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eborus Author

Level 1

15 points

IMac running very slowly with Catalina

I have an iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015) running 10.15.1 with 16 Gbytes memory and 29 years experience.

The machine is unacceptably slow in logging in; switching between the two registered users; loading applications; time machine backups etc.

I've looked at Activity Monitor, nothing hogging CPU or memory and I've rebooted in Recovery mode in order to fully run Disk First Aid. That didn't help, in fact on restart and logging in to my user account I saw a totally black screen with a cursor, then the spinning beach ball for about 10 minutes before FINALLY getting into my account.

Any ideas?

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 7, 2019 11:05 AM

Top-ranking reply

eborus Author

Level 1

15 points

Posted on Dec 16, 2019 1:20 PM

Problem seems to have been cured since I upgraded to MacOS 10.15.2

After first installing, the initial login and user switching took about 2 minutes per account - even though no applications had been left open before those users were logged out for installation of the upgrade, (so the 'memory state' or footprint for the users was as small as possible).

The second time I switched accounts took about 8 seconds per account, and now whilst in the middle of typing this message (with Safari, Reminders, Calendar and Stickies open), I was able to switch to another user and back to me within ten seconds in total.

Thank you Apple support team!

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IMac running very slowly with Catalina

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