Chosen Solution
A little back ground: I purchased this imac used. When I first powered it up the cpu fan was running at full speed and it had a firmware password. I was able to get passed the firmware password after a RAM upgrade to 4GB. I repartitioned, reformatted the 160GB HD, and installed OSX 10.6.8. I’ve also reset the SMC, NVRAM, ran virus scan, and repaired disk permissions and the imac is still crawling! I was able to repair the LCD sensor cable which fixed the high speed fan which I was told by a “Genius” would correct the slow speed but here I am. FYI: 37 GB of 160 GB used CPU 90+% idel 2GB of 4GB used Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Mike
I suggest you update OS X to Mavericks. Check here iMac http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/. Since this is used Mac OS X, it might be that the hard disk drive is fragmented and causing OS X to crawl. Now, Mac handles fragmentation smartly but if the drive was used for large software then it may become fragmented. (Apple says, large/heavy software such as video editing may cause drive fragmentation). Again it is a speculation so better you check it with a software. Since, DU won’t let you do that, you might go for Stellar Drive Defrag, Prosoft or iDefrag to check if the drive is badly fragmented. All these tools are paid but free version will let you know if drive fragments are many in numbers. Hope this helps!!
My first thought would be a failing hard drive. Vishal may be correct about defragmenting. I use TechTool Pro to do this but there may be cheaper programs in the Apps store.
