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iMac running super slow, especially after restart

My iMac was running great until a couple of weeks ago. Now it takes close to an hour to restart, and very slowly, system performance will improve to merely lame. After searching the community, it appears the best solution is to upload a report from EtreCheck, and some knight in shining armor may help me decipher the mystery. Extra info: I'm running Mojave 10.14.6. Not sure why the report didn't figure that out? Makes me worry I have a hardware issue, although disk utility and Malwarebytes both said everything was just peachy. BTW, I can't upgrade to Catalina, or my Adobe CS5 apps will stop working.

Thanks in advance!!!!


Posted on Oct 7, 2020 5:59 PM

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Posted on Oct 7, 2020 6:25 PM

Looking over your EtreCheck report the only thing I see is that you seem to have the wrong computer for they type of work you use it for. It appears to be a base model 21.5" with only 8GB of un-upgradeable RAM and a glacially slow 5400 RPM HD. Those machines were only intended for doing e-mail and surfing the internet however it appears. you are running professional grade apps on it. However if it was running better a couple of weeks ago, then you may have a hard disk issue which would not be surprising on a 7 year old computer. I would recommend restarting in the Recovery Partition (Command + R on startup), open Disk Utility and run First Aid 2-3 times and look for errors. If any errors appear that confirms the HD is in trouble. That being said you would need to take it to an Apple Authorized Service Provider to be professionally diagnosed and repaired.


Finally and MOST IMPORTANT you do not seem to back this computer up. That is a 100% guarantee of losing data!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At the very least you should be using Time Machine to backup hourly. Operating any computer without a sound backup plan is foolish and short sighted.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 7, 2020 6:25 PM in response to stacesmac

Looking over your EtreCheck report the only thing I see is that you seem to have the wrong computer for they type of work you use it for. It appears to be a base model 21.5" with only 8GB of un-upgradeable RAM and a glacially slow 5400 RPM HD. Those machines were only intended for doing e-mail and surfing the internet however it appears. you are running professional grade apps on it. However if it was running better a couple of weeks ago, then you may have a hard disk issue which would not be surprising on a 7 year old computer. I would recommend restarting in the Recovery Partition (Command + R on startup), open Disk Utility and run First Aid 2-3 times and look for errors. If any errors appear that confirms the HD is in trouble. That being said you would need to take it to an Apple Authorized Service Provider to be professionally diagnosed and repaired.


Finally and MOST IMPORTANT you do not seem to back this computer up. That is a 100% guarantee of losing data!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At the very least you should be using Time Machine to backup hourly. Operating any computer without a sound backup plan is foolish and short sighted.

iMac running super slow, especially after restart

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