S L O W ... spinning wheel

Like everyone, when I got my iMac 4 years ago I was thrilled with it's speed. It turned out that it was not much different from my old PC in time. I get the spinning wheel so much now it's to the point I don't enjoy my mac at all. I've erased and installed with awful results. It took forever trouble shooting the system, which seemed to be full of duplicates and missing files.
I'm new to this forum, (today), and looking around I can see that even though I've had my iMac for a few years, I'm not nearly as informed as most of you. Any suggestions on getting my speedy iMac back in shape?

You probably need to run a system maintenance utility like OnyX for starters. If things don't improve after that, it may be time to consider a hardware problem, ie. a failing hard drive. Let us know how you get on.

I run maintenance 3.3 nearly daily also run tech tools deluxe all the time to tune things up. I'm obviously not real savvy in this respect and timid as far as worrying about screwing things up.

I'm not familiar with M3.3, and TTD for OS X has had, to be charitable, mixed reviews. Better you use Disk Utility from your MacOS or from Disk 1 of the set that came with your Mac. Disk Warrior is tops, but we haven't reached that stage yet.

Do you know how to use Disk Utility (I don't want to assume anything)? Either post back or PM me if you need assistance.

Somewhat. I occasionally check and repair permissions and that's how I did my erase and instal ... Wish I hadn't.
Roy

Bottom line ... Is it best just to take it back to the Apple store and leave it in their hands? I can see myself out $$ a few hundred bucks and no better off. What do you think? One thing I noticed over the months of this problem ... I seem to have far more disk space on my hard drive now than I did before I did my erase and install. Would buying leopard help me? Buying a clean OS on? Getting desperate ....

Rereading my last post to you. I meant far more disk space used, not free. So I probably duplicated some files. JUST WHAT I DIDN'T WANT TO DO!!

Hmm, erase and install should not have increased disk space usage. Archive & Install however would do so because it retains the old system files.

Okay, you say you've used Disk Utility, but mainly/only for repairing permissions and then erase&install. That's possibly where you've come unstuck, because a Clean install (same as erase&install) needs to be done from a CD or DVD. You cannot do a clean install from the HD itself.

Okay, let's see what can be done. I hope you've got the original disks that came with your Mac - yes? If so, post back or PM me please. If not, there's little point in continuing here, and your best bet may indeed be to take your Mac to an Apple tech.

Sounds like you have installed the OS twice which can lead to problems as ou have described. Hate to suggest this, but looks like an erase and install coming up.

If you do go this way, suggest zeroing the drive when booted from your OS install disc/s, running Repair Disk and then the clean install. When the system is up and running, utilities such as Onyx, MacJanitor or Macaroni will keep it running up to speed.

You do need to have this maintenance scripts, daily, weekly and monthly etc. regularly carried out. Onyx, which is free, does that very nicely.

Titanium Software

Onyx seems to speed things up. How can I tell if I have a double installation of Tiger?

If you did an Archive & Install, a folder named Previous System would have been created, retaining all the old (previous) system components. Using Cmd-F in Finder, or Spotlight, type in the word Previous and see what, if anything, is found.

I don't think you could install a system twice if you'd done a Clean Install since that erases absolutely everything on the hard drive before installing a new (replacement) system.

Is there a way that I can check to see if I've got duplicates of any major files? Like perhaps my pictures or music?

Spring Cleaning does this kind of thing. I have used it many years ago.
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