[JZ]

Hey true believers.

My iMac seems to be getting a bit slow lately. Sometimes beach balls sometimes just slow in general. I have 4GB of memory and still have plenty of memory left on my HD. Anyone have any tips to speed it up?

JZ

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[klytia]

I never thought i would see you asking this question Jamie, the only thing that's going to speed your iMac up is more ram. I know there is some disbelief in moving some of the big stuff off your hard drive like iPhoto & iTunes, but it's exactly what i did straight from scratch. I did read once some time ago (the boffins will correct me if i am wrong) was that once you used up 10% of your system resources your machine will run slower! So me being me, keep all the large files off my iMac hard drive and have a might fine speed at present with 4gig of memory.
just remember ram, ram, more ram...and it's cheap now....

Mick

[Jim]

Hi Jamie,

Have you tried to reset safari?,this clears all history, downloads,web images,cookies etc.try and clear out Iphoto as well.

My knowledge of macs is very basic however i hope it helps.

Cheers,

Jim

[mickdevlin]

There have been some similar threads o this topic over the past few months, JZ. Try using the Forum's search function to avoid repeating suggestions that were made on the earlier topics.

[Ken Gracey]

Zap the pram jamie, or run an app like Onyx, will also speed it up





TL

[BrianB]

I was going to suggest what TL said... First zap the Pram, and run Onyx. I ran Onyx recently and it seems to have done a good job on my MacBook.

Also in Macworld quite a few months ago there was a whole article on fixing slow Mac issues. Look back through past issues and find the article.

[Ben_]

With 4 GB of ram and plenty of hard drive space free your iMac should be running like a dream. Make sure you don't have too many login items installed for your account. I have found that login items slow things down a lot. Is your desktop crammed with icons? Sometimes it helps to clear the desktop.

Do you do a lot of video editing with large files? Sometimes working with large files a lot can lead to fragmentation on your drive. In particular, I have found that although OS X does a great job of keeping files defragmented, it is not so good at keeping the free space on the drive defragmented. You could consider getting a defrag program like iDefrag. The demo can tell you if you have fragmented free space that might be slowing things down.

Does it hang while you are doing something in particular or is it just sluggish in general? Is it slow on all user accounts or just your own? If it is just your account, there may be some conflict or corruption in one of your user files.

Also, you could check console and activity monitor to see if there are any clues as to what is happening.

If you really can't pinpoint what is slowing things down, you may need to do an archive and install. This cleans out any corrupted system files and has the added bonus of giving you a defragmented drive at the end of it.

Good luck!

[JZ]

Hey ben it's seems to be just sluggish in general, i have started cleaning out duplicate files and now set up both my girlfriends iPhone and my iPhone to sync from one user account rather then duplicate music and video files. my desktop is always squeaky clean, i had to go in to my girlfriends user account to clean up her desktop. hopefully a bit more spring cleaning should sought it out, but keep the advice coming it all really helps!


jz

[Ken Gracey]

Jamie, what happens in you login with a different user name, does it effect the speed at all ?





TL

[Dylstra]

Just off topic, I cleared Safari's cache and zapped the PRAM for the first time in a couple of years and it's made quite a big difference.

[e.w.c]

hey guys im new to macs and was wondering what is ment by zapping the PRAM.

[Ken Gracey]

You mac has what the call a parameter ram (PRAM) which holds bits and pieces of information, occasionally this can become corrupted and cause your mac to slow down or miss behave. By Zapping the PRAM, you cause it to dump all of its data, and start to collect new more up to date data.

To ZAP the PRAM, all you need to do, is shut your mac down, wait 30 seconds or so, and then reboot it while holding down the Command + the Option Keys, while also holding down the keys marked P and R. Wait until you here you mac CHIME 3 times before letting any of the keys go, after it restarts the PRAM will be clean.

[e.w.c]

oh ok thanks for that mate appreciate it