My imac is very slow.. need help

I have a imac 20" model 5'1 with 2.33GHz processor and 2GB Ram, i have had it just over a year and half and never had a single problem with it until recently it just suddenly started running very slow. It don't never crash the little color wheel appears and i cant do anything until it goes. this can happen doing almost anything from just opening files browsing in safari.I have had a look at the activity monitor while this happens and the processor is usually onlyabout 12 percent to 20 percent and memory is plenty. I have also done a hardware check and that reports everything is OK. I reset the SMU also, that didn't help . After searching around apple support and finding no help i decided that I would instal OSX againI did a format install and it took well over 8 hours to complete the install of OSX.Still my Mac is slow most of the time. Has anyone got any ideas what could be wrong I know i must have some kind of hardware problembut why is my mac telling me otherwise. any ideas or suggestions will be much appreciated.



Just one other thing has anyone ever seen these shadows in corner of mac screen and know what it is.. i have them in three of the corners. ??

Click to view attachment Thanks
Andy.

I think you mean intel right ?

Yes its an intel, the Model ID is 5'1

Try a fresh install of Leopard...

Hi I did that ... the instal took over 8Hours to complete

Take it in to the shop. You're covered against crap like this for a year (3 with AppleCare).

My Warrenty is exspired now , i didn't have the extended cover. i was hoping i could do this myself but there is no point me opening it up if i don't what could be wrong with it.

Ask an Apple Store for an estimate on how much it would take to fix. If its reasonable then just pay to get it fixed (or act like a genius and ask them what's wrong with it so they'll take interest and tell you everything so you can go and fix it yourself ), otherwise if the price is ridiculous (meaning its a hardware problem), you may want to try at fixing it yourself or getting a new computer.

It's your hard drive.

You'll experience the same symptoms no matter what hardware, what OS. If it take's that long to install the OS and it run's that slow, it' definitely the hard drive. Try backing up your data before it completely dies and replace it.

In this situation SMART status will usually report that everything is okay, but SMART is hardly reliable.

I would have to agree with qwen3579, if a OS Install is taking that long, then its either your HDD, or your Motherboard dying. Though I would suspect HDD. Try putting your ear to you iMac. It should normally be purring, with slight Harddrive-sh noises. If it makes some Weird repetitive Click Noises, its probably dying. SMART is not fully trustable. I have a Samsung 40GB which shows SMART as good, even though it has 10GB out of 40GB missing.

Lol yeah SMART only reports "failing" when the drive is minutes from dying

I'm going to what you advised and take the hard drive out and replace it. I did a little test this morning after reading that you say its my hard drive. I sent a 288MB
folder over my home network to desktop on my Mac. After 9 minutes the file transfer stopped and my PC reported that the location was no longer available or something like that.
Anyway I looked at the folder on the mac desktop and it only had 87.6MB. so I sent it
back to the PC and it copied it in 40 seconds.

One thing i did notice while I was trying to copy the 288MB file to the mac was that in theactivity monitor the the data written kept going from 512.00KB to 0Bytes every couple
seconds. Is that normal? .
I ran the Disk Utility on the mac again to verify the disk and that came back as a pass again. Also I listened to the hard drive noise like "U.C." said and it sounded quite and normal, only there was long pauses where There was no noise from the disk at all.
this was while the folder was still being copied from the PC to Mac.

Also will it be OK to put my OSX operating system on a different hard drive?

No. This definitely sounds like your hard drive is breaking.
Yeah it's fine, either a new internal drive or an external one.

You can even do this. Install OSX to your iPod/External HDD and try it. If it works fine, then bother opening it up and replacing the HDD. Else let the apple geniuses do their job.

I opened up my imac today, and managed to get to the hard drive , it wasn't too difficult just the sticky shield stuff was a pain. so i will be getting a new drive for it.
Probably a 750GB Seagate .. it has a 250GB western digital
at the moment. There is some tiny circuit board on the side of the drive I didn't remove it because couldn't see if it had a screw in it or was just stuck to the side.
Guess that must just be the sensor but hope it attaches to the new drive ok.

I don't know how to put the OSX onto my iPod as a test. when I connected the iPod it wouldn't let me install to it . it said something about it would not be able to boot from that drive.
anyhow I did use the ipod to copy some files and stuff to and works fine its only when there is activity with the internal drive that there is slowdown.

Thanks for all the help and advise guys.

Good luck!

If you experience the same symptoms after installing the new drive, then we know it's the logic board.

The thee stages of SMART:

1. HDD Running Normally
2. Problem Detected With HDD, Backup Data and Replace
3. HDD Not Found

Number 3 usually happens 2 minutes after number 2!

Hi JackTHEmac I have exactly the same problem with the same machine.

Tell me, did you get it sorted out, was it your hard drive or logic board

thank

Hi elms29

I haven't changed the hard drive yet, but will be ordering one in a week, so soon as i get it done i'll let you know .

OT. Found that out the hard way with a WD 250GB IDE drive: Smart said it had problems so I shut down to put in another drive to copy to and when I restarted the 250 was gone forever. I have been trying to find a replacement logic board ever since to see if I can bring it back to life!

Thanks for you reply. Do stay in touch to let me know. I am currently writing zeros to my hard drive and will see if it works when i reinstall tiger.

Don't you thik its strange that so many people with the same machines have the same problem at the same time!! Should apple not recall these computers.

elms29

hi

I changed my hard drive and all is well now.

Thats good news! My hardrive should be with me by wednesday i ordered a Seagate Baracuda 500GB so i'll have a nice upgrade from 250GB at the same time.