Sluggish iMac

T

Tifstorey

Registered
Hi all,

I've been searching for answers to my issue, not only on here, but i've not managed to come up with any solutions.

I have a new 3.4 i7 iMac which i've been running for around 5 months. It's my 4th iMac and i'd probably say the slowest out of all of them. What started me on Mac (the ease of use, reliable and steady system, etc) is ironically becoming the reason to move me away back to PC at the moment.

It started ok, but has gradually become slower and slower over time. Tonight it started stuttering audio and becoming sluggish whilst i was running Spotify and Firefox (with 3 tabs). That's it.

I use it for audio (Mainly Logic Pro). During which i need to have everything else closed and watch what plug ins/aux runs i use to avoid the cpu not being able to hand it. I've never had this problem before with my previous macs.

Anyone know what i can do to test where it's struggling?

I'm sure i'll get a few responses of 'take it to Apple' but unfortunately the nearest centre to me is 2 hours away and i'd rather try and find a solution i can sort for myself.

If anyone has any suggestions, please pass them on!

Thanks,

Tif
 
First open /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor and in Activity Monitor click on the CPU mini tab to sort by process taking. See if any program is running away and needs some serious updating.

Plus how much data is left on you startup drive? OS X needs about 20% of the startup drive for swap cache. If it is less that 20% space left consider either getting a bigger hard drive or move some files of onto an external.

Plus run some cache clearing software maintenance by using either Yasu or Onyx and run all the cache clearing routines. Let the cleaning program reboot your Mac. Then upon that reboot immediately manually reboot again to completely rebuild your startup/shutdown system cache.

Hopefully any of this will help, Good Luck.
 
Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. For performance issues, there are a few things you can check:

* Check your Login Items under System Preferences > Accounts to see what you have automatically launching.
* Also check /Library/LaunchAgents/ and /Users/yourusername/Library/LaunchAgents/ for items launching at startup
* Look at what widgets you may have running.
* Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
* Take a look at the System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor to see if you have excessive "page outs", a sign that you may benefit from more RAM.
* Make sure you're not running any 3rd party antivirus app, as many of those will drain resources, reducing performance. They're not needed to protect your Mac.
 
Thanks for the replies. They're much appreciated.

@Satcomer: I've download Onyx and done a clean. I'll see how that works out over time..
My HD has 70% free space so that can't be the issue.

@Daren: I've just gone to System Preferences/Users, to see what's automatically launching. I've encountered a problem where System preferences crashes. It's done it 3 times where i've had to force quit. I've just restarted, still doing it.

I've done a test, it seems i can access most system preference icons. The ones that cause it to crash are all system icons. (Users & Groups, Parental Controls, Date & Time, Software Update, Speech, Time Machine and Startup Disk).

I've also noticed through looking at the activity monitor that my firefox shockwave plug in is taking up 122% CPU..
(i've taken a screenshot to upload but Preview will now not open).

Seems there's more issues on a daily basis. Could this be the start of a hardware fault?

(I'm backing up as i type this!)

Any further advice is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tif
 
Another update..

Can't back up my system. When trying to copy things over to my external HD the bar appears with 'preparing to copy to 'LaCie' but stays on that. When trying to stop it, it just tells me it's 'stopping'.

Any ideas on how to backup? I'd get backing up on DVDs but i have too much GB and not enough discs!

Again, any info is much appreciated.

Cheers,
Tif
 
How are you copying?

First, make sure your Ex-HD--which you are copying to--is formatted for a Mac.

Second, consider getting a cloning program: Carbon Copy Cloner is free and quite a few HERE recommend it. I use SuperDuper! which is not free.

--J.D.
 
I have 2 external HDs which i've used for some time on this machine, both formatted for mac. One is for TimeMachine and the other is used just to simply copy files over through Finder.

The problem i've encountered was by 'dragging' files over to one. My system won't let me access TimeMachine. I just get the spinning wheel..

There's obviously something going wrong, i think i'm going to have to get it booked into Apple, but is there anything you could suggest in the meantime for me to back up my data?

Thanks,
 
Well, you can try the free cloning program above. If that does not work then your volume is probably damaged sufficiently that it cannot copy. So then you have two avenue which I pontificate upon in the "I've Lost My Data!!" FAQ I posted.

The relevant portion for you is trying to boot from an Installation Disk and/or your backup HD and see if you can run Disk Utility. That may fix the problems. Disk Warrior is another avenue. It depends on what and how much of your data is irreplaceable.

--J.D.
 
Tifstorey said:
I've also noticed through looking at the activity monitor that my firefox shockwave plug in is taking up 122% CPU..
(i've taken a screenshot to upload but Preview will now not open).

Seems there's more issues on a daily basis. Could this be the start of a hardware fault?

(I'm backing up as i type this!)

Any further advice is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tif
Click to expand...


Delete that run away Firefox plugin. That is definitely malfunctioning and needs some serious updating.

Plus to take a screen shot you can do that by just using your keys without any program. First bookmark the Apple document Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts and see that taking a full screen shot: command button+shift+3. To take a controllable camera shot: command button+shift+4.

Do you have a backup you can boot to? This way you can see if it is the OS X or the hard drive and Repair Permission (Repair Permissions using Disk Utility).
 
Thanks again folks.

The plug in has been updated. Hopefully that will end the issues with the 122% cpu usage....

Re; bootable disk - i could partition one of my external HDs and try that? Worth a go do you think or would you take it into an Apple store anyway?

Re: Screenshot, i had taken one using the shortcut. Used +3 instead so opened it in Preview to crop it, that's when the problems occured.. :eek:

I'll see how it goes over the next 4-5 hours when i'm editing some recordings.
Thanks again.

P.s. Seems i have a mysterious poster thanking people on my behalf..? :D
 
It's a spammer. We get them from time to time. Just click the "Rep" button in the upper right-hand corner of the post and give them a negative reputation vote. It serves to warn people not to trust their answers (and their reputation is indicated visually by a series of either green [good] or red [bad] icons in the same vicinity).
 
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