My Mac is rubbish...

Hi,

My Mac is like 3-4 years old and now it has become really lame. I running Leopard. Have a 20" White iMac. I don't know the spec's off hand, mid-range if I remember correctly.

I think there is something wrong with the hardware. I tried a fresh install of Leopard a while ago and it was better but still 'iffy'.

The problem is that it is slow. It takes too long to start up. Programs do not launch as quickly as they used to. Sometimes a program will continue to crash when I try to launch it until I restart the computer. Sometimes my computer will boot to a blue screen and stall..

Does anyone have a complete guide to troubleshooting every part of the Mac? I would like to scan the memory and run any other hardware test's that are available.

I would also like to do virus scans and general system integrity checks. I have no idea where to begin. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Because these problems have survived 2 formatting's, I am thinking that the problem may lie in a bad sector of memory or my hard drive is getting a bit naff. I would just like to identify issue so I can solve it.

Thanks in advance for any help given.

You can check the health of your hard disk by checking its Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) status in Disk Utility.

You don't need to check for a virus, unless you also have Windows installed. There are none for OSX.

re the above disk utility check, you havent mentioned it but here is here you get there:

Go to finder by clicking on smiley face in dock or anywhere on desktop.

then click on 'GO' in task bar of finder

then click on utilities

then click on disc utility

then click on repair repair disc permissions

how much have you got on there - might be not enough memory.

i had a few probs a few weeks back and the apple recommended installer came in and he ran something called "disc warrior" which he said was good for picking up probs with the hard drive.

my prob was my system was not backing up to the time capsule, it would get to a certain point and stop every time. seems disc warrior picked uup there was a problem with the hard drive so when it got to that spot it stopped.

hopefully you will get better advice with other posts but try that for a starter.

that blue screen and stall thing looks serious - ensure you have backed everything you want up quick.

cheers

Also download Onyx and run the default maintenance scripts.

Hardware diagnostics:

Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test

You may also want to check how much memory you have left, for an iMac to run smoothly, it needs at least 10% of total HD to be free.

Re above post.

No doubt he means at least 15% of the hard drive capacity to be free.

Does it make a difference if 10% or 15% of the hard drive is free? I've heard many people say 10% is enough. But you say have at least 15%. Does that extra 5% make a difference?

Sure you'd need more if you want the disk used as a scrathc disk. But I thought 10% free is enough for virtual memory. But I'm sure you'll know why the 15% is the way to go.

the8thark said:

Does it make a difference if 10% or 15% of the hard drive is free? I've heard many people say 10% is enough. But you say have at least 15%. Does that extra 5% make a difference?

Sure you'd need more if you want the disk used as a scrathc disk. But I thought 10% free is enough for virtual memory. But I'm sure you'll know why the 15% is the way to go.

Click to expand...

Depends on the amount of RAM / size of your harddrive doesn't it? If you have 2 gigs of RAM, you would want more space for virtual memory than if you had 8 gigs.

Thanks for the replies guys... however things have gone down hill dramatically.

I applied the latest security fix, blew some dust off of the top. Restarted... now it is stuck on the loading screen with an apple on it.

If I press the alt key to choose where to boot to I can select the Mac partition. However when I select the Mac partition it gets to the apple screen and freezes.

Does this mean I have to reformat or can I fix the Mac partition with the Leopard disk? It is a BIT if on if I can find it...

You need that disc! See if you can boot from it, by holding down the C key.

harryb2448 said:

Re above post.

No doubt he means at least 15% of the hard drive capacity to be free.

Click to expand...

Is it 15? Learned something today

toMACsh said:

You need that disc! See if you can boot from it, by holding down the C key.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I will burn an evening looking for it tonight. How do I boot from the disk? I mean, when I put the disk in... what do I need to do to attempt some sort of repair?

Its probably the wrong place to say this... however the plethora of issues with my Mac makes me really glad I have a steady Windows computer to work on

Yeah, and how old is the "Windows computer"?

You ask how? What you quoted tells you. Hold down the C key and turn it on.

I held down the C button. This is what I was doing yesterday. What do I do next? That was the question.

Once I have booted to the Disk, how to I repair the installation?

Well, what happened when you tried to boot while holding down the C key? It booted?

If so, you need to find Disk Utility and run repair permissions on the hard drive.

toMACsh said:

Well, what happened when you tried to boot while holding down the C key? It booted?

If so, you need to find Disk Utility and run repair permissions on the hard drive.

Click to expand...

Yes I have done this. Still doesn't start. Is there any way to reinstall OSX without wiping the files? I was under the impression that files were stored separately from the OS?

Shizzle my dizzle. Its healed!

Its strange, I dropped an iPod and it had lines all over the screen. Then.. over the course of two weeks the lines started to recede and fix themselves! Now my Mac is doing it. Are these things alive?

Anyway, I am going to get what I need from it then kill it off and reformat it

Ref: 15% free space on "system drives" (or partitions), e.g. the partition your OS resides on

This has been a standard for as long as I can remember. Def since the early 90's.
Only part of the issue is that when you get into this space, you are using the slowest part of the drive... that part that is farthest from the heads. You will begin to see slow downs. Once you've hit only 10%, the slow downs can become unbearable - at least for me and one of the prime reasons for "my machine is running slow" when it comes to all my Win using friends.

The slowdowns can become totally unacceptable on a fragmented Win partition at 15% for a gamer particularly. I have also seen drives that could not be defragmented due to not enough free space at 10% free on drives at 120GB and smaller.

The largest size drives that I have personally experimented with regarding the amount of free space has been a 500 GB drive in Windows and 320 GB drive in OS X. In each case, I began noticing slow downs at approximately 20% free. In OS X at 15%, I began seeing the beach ball where none existed before and by 10%, the OS became (for me) an unusable waste of my time sitting there waiting for something to load that I shouldn't have had to.

Some would say, this is not as important in OS X since it defrags on the fly. Well, it does a really good job at keeping your files defragged. It does a pretty lousy job (if at all) at keeping your free space defragged. If you're one that loads and removes a lot of data and/or large files, by the time you've hit about 25% free, you have files that are sitting at the end of the platters on your drive and you will begin to experience some occasional slow downs.

I began years ago (like maybe 15 years) trying to keep 25-35% minimum free space. This was especially important to the hardcore gamers / hardware tweakers out there. You could watch your games slow down and frame rates drop when you got below that. You'll definitely wait longer for cut scenes and new areas of the game to load.

Given that Snow Leopard will use 60GB+ virtual memory, a 4 GB+ sleep file... I can't see that this same standard doesn't still apply today. Just take a 500 GB drive at 75 GB free space and have maybe 65 GB of that taken up by VM and a sleep file, you really only have 10GB or 2% actual free space on that machine. Plus the fact that your VM is running in the tail end of the drive. You will see it slow down.

There are a lot of other factors to consider including how much memory is in the machine. But I'll still hold 15% to be the minimum for an acceptable running drive for the average user out there to eliminate problems that are a direct result of too little free space. You want to keep a rig running up to potential, I'd suggest 25-35%.

toMACsh said:

Well, what happened when you tried to boot while holding down the C key? It booted?

If so, you need to find Disk Utility and run repair permissions on the hard drive.

Click to expand...

Perad said:

Yes I have done this. Still doesn't start. Is there any way to reinstall OSX without wiping the files? I was under the impression that files were stored separately from the OS?

Click to expand...

I don't get that. You couldn't have done what I suggested if it didn't boot.

Perad said:

Shizzle my dizzle. Its healed!

Click to expand...

But, I'm glad it's working now. Mysterious machines, these computers!