27" iMac getting Laggy and slow

Sdahe · May 1, 2013

Hello Guys,

I have an almost new iMac and the animations are been lagging since last week... is there something you can do to make it run smooth again like when I bought it?... Do I have to re-install everything?...

rkaufmann87 · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
Hello Guys,

I have an almost new iMac and the animations are been lagging since last week... is there something you can do to make it run smooth again like when I bought it?... Do I have to re-install everything?...

No you don't need to re-install everything. However without any information about how much RAM you have installed or what you're running when the sy stem slows down it's difficult to begin troubleshooting. I'd start out by reading Apple's article on Activity Monitor and how to use it. You can find it by clicking:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

GGJstudios · May 1, 2013

If you're having performance issues, this may help:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X

Sdahe · May 1, 2013

Thanks guys...

My iMac has 16GB of RAM and a 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. I'm usually running Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver, Mail App, Safari, iTunes.. at the same time . Those are my main apps running during the day.

mainomega · May 1, 2013

verify/repair disk permissions. That helped me out a bit.

justperry · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
Thanks guys...

My iMac has 16GB of RAM and a 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. I'm usually running Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver, Mail App, Safari, iTunes.. at the same time . Those are my main apps running during the day.

You should rkaufmann87 link about how to use Activity Monitor.

We also can help you out if you make a screenshot from Activity Monitor, Open it then select ALL processes in the drop down Menu, next click on the System Memory tab in the lower part, and click the %CPU to show the most active processes.
To make a screenshot press Command-Shift-4 at the same time, then hit the Space bar next click on the window.

thekev · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
Thanks guys...

My iMac has 16GB of RAM and a 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. I'm usually running Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver, Mail App, Safari, iTunes.. at the same time . Those are my main apps running during the day.

It's always possible that could be an issue of ram. Have you checked activity monitor? How much is really used by the creative suite applications varies immensely depending on how you use them. It's best to just look at that. Most people also have scratch disks set to their boot drive, so if that is somewhat full and you're running low on ram at any time, you will definitely notice slowing. 16GB is enough for most people though, so I'm a little doubtful of it. Sometimes the system is just bad at freeing up inactive ram, which is why I say to check it. Also this has to be asked, you have tried rebooting right? If it's none of these things, I would check running processes. After that I would start to suspect hardware. If you've upgraded memory in the past, test that. Permissions don't cause these kinds of issues.

Also when you say almost new and 16GB, I get the impression you upgraded ram recently. You should always test the new ram as soon as you upgrade. If you haven't yet, try that. The other processes I was thinking of in activity monitor were spotlight based. They like to mess with applications that write a lot of data to disk at times.

Sdahe · May 1, 2013

justperry said:
You should rkaufmann87 link about how to use Activity Monitor.

We also can help you out if you make a screenshot from Activity Monitor, Open it then select ALL processes in the drop down Menu, next click on the System Memory tab in the lower part, and click the %CPU to show the most active processes.
To make a screenshot press Command-Shift-4 at the same time, then hit the Space bar next click on the window.

Here it goes... all my apps were closed..

Sdahe · May 1, 2013

thekev said:
It's always possible that could be an issue of ram. Have you checked activity monitor? How much is really used by the creative suite applications varies immensely depending on how you use them. It's best to just look at that. Most people also have scratch disks set to their boot drive, so if that is somewhat full and you're running low on ram at any time, you will definitely notice slowing. 16GB is enough for most people though, so I'm a little doubtful of it. Sometimes the system is just bad at freeing up inactive ram, which is why I say to check it. Also this has to be asked, you have tried rebooting right? If it's none of these things, I would check running processes. After that I would start to suspect hardware. If you've upgraded memory in the past, test that. Permissions don't cause these kinds of issues.

Also when you say almost new and 16GB, I get the impression you upgraded ram recently. You should always test the new ram as soon as you upgrade. If you haven't yet, try that. The other processes I was thinking of in activity monitor were spotlight based. They like to mess with applications that write a lot of data to disk at times.

How do I test out the memory?

justperry · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
Here it goes... all my apps were closed..

Nothing to see here, what about your page outs, are there any?

Sdahe · May 1, 2013

justperry said:
Nothing to see here, what about your page outs, are there any?

No Pageouts

justperry · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
No Pageouts

This is after using all the Applications you mentioned before?

If this is the case you don't have problems with the size of your RAM.

You could indeed test your Memory as suggested by theKev and when it gets slow open Activity Monitor and see what is going on, I agree with him Spotlight sometimes messes up, two processes to look for are MDS and MD worker, they sometimes use quite a bit of resources.

You can use Memtest to test your RAM, best way to run this is from single user mode since it will test All your memory instead of part of it when done while logged into the OS.

Sdahe · May 1, 2013

justperry said:
This is after using all the Applications you mentioned before?

If this is the case you don't have problems with the size of your RAM.

You could indeed test your Memory as suggested by theKev and when it gets slow open Activity Monitor and see what is going on, I agree with him Spotlight sometimes messes up, two processes to look for are MDS and MD worker, they sometimes use quite a bit of resources.

You can use Memtest to test your RAM, best way to run this is from single user mode since it will test All your memory instead of part of it when done while logged into the OS.

Yes... I never get pageouts even with all my apps opened... I guess that's good

So there is nothing wierd in my process list?

justperry · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
Yes... I never get pageouts even with all my apps opened... I guess that's good

So there is nothing wierd in my process list?

Good, seems running out of RAM isn't the issue here.

Keep an eye on the processes when the Mac is getting slow, not when you don't have these issues.

Check out this Memtest page, click on the User guide, it will tell you how to run Memtest, download it and see if your RAM is OK, if that is the case it is likely to be a runaway process, as said before MDworker and MDS are 2 processes to keep an eye on.

thekev · May 1, 2013

Sdahe said:
How do I test out the memory?

http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/03/memtest-mac-ram-test/

Do it in single user mode only. Run 10 cycles or so. I would just let it run while you sleep. If it turns up any errors, RMA the ram. It's not that uncommon with memory upgrades, which was why I wanted to rule it out.

Sdahe said:
Here it goes... all my apps were closed..

It's not just pageouts. When you're experiencing lag look at activity monitor. See how much ram is marked free. OSX is supposed to free up inactive ram. It doesn't always happen.

justperry said:
Good, seems running out of RAM isn't the issue here.

Keep an eye on the processes when the Mac is getting slow, not when you don't have these issues.

Check out this Memtest page, click on the User guide, it will tell you how to run Memtest, download it and see if your RAM is OK, if that is the case it is likely to be a runaway process, as said before MDworker and MDS are 2 processes to keep an eye on.

Yes those were what I was thinking of when I mentioned spotlight. Sometimes even after all these years they'll conflict with scratch disk processes.

miguelcoma · May 7, 2013

Sdahe said:
...

Hi, I got the same or a similar problem and got it solved.
Go to this thread and see if it helps (Solution on comment #19).
And please, say if it does so that we know it's a problem with new iMacs and that's the way to solve it.

Sdahe · May 7, 2013

miguelcoma said:
Hi, I got the same or a similar problem and got it solved.
Go to this thread and see if it helps (Solution on comment #19).
And please, say if it does so that we know it's a problem with new iMacs and that's the way to solve it.

Thanks... now it's working very nice...

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