i mac help?

Question

i have an imac computer that was new in december 2003. it is extremley slow and might take an hour to load certain pages. every other computer in my house works fine.any idea why this computer doesnt?

Answer 1

Whoa, hold everything. Do I understand that some program on this computer cannot load web pages in less than two minutes? No web page takes an hour to load unless you are drawing it with a pen and pencil! Just kidding.

What program is doing the web browsing on the old clunker? If it is Internet Explorer, shame on you. Either switch to Firefox (for OS X) or iCab for OS 9.

If you still have slow page loads with a good browser, maybe EVERYTHING is slow but you just didn't mention it. Is that the case? Then follow the following steps:

Number 1: Empty the trash. Some people forget to do this for months at a stretch.

Number 2: Run a test of the hard drive. To do this, you must use the install DVD (or CD) that came with your Mac or the newer version of full install DVD if you have bought an upgrade. Put that disk in the drive and restart while holding the "C" key. When it is fully booted to the installer, don't install anything. I say that because you may be tempted but don't do it. Click on the "Installer" or "Utilities" menu at the top and open Disk Utility. Then click on the "First Aid" tab, select the hard drive and click "Repair disk". At the end it should say "Appears to be OK". If that's not what it says, run the repair again. Then quit Disk Utility, quit the installer and restart. Hold the mouse button or the clicking area of the scrollpad at startup to make the disk eject.

Number 3: If that is not the main cause of slowness, check the amount of empty space on the drive. Just click once on the drive icon and go to File > Get Info. The available space should be at least 2 GB for basic system use. It should be even more for mounting large disk images and other intense tasks. If the available space is quite small (say, 500 MB or less) you should find a way to backup some big files (music, photos, videos) and erase some of them. Then empty the trash. Remember, the trash is just a special type of folder and it doesn't really take any files off the drive until you empty it.

Number 4: If that still leaves the system crawling along, create a new admin user, logout and login as the new user. If the system suddenly gets supercharged, the old user account has some wacked out software installed. In that case, you may be able to get it back to normal. Login to the old user and drag the user's Library folder (NOT the main Library folder that is at the root level of the hard drive) out to the desktop and restart. If that solves the problem, you may have to reinstall some programs for them to work correctly. But don't reinstall any suspicious downloads. Those types are the ones likely to have gotten you into this mess.

Answer 2

Restart the computer and see if that helps speed things up. If the computer is still running slow your iMac is ether low in disk space, low in memory (RAM) or some program is slowing down your machine.

Check how much disk space is on the computer from the Finder. If it's under 3 gigabytes, the computer will run slower. Quit any apps that you're not using, most OS X apps keep running even if you close all of its windows. In the Dock, active programs have a black triangle underneath their icon (or at the side if the dock is at the left or right sides of the screen).

If you are running Mac OS X tiger (10.4), see if the computer has at least 512MB of RAM. You might have to add more memory.

If that doesn't work send the computer to an Apple store, or any store that specializes in troubleshooting Mac computers. Also open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and see if a background app is running that you're not familiar with. Make sure you select "My Processes" from the pop-up menu from the toolbar.

I hope this helped you.