2 year old iMac sloooowwwww

fuzz_ballfuzz_ball
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014


It's been a while since I've posted here, and yes, before posting this I tried some regular tricks that I know many will suggest, but first let me sum up my problem:


 


My iMac is just way too slow these days. I'm not talking about the processor can't keep up with current games, I'm talking it is slower now using the same software that I've been using since I've owned it. I have 8gb memory and I only ever have a handful (Safari/Mail always, plus a couple other apps) running at any given time. I sleep it it a lot, but I do restart it every once in a while to see if it will improve.


 


What do I mean by slow? I see the beach-ball way too often, and apps are sluggish, slow to load.


 


Now I have eliminated one culprit: that damn leaky HP printer driver agent. That sucker after a few days will consume half my ram if left unchecked. I have also forced-run the various utility scripts to make sure things are tidied up, and made sure spotlight indexing isn't out of control


 


So how do I know it is slow? The primary reason is that my Bootcamp partition running Win7 (that I rarely use) is blazing fast. It reminds me of how fast my iMac used to be on the non-bootcamp partition after I first got it.


 


Now I'm left to ponder: do I need DiskWarrior-style de-fragmenting (haven't done that in years), and/or has my beloved Mac OS achieved the status of Windows OSs in that you just have to re-install the OS every couple years to clean out the crud that inevitably slows your system down?


 


Anyhow, just wondering your thoughts. Do I have to bite the bullet and do a fresh install and re-install all my apps (god I don't feel like giving up a weekend to do that), or is there something else I could check that maybe I haven't thought of that is gumming up the works?


 


Thanks in advance for your helpful input!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    One the easiest and most obvious is to fix your file permissions, First go to the utilities folder and bring up Disk Manager, then choose you hard drive called Macintosh HD. Close repair permissions. Run repair permissions, then reboot. There is also an extensive list of things you can try here; http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=13817005&postcount=2

    You might also want to consider installing your system and apps on one partition and your data on another, I find this to speed things up.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member


    If you already have disk warrior, you may as well use it. The disk has to be up to date for whatever OS you're using. If the OSX partition is fairly full that would increase the amount of time the system waits on the HDD, sometimes increasing beachballs. I've never liked partitioning. Also disk warrior doesn't technically defragment data.

Sign In or Register to comment.