On Nov 24, 2013, at 4:38 AM, N. Shani <nshani...@gmail.com> wrote: > Need your collective wisdom to identify what is causing the above to slow > down. > > The particulars are: > - late 2006 17" model 5,1 > - OS is 10.6.8, with current updates > - stock HD 160 GB, ~1/2 full > - 2.5 GB RAM (stock was 2x 512 MB, so one 512 MB stick was exchanged with 2 > GB stick) > - monitoring active CPU processes doesn't show any process hogging the CPU > beyond a few % (not even M$-related, such as Excel or Word) > > I originally suspected it was Sophos, so removed and downloaded ClamX. > It helped a bit for a while, then it started crawling again. > > Thanks to anyone who can assist with ideas on how to speed this iMac, which > is otherwise running fine.
FIRST: Do a full, bootable backup of your hard drive. Use Carbon Copy Cloner (the last, free version can be downloaded from the Bombich software site) or SuperDuper! Do this NOW while your iMac's hard drive contents are still accessible. Since you say your iMac is otherwise running fine, the most likely culprit is the hard drive, even though yours is only half full. If you still have the original install DVDs, find the one with "AHT" or "Apple Hardware Test" written on it, and follow instructions to boot from that DVD. Once booted, run both the Quick and Extended tests. Make sure you check the "Do not stop for errors" box so that the tests will run to completion. The first time through, do NOT let the tests do a full scan of the hard drive. I suspect the drive will pass the basic tests just fine and you'll get a green "PASSED" screen each time. But you may get a red "FAILED" notice, with red type for the failure message. That message likely will be for the hard drive. Whether the hard drive passes or not, run the AHT again in the Extended mode. Deselect all tests EXCEPT for the hard drive full scan. Again, set the test to NOT stop for errors. Let it run, which may take a couple of hours; if it takes longer, that's a clue which I'll talk about in a moment. This will do a full scan of the hard drive for bad sectors. It may or may not pass. Hard drives that are just beginning to have problems with reading and/or writing usually pass. If the hard drive passes with a green "PASSED" message, that means there are no bad sectors, but it doesn't mean there are no problems, especially if it takes a loooong time to do the scan as the test tries to resolve slow read/write issues. A 160 GB HD shouldn't take more than a couple of hours on your iMac. If you get red "FAILED" messages, AHT will tell you why, generally. It also will give you a code or codes, which you may or may not be able to translate into English after doing a Google search. At this point, you will have done all you can do with the AHT, but you will have some insight into the health of your iMac's hardware. Pass or Fail, here's what I do in cases such as yours. First, I install SMARTReporter on any Mac that passes through my hands. This simple utility monitors the Self Monitoring and Reporting Test firmware on each hard drive installed inside a Mac and shows a green (OK), yellow (failing) or red (failed) icon in the menubar to alert you to your hard drive's health. Second, I run Apple Service Diagnostics (in your iMac's case, that is ASD 3S108) in both OS and EFI modes. ASD tests are very extensive versions of those run by AHT, and often will find problems that the quick AHT tests don't/can't. Next, I run Drive Genius 3, the utility used by Geniuses in Apple stores. I boot from the DG3 disk and run the hard drive scan test, making sure to ask it to reallocate any bad sectors found. Then I run the Disk Integrity tests for both read and write. The longer the tests run, the more likely you are to find any problem areas. So don't skimp on time spent as you're not likely to find any problem areas on the hard drive's media in 5 minutes, or possibly even 30 minutes. I usually do a Sustained version of the read and write tests on a smaller hard drive like yours, which takes 1-2 hours unless there are read/write slowdowns. Finally, if a hard drive has passed all of the above tests, I run two more utilities. First, with the iMac still booted into the Drive Genius 3 disk, I select the Defrag button. Even though OS X does a pretty good job of defragmenting files on the fly, after 7 years your hard drive is probably pretty fragmented. DG3's Defrag feature will tell you how much and suggest whether or not you should defrag. If your hard drive has passed all the tests and has been defragmented, the last thing to do is to run Disk Warrior, which will find and fix directory issues. (DW version 4.2 is the right one for OS X 10.6.) It also will find and fix "volume information" errors, which often are behind hard to pinpoint operating problems. If the iMac and the hard drive have been through all of the above, and passed all the tests and procedures, I then do a PRAM reset (let it chime at least twice) and after the last chime I hold down the Shift key and let the iMac start up in Safe Mode. The PRAM resets startup parameters to factory default and the Safe Mode clears out a bunch of caches that may be eating up memory. The very last thing I do after all the above is to restart the iMac, go into Disk Utility, and then run Repair Permissions. I did all of the above on a client's late-2006 iMac several weeks ago. She was complaining about how slow her iMac had become. I swapped out the matching pair of 1 GB RAM sticks for a matching pair of 2 GB RAM sticks ($50 a pair from Data Memory Systems in New England). (Matching RAM tends to run faster and better than RAM that isn't matched, like yours.) That helped somewhat. The iMac passed all the tests above, including several hours each of DG3 read and write integrity tests. BUT, her 250 GB hard drive had less than 10 percent free space and was about 60 percent fragmented, so we dumped some data onto an external drive and defragmented the disk. Her iMac now performs as it did when she bought it in early 2007, if not a bit faster. Somewhere in all the above is your answer/solution. OTOH, it's possible your machine also could benefit from a fresh install of the OS. Apple Service Diagnostics can be found online, but Apple does not officially approve of anyone other than Apple trained and certified technicians having access, which is why I'm not giving you any URLs. Drive Genius 3 and Disk Warrior are pricey third party utilities in the $100 range, but are worth every penny for someone like me. Have fun! Jim Scott Eureka, CA -- -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iMac Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
