Mail, word and other apps not responding Mac OX

I have a 27" late 2009 Mac with 2TB and more than 1TB free. I have Sierra running. Over the past few months, it has been increasingly sluggish and for the last month I have been unable to get beyond the login. I followed instructions online, changed the password and now I am back in but nothing is responding.. I had a brief response from Safari but nothing now

I have tried safe mode, disc repair but don't know what else to do.

I have parallels (running windows) on my mac but have not used it for a couple of years. Can anyone help me out of this mess

Welcome to the forum.

Have you tried using Onyx (www.titanium.free.fr) to do some cleaning? Are you using any antivirus/other cleaner/ etc. software? Is it the original hard drive? How much memory is installed?

Before we attempt any repairs, you do have a backup system in place. correct?

Have you been doing updates/upgrades of macOS, or did you do the clean install of macOS? What other Mac OS X versions have you upgraded through? Since you are running Sierra (macOS 10.12), you can boot into Recovery and run Disk Utility > First Aid on the drive and the partition.

Responses

To MacInWin

Have you tried using Onyx (www.titanium.free.fr) to do some cleaning?
No
Are you using any antivirus/other cleaner/ etc. software?
AVG for Mac
Is it the original hard drive?
Yes
How much memory is installed?
4GB (2x2)

To Ferrari
Yes I have both external hard drive and Backblaze' backing up
Have updated regularly but no clean install. Upgraded sequentially through each one as it was released.
I think I have done the boot into recovery and first aid already.

Thank you both. What should I do first?

OK, get rid of AVG. You don't need it, it slows down your machine doing nothing. There are NO viruses for Macs, the only thing any AV software can find is Windows viruses that will not run or affect your Mac in any way. You need to follow the directions AVG gives for how to delete it. (https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=How-to-uninstall-AVG-AntiVirus-for-Mac ) I'm betting that one thing alone will significantly improve performance.

4GB is not much memory. Your system is rated to take up to 16GB. I'd suggest you would have better performance at 8GB. Make sure you get the right memory, Macs can be picky about that. OWC (macsales.com) and Crucial both have configurators that will tell you exactly what you need.

Got rid of AVG although I had to 'force quit' because it was stuck on a GUI that it said wasn't there. (sorry I didn't record it exactly) I closed down and AVFG does not appear to be there. There is an AVG in Parallels - Windows 7. As I say I am no longer using this and need either to update or get reid of it. Would removing it help?

My Mac is still sticky and slow and I am having problems with apps hanging although I think it is marginally better. I still have office for mac 11 should that be updated or is it 'tinkering around the edges?"

I'll look into increasing the memory too..
Thank you very much

As long as you keep Office 2011 up to date no problems. Current version is 14.7.0 and it runs like a champ of macOS Sierra. Increasing memory is not going to be a problem as your iMac can handle up to 32GB and suggest from either OWS (macsales.com) or Crucial. 16GB was correct at time of release but things have improved wince then. If you do not use Parralells I would use BootCamp to uninstall it. And BootCamp only!

Next what operating nsystem is the iMac running? Trust you do not have any other AV or cleaning programs running?

You don't need Boot Camp to uninstall Parallels. Parallels is an emulator that runs in macOS and in which a Virtual windows can run. But it doesn't need a separate partition like BootCamp. So, unless the OP is using a separate partition, all that is needed is to delete the machines from within Parallels (to reclaim the space from the images) and then uninstall Parallels by dragging it to the trash. Nothing fancy.

Hello All, I am gradually working through your instructions. I am using Onyx to verify disk, and clean up. I have done nothing with parallels yet. I think my programs are possibly a little more responsive than before but I am still finding some are hanging. This is coming from my MacBook while things are countering away on the iMac! I am still finding that at login from start, i have to input my user name as well as my password which is not how it was before. As I have been writing Onxy has stopped responding and I have had to 'force quit'
Thank you for helping me a little further - I am still worried though.

Oops not BootCamp alas! Apologies ESJ my bad. Again what operating system? If OS X.6 use the original install DVD and boot from it by holding down 'C' after chime when the DCD is in the optical srive. If OS X.7 or later, go into Recovery Mode and check the hard drive. Maybe try using a new user account might overcome some of these problems assuming the drive is okay.

I have sierra and 10.12.1. I hadn't thought of a new user account. would that not limit my access to all my stuff - dropbox etc?

did you say that we could upgrade memory to 32GB?

Personall, I would recommend an erase and clean install. If you have updated through every Mac OS X/OS X/macOS version since getting your iMac, it may be time for a clean fresh install of macOS Sierra 10.12.

Bob are there instructions for a clean install? Thanks for your help
Elizabeth

memory 4gb is low: to speed up: install more ram (correct specs, easy to do; owc or crucial; cheap).
install to 16GB.

if only more ram does not completely solve the issues: run an Etrecheck list here: you may have wrong (e.g. antivirus) apps or be infected with malware/adware, or....

ESJ said:

Bob are there instructions for a clean install? Thanks for your help
Elizabeth

Click to expand...

Here are the instructions on how to reinstall macOS, right from Apple, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Before we go a nuclear with reinstalls, how about opening Activity Manager and look at the Memory state. Two things to look at: 1) Memory Pressure, should always be green. Any other color represents too much demand for memory and 2) Swap Used. Should be zero. Any other number indicates the system ran out of memory and had to write some of memory out to the boot drive, then read it back in when it was needed, slowing down the system because of that. Reinstalling won't solve the memory issue.

Hi There
Activity pressure is a sort of yellow/orange colour and I am using 3.52 GB (I have 4.00 GB)
swap used is 323.8 MB
what next?

Buy more memory. Both of those are indicators of major memory shortage.

I have been told that this model now will take 32GB memory- is this true?