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Slow imac G4

K

kb1977

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2008
4
0
Hi

Newbie here!:) My friends imac G4 is super slow, it was fine until a few weeks ago but has gone really really slow especially when clicking between applications.

I have no mac experience but am quite handy with PC's so said I'd have a look for her, and so I defragged, deleted trash, restarted, ran virus and spyware detection - the hard drive is about 60% free and I couldn't spot anything that would be causing this, but it really is so slow. She has operating system 10.4.11 - 1.25ghz processor and 256 mb ram, I know I could just add more ram but it was fast enough for her a few weeks ago and she's noticed a considerable drop.

I have captured the activity monitor (attached) and was hoping someone could tell me if there is anything suspicious running here - my friend says she doesn't know what any of this stuff is other than firefox, safari, norton, excel and itunes.

Failing that, are there any good freeware mac programmes I could run to try asnd improve things?

Thanks in advance.
 

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Sly

Sly

macrumors 6502
Nov 30, 2003
454
0
Airstrip One
Firstly 256Mb ram is not enough for OS X 10.4, adding another 256 will make the world of difference, you've only 11mb free there with nothing running, the CPU is not really working at all. Secondly Norton is notorious for messing up Macs. My advice Reinstall the OS X afresh, add another 256mb ram stick, leave Norton off the computer, you don't need it.
 
Sly

Sly

macrumors 6502
Nov 30, 2003
454
0
Airstrip One
Adding another stick of RAM is easy, take the bottom plate off (the screws are captive so you wont lose them) you will see an empty slot, snap in the stick (It needs a good push to seat properly), put the bottom cover back on... done. I always buy my RAM from Crucial as it always works right first time, Macs are sometimes a little picky about the type of RAM used, there are plenty of threads here about RAM if you want other options.
 
Sly

Sly

macrumors 6502
Nov 30, 2003
454
0
Airstrip One
That walk through is to replace the internal "non user accessible" RAM that is fitted by Apple (in your case 256Mb). You only need to take off the bottom plate off as shown in pic 1 of the walk through. The iMac shown has some RAM already fitted to the user accessible slot, you will find yours is empty. Honestly it is a 60 second upgrade job.

OS X currently does not have any viruses or spyware to worry about, untill it does, if ever, no antivirus software needed. Antivirus just slows everything down unnecessarily. Macs can pass PC virusses on to PC users, which I suppose could be the only reason to install antivirus, but as you need all the speed you can get on that G4 I wouldn't bother. OS X 10.4 defrags automatically on the fly so no need for that either.
 
M

Mark-Mac-Attack

macrumors regular
Apr 6, 2007
249
0
England
I think this thread really shows that the typical steps a PC user performs when looking for problems means bugger all when it comes to a Mac.

:apple:
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
You need to read the guides on top of this page.
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/78/

Unfortunately, your windows centric approach is mostly an exercise in wasting time when it comes to OSX, especially that you installed and "ran virus and spyware detection." That actually slows the the computer even more on both PC and Mac. In addition, OSX does not have viruses or spyware. Thus many cases of installing anti-virus actually destabilizes and slows down the system. You need to uninstall Norton from a Mac, especially a version that is probably pirated.

The real problem is that
256mb of ram is not enough. I suspect that recently someone installed new apps and is running more apps thus the slow down (looks that way via ram usage from activity monitor).

Firefox is taking up 25% of CPU. I would use Safari instead.

Also you need to do "All Processes" instead of My processes.
 
K

kb1977

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2008
4
0
Thanks all, this has been a learning curve ;)

The spyware programme however (macscan) did find 31 tracking cookies - is this not spyware?
 
Dmac77

Dmac77

macrumors 68020
Jan 2, 2008
2,165
3
Michigan
^^^

Tracking cookies are harmless. They just track your web history so certain ads target you based on web usage. I.E. if I go onto tons of fishing sites, I'm more likely to see ads relating to fishing products then ads related to makeup.
Just get rid of the antivirus, do a fresh install of OS X, and max the ram on the iMac.

Don
 
J

Jiff Lemon

macrumors member
Apr 8, 2008
53
0
Also don't believe what the books say about maximum ram being 1GB.

Have 2gb sat in mine; Sure it's overkill but its cheap as chips and I didn't fancy opening up my mac a second time! :D
 
G

G5power

macrumors 6502
Feb 25, 2005
253
0
KB1977 it's great that you are helping a friend out with their computer.

With that speed of processor that is definitely the memory making things run slow. Some new installed program or change in operating habits has finally pushed the operating system to the point that 256MB of RAM is choking things.
 
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