Occasional lock up

Almost daily my Mac locks up. Mouse curser freezes on the screen. The only way out is to manually turn it off. It is slow coming back on. I am using an early 2008 iMac, 2.66 GHz Intel, 2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. OS is Yosemite. Any ideas?

Have you run Disk Utility to check the drive? How much free space is on the drive?

Part of the problem may be that Yosemite doesn't have enough room to run well. 2 GB is the absolute minimum required to run Yosemite.

There is lots of space, I think. In "500 GB SATA Disc" I see 483.69 GB free of 499.25 GB. Since the freeze up problem started recently, and I have been using Yosemiti ever since it came out something else is the problem don't you think?

Since you have a lot of free space. It could be that the hard drive is failing. Symptoms like you mention can happen with a failing HD.

Another possibility. Running Yosemite with only 2gig of ram is a recipe for slowness.

- Nick

I had a new hard drive installed about 6 months ago because of a crash. El Stupido here lost years of saved stuff because I didn't have it backed up.

If Yosemite is the problem I guess that I could go back to 10.9. I don't recall any improvements between 10.9 and 10.10, at least for the full I use.

If the HD is relatively new…then the issue is probably not the HD. If you did a ram upgrade…things with Yosemite would probably improve. Max. ram for your iMac is 6gig.

- Nick

If you have been running Yosemite previously and problems started recently that suggests there might be other issues involved. For better or worse here are my suggestions:

1. If you haven't already done so check the drive with Disk Utility. Repair any issues that are found. It would be unusual for a drive to start failing that quickly but it's not unheard of.

2. Try creating a new User account from the Users and Groups preference pane, give it administrator access, and log into your machine using that account. If the problem disappears something has gone wonky in your user account. We'll go back to using your current account. This one is for testing purposes.

3. Backing up to 10.9 might or might not help. Some features in Yosemite should have made it run better in low memory situations than 10,9 did.

Your iMac can handle 6GB of memory, 1 x 4GB and 1 x 2GB. Personally think 2GB is too little for both Mavericks and Yosemite. Most here re ommend 8GB.

I ran disc utility and everything is okay. The User account thing is gonna take this neophyte time to try.

Harryb
Your suggestions require a trip to the Mac store to either get the additional memory installed in the old machine (2008), or, get a new iMac. It is about time to upgrade I guess. What do you think?

earley said:

Your suggestions require a trip to the Mac store to either get the additional memory installed in the old machine (2008), or, get a new iMac. It is about time to upgrade I guess. What do you think?

Click to expand...

You can upgrade the ram in your iMac yourself. It's very very easy.

- Nick

Well earley it all depends on the readies (cash). If you got it go for a new iMac otherwise increase memory which is an easy self install. Suggest not buying from the Apple store - too dear. Look at this:-


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/Intel_Core_2_Duo_PC2-6400

harryb2448 said:

Well earley it all depends on the readies (cash). If you got it go for a new iMac otherwise increase memory which is an easy self install. Suggest not buying from the Apple store - too dear. Look at this:-


Apple iMac Memory upgrades for Aluminum 20" and 24" models with Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz, or 3.06GHz processor

Click to expand...

I think he's saved from Apple's memory prices, even though some some of their prices have become a bit more realistic recently, because I don't think they even sell memory modules for those 2008 Macs any longer.

Many thanks to all for the help