iMac 20"- Disk shows no problems but Freezes badly

[filipzywica]

Hi,

I have gone through the threads about slow and Freezing iMacs but could not find a solution to my issue.

Mine is 20" 2.4GHz intel with 3 GB Ram and is about 2 yrs old.

Recently it started freezing and slowing down terribly with programs (both native and adobe) crashing on me badly.

It also shows me the blinking question mark Icon at some start ups and sometimes it starts with no problem (on appearance of the "no start up disk found" icon I'd press the power button, give it a moment and then press it again holding until it "shreeks" and it'll mostly be back on)
Not always this happens - sometimes I manage to shut it down the healthy way.

It also shows me a question mark on the actual start up disk icon in the SYSTEM PREFERENCES window. I cannot remember if this is how it should be - cannot remember as I never paid attention to that but found a fragment of a post elsewhere where someone said this is a sign of an underlying Hard Drive problem.

When I ran Verify Disk in The DISK UTILITY, and that tells me that the drive appears to be fine. I ran Verify and Repair Disk permissions and that didn't present anything worrying.

The Repair Disk button is greyed out but I suppose it's unavailable because the system says it's fine...

I even ran a test of the hardware using the program on my system CD (held the D button as the system was starting up to run the testing procedure) and that said - no problems

Yet it still freezes more and more frequently and sometimes doesn't find the startup drive.

I have just finished backing up all my important files and I am ready to reinstall the OS X from the CD but I still have doubts it will help.

Would anyone have any ideas, experiences? I would really appreciate sharing some wisdom.

Thank you,

Filip

 

[hothacker3000]

you might have to add some more memory up in there and that will defintely make it go alot faster and resolve the problem your having with it freezing you have alot but it might not be enough to the point where it's freezing but operating by coming on and opening applications, browsing the internet etc... and daily activities but still freezing from one problem more memory needed in the slots to run correctly so adding more will that should work......

 

[chscag]

It does sound like your hard drive is giving you problems. Concerning the testing that you did; were they run (verify and repair) while booted from your original install DVD?

Freezing symptoms and the question mark at startup are usually indicative of a failing hard drive. It could be something else, but the symptoms point to the drive. I wouldn't reinstall OS X as it probably will be a waste of time and could lead to other troubles. Just make sure you have a good backup ready to go. If your iMac has Apple care on it, make an appointment to take it on in. If not, be prepared to swap out that hard drive.

Regards.

 

[filipzywica]

It does sound like your hard drive is giving you problems. Concerning the testing that you did; were they run (verify and repair) while booted from your original install DVD?

The Verify Disk and Repair Disk permissions were run from within Disk Utility as it is, not when booted from the DVD.

I used the DVD only to perform the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) as described on apple's support pages and that too showed no problems.

About the question mark icon: here is a slice of the image of my System Preferences window. Is that normal? As mentioned - I never had a proper look before.

With regards to adding more RAM - I really doubt this is the case, I added the extra 2 Gigs around 6 months ago and I do not do perform any seriously RAM hungry operations, excluding some Photoshop work. Up until recently It had been running pretty smooth with 3Gigs.

Thank you for your replies, guys and I guess I will be taking a walk to Apple store this afternoon. No Apple care - unfortunately.

Best regards,

Filip