Speed up my iMac

[g7gnu]

Hi I have noticed over the last couple of months I am getting a lot of the coloured spinning disk mouse cursor and lag when trying to use the computer can any one suggest a suitable program to clean up my iMac without trashing it?

thanks g7gnu

 

[nickyr]

have a read of this:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ap...lot-beach-balls-recently-why.html#post1320497

I use a program called Onyx which performs cleaning processes - I just leave it at its default settings and run it every once in a while.

 

[docx]

Try OnyX but stay away from programs like MacKeeper as they can cause problems.
Titanium's Software • Index page

 

[techiesteve]

What iMac do you have? If OnyX doesn't resolve your problems and you are running Lion or Mountain Lion, boot to the recovery partition with command R, then run disk utility repair disk permissions and repair disk. If running an earlier OS, boot from your OS DVD and run the the same. If you still have a problem and your iMac dates from 2007/8, there's always a possibility your hard drive could be starting to fail, I see lots of failures from WD 250, 320 and 500GB drives from that era. If you aren't already regularly backing up now is the time to start.

 

[harryb2448]

And how full is the hard drive? Less than 15-20% free space can cause these problems. And you have not told us the model, operating system or important details such as how much memory is installed.

 

[g7gnu]

Hi thank you all for your replies. more info as requested, latest OSX version 10.8.4. iMac 3.06GHz intel i3 proc, 4 GB ram and about 25% used on HD.

I did download and run onyx and just cleared the caches.

activity monitor after 24 hours on 274mb page outs and 574mb swaps, after restart it stayed on zero for a while.

regards
g7gnu

 

[chas_m]

At a guess it sounds like you aren't quitting programs you're not using, just *closing* them. Not the same thing, and can eat up that RAM quick after a few programs.

Get in the habit of actually quitting (command-q or file->quit) programs you're not using or going to use for a while. Modern computers can relaunch programs in a second or two, it makes no sense to keep them open endlessly.

And I'd double that RAM if that iMac can take a RAM upgrade.