyld returns 2 when trying to load /Users/parz/Library/Contextual Menu Items/Path Finder CM.plugin/Contents/MacOS/Path Finder CM
2006-08-09 15:50:57.747 iPhoto[1109] CFLog (22): Cannot find function pointer AbstractCMPluginFactory for factory 4D69CF21-A381-11D6-9544-003065DA3F94 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x2f5738f0 </Users/parz/Library/Contextual Menu Items/Path Finder CM.plugin> (bundle, not loaded)
2006-08-09 15:50:58.039 iPhoto[1109] CFLog (21): Cannot recognize type of executable for CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x2e3a81b0 </Library/Contextual Menu Items/MediaProCM.plugin> (not loaded)
2006-08-09 15:50:58.042 iPhoto[1109] CFLog (22): Cannot find function pointer MediaProCMFactory for factory F33A2227-57F1-11D9-9FF3-000D933C4E4C in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x2e3a81b0 </Library/Contextual Menu Items/MediaProCM.plugin> (not loaded)
2006-08-09 15:52:17.739 updater[1113] * -[NSBundle load]: Error loading code /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SIMBL for bundle /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle, error code 2 (link edit error code 0, error number 0 ())
2006-08-09 15:55:33.284 iCal Helper[1119] * -[NSBundle load]: Error loading code /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SIMBL for bundle /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle, error code 2 (link edit error code 0, error number 0 ())
2006-08-09 15:56:10.209 iPhoto[1120] * -[NSBundle load]: Error loading code /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SIMBL for bundle /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle, error code 2 (link edit error code 0, error number 0 ())
2006-08-09 15:57:29.817 Console[1123] * -[NSBundle load]: Error loading code /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SIMBL for bundle /Library/InputManagers/SIMBL/SIMBL.bundle, error code 2 (link edit error code 0, error number 0 ())
My guess is I have some iPhoto plugin trouble... what's the best way to troubleshoot that, and/or, how do you determine which plugins are standard Apple, and which I've gotten from somewhere?
Also - I used software update to apply 10.4.7, had problems, and went back later and applied the combo updater w/disk permissions.
Thanks again for your help,
Ben
Intel iMac 2ghz Mac OS X (10.4.7) 256mb vram
Intel iMac 2ghz Mac OS X (10.4.7) 256mb vram

Success with iDefrag and DiskWarrior on my Intel iMac! (indirectly)

Had some very good success using iDefrag and DiskWarrior on my intel iMac, both of which do not run directly on the intel platform yet. As I had observed a gradual (modest) slow-down over the course of the past month since I got my iMac, I couldn't help but try to figure out a way to defrag and optimize the hard drive since I had over 125GB (including quite a few large media files, and a couple system updates, both of which tend to cause fragmentation). So, after doing two independent backups on separate external HD's, I ran iDefrag on my iBook and defrag/optimized the iMac's hard drive using Target Disk Mode. As expected, the hd was VERY fragmented - and the process took overnight to complete. Being as careful as possible to ensure no problems, I then ran verify disk and repair permissions on the iMac's hard drive, and no problem. Did notice a very meaningful increase in responsiveness and speed on the iMac, even more than I would have expected. Since I historically always ran DiskWarrior after doing this exercise on my PPC mac's, I decided to attempt the same here. Since I (and others on this board) have been unsuccessful in running DW3.03 using the iMac in Target Disk Mode, I decided to update backup drive #1 post-iDefrag, and was then able to mount this drive (backup#1) and run DiskWarrior on it from the iBook. No problems were detected which was great news, but the I had it write the new index/directory files. I then sync'd back to my iMac's hard drive (from backup#1 to iMac HD) and observed that a number of files were updated most likely as a result of the updated directory/index files from running DW (I use FolderSynchronizer to sync). So keeping backup#2 of the pre-iDefrag/DiskWarrior for a while, but so far so good, and a very meaningful improvement in performance. So the experiment seems to be a success.
DISLAIMERS: If anyone does "try this at home" please backup and re-backup before attempting. In addition, please note that Coriolis is in the process of developing an intel build for iDefrag and probably recommended in general to wait for this update.
iMac 20" 2GHz Core Duo 2GB RAM, iBook 12" 1.33GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Thanks for this posting and the good advice. I put in some time chasing the 801.57 gb limit before finding this thread that steers in the direction I see now I must persue, a new enclosure (modern day version rather than 5 year old technology -- yes, the old external drive has the Oxford chipset mentioned repeatedly in other threads) to go with my new drive. Would have been better off $$-wise to have purchased a complete unit, but this is so much more fun on a Monday evening.
Great being here with you all!

2006 Intel iMac with new Mac Mini?

I have a 2006 Intel iMac (MA200X/A) running Snow Leopard. It's finally gotten to the stage that it's running too slow to work on, so I was looking at the Mac Minis. Is it possible to use my iMac as a display for the Mac Mini?
The iMac only has mini-DVI so I was looking at the cables available and there's mini-DVI to either VGA or DVI, and then HDMI to VGA or DVI, would using the matching cables for each of those work?
(I can't really afford to spend at least twice as much buying a whole new iMac...)

No. The mini DVI port on the iMac doesn't support video in.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3924

Lion... Seems to be slowing my iMac Down? Tips and Tricks?

Hey everyone, this is my first post so go easy on me
I installed lion as soon as it came out. I'm really impressed so far, loving the new features (except my inverted mouse, that had to be changed pretty sharpish). My only problem is, is that it seems to have slowed my iMac down. I have seen in some posts that spotlight needs to do alot of indexing, but I generally leave my computer on for long periods so it should have finished that by now should it?? I seem to struggle with safari, however im just in the process of re-downloading and installing again.
My iMac is a 24 inch, 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. My macbook air doesnt seem to have any problems so any idea why I would be struggling on the iMac??
Any tips, tricks or advise would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

Thats what I thought about spotlight. If Im leaving it on for long periods that should of been done and dusted ages ago. I know what u mean about the performance, some times it flies and does what I want, but the more windows I have open on sarfari and it seems like im asking for trouble!
I thought I would be able to re-download safari from here... http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
How ever u can only get 5.1 on the apple site and u need snowleopard for that. So that idea has gone out the window.
Hmmm not sure about the apps. However u can just re-download the ones u have already paid for can't u.
U had any joy?

Slow Intel Imac...

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for