iMac maintenance

My iMac is about 4 years old and in the last few months has slowed down terribly. I've run permissions and no help. It is a 3.06 GHz machine with 4 gigs of memory. I have 128 gigs of free space on the 500 gig internal drive. Dual core Intel processor and running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Usually there is no more than 4 or 5 applcations running at the same time: Mail, Safari, Parallels running XP, and maybe one more (Lightroom, Photoshop or Excel). But this is what I've always done and the slowdown is only the last several months.

Is there a way to test if the cpu is working properly? Any other things I could be looking at?

Thanks very much.

Welcome to Mac-Forums..

When your use of Parallels, you should really upgrade your RAM to either 8 or 16 GB. Does suspending/closing Parallels while leaving the other applications running yield usable performance?

THanks for the welcome. My iMac is maxed out on ram. Those models will only take 4 gigs.

Things do not run appreciably faster with Parallels off. And the thing is, I've been running the same software for years without this issue.

Mark

If it is a 2008 model, it will actually handle 6GB. With that much memory think your problem is related to the programs you have opened.

My iMac maxed out at 4 gigs. I've verified this at the Apple Store a couple of times. Wish I could add more ram.

Mark

While it could be, it's highly unlikely the issue is the CPU. A CPU going south really is pretty rare. I don't even look at that if I have a running computer.

After 4 years and with 25% free space - I'm going to "assume" since you're using Lightroom/Photoshop you've had much more data (pictures, etc) than that copied to and from the drive. I would guess the drive's free space is highly fragmented. I start noticing slow down due to free space fragmentation at 30-35% free space. I let 10.6 get down to 25% free "once" just as an experiment and the slow down was unbearable for me with a fragmented drive.

You can download the demo of iDefrag and run it to get a picture of the fragmentation of the free space.
Would be very willing to place a bet that your data is spread all across the drive from one end to the other.

Couple of ways to fix it - if the problem is this rather than a drive beginning to depart.

Create a clone with CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper!. Boot to the clone, make sure it's functioning properly and your stuff is there, then erase/format the internal and clone it back to your internal drive.

I've used SD! for this several times.

Another option if you have a Time Machine backup, is do a clean install and restore from your TM backup.

Best option imho, but it'll cost ya - iDefrag - yes, I felt the speed increase from iDefrag vs the clone was worth the price of admission. Have never yet tried restoring from my TM backups.

Probably still take Harry's advice and up the RAM since you're using Parallels.
There is no 3.06 GHz whose max is only 4 GB - the early '08 model max is 6 GB - the early '09 model can handle 8 GB - the late '09, 16 GB.
Apple is going to tell you the Apple line - and that is going to be the max Apple tested it with - not necessarily the max it can use.
Verify - everymac.com, Crucial or OWC.
edit:
everymac doesn't sell RAM, Crucial and OWC do and will guarantee the RAM to work in your machine.

As Mod bobtomay says Apple employees are well indoctrinated and always push the company line. 2007 iMacs, model A1224 known as iMac 7.1 and 2008/2009 models can all handle the 6GB.

Interesting. Somewhere along the line I thought I had learned that OS X does not need to be defragged. But I will follow your advice and try the iDefrag scan and if needed, buy the program. $29.95 isn't what it used to be.

Even more interesting (not in a good way) about the advice given by the Apple Store. I'll try OWC. Their external hard drives have served me well.

Thanks to all.

Is defrag needed?

I ran the scan and if I am interpreting this correctly, my HD is not terribly fragmented. See attached.

Ununstaling Flash remainders

A week ago or so I posted about how my iMac had slowed down to the point where the spinning wheel would go on for minutes at a time. See http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/298826-imac-maintenance.html

The probelem seems to be getting worse and yesterday Safari became totally unresponsive and I had to shut it down. I've read that Flash can do that so I uninstalled Flash using Adobe's uninstaller. But I see that there are left over files all over the place. Is it safe to delete any file that has "Flash Player' in its title?

Thanks.

Mark

iMac, 10.6.8,

Threads merged - please keep ongoing discussion about a continuing problem in the same post so that there is context and we can provide further assistance..

If you uninstalled Flash using Adobe's uninstaller, it should have done a good job of cleaning up after itself. You can confirm that Flash is no longer working by visiting any site in Safari that uses Flash. If you see a broken puzzle piece, then Flash is missing and the files that are left over are probably of no consequence..

Also, know that Chrome includes it's own Flash player inside it and doesn't require a copy installed from Adobe..

Boot from your Snow Leopard DVD and run Repair and see what is reported. May well be a failing hard drive.