Internet painfully slow on my late 2012 iMac

Hi all,

I've been experiencing really slow internet and web browsing speeds on my iMac for a while now and it wasn't like this when I first owned it.

It's extremely frustrating having to sometimes wait over 10 seconds to just load one webpage.

I'm better off using my iPhone as that loads the webpages almost instantly.

Any help with this?

PS I've already cleared the caches and turned off all extensions but that hasn't helped at all.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the replies so far.

First off, I have about 500gb left on the terabyte HDD.
Secondly, I'm using ethernet.

And no, I don't experience the slowness on other computers that are connected to the same network. Also, I've loaded the exact same desktop based web pages on my iPhone and iMac, and my phone is so much quicker still.

Just to also add, that I'm getting 50mb DL and 3mb UL on SpeedTest, and my ping on ping test is about 15ms

asriznet said:

- Have you tried in recovery and tested it?
- You may also want to run traceroute test on both your mac and PC and compare the readings.
- Also, explore the DNS option too and see if that helps.

Click to expand...

I've try them now and report back with my findings.

Thanks for your help.

Right, so I started in recovery and tried the same web pages and they were all so much faster! I don't think they were as fast as when I first got the mac, but still so so much faster.

And now because I'm back to using the computer normally again, they're all slow.

So what does that mean??

Thanks

FreemanW said:

At the top of my suspicion list would be the lovely malware known as GENIEO

There is an MacApps online distributor that I suspect was the source of this getting ensconced on my late 2012 iMac. It wreaked havoc with my entire LAN.

I suggest grabbing Sophos and or BitDefender (both free for Mac) and run complete scans. It couldn't hurt.

GL

Click to expand...

I already have sophos and have ran full scans before but didn't help

FreemanW said:

Check to see if you've a Safari plist file, this would be located in [Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.Apple.Safari.plist]. If so, take it from where it is ensconced and place it on your desktop for temporary safe keeping.

Restart the iMac and perform a reset of NVRAM/parameter RAM, then open Safari. It ought to recreate the plist file if it needs it. You may also try a Reset Safari procedure and see if those bullets kill the problem.

Click to expand...

I'll try that later, thanks.

The safari reset hasn't worked.

Brilliant that's really useful information. I'll give it a go later and report back.
Praying it'll solve it and it's driving me insane and not the performance I'd expect for a £1,100 machine.

Right, I've checked through the files and there is no com.apple.safari.plist

Also, just tried safe mode and the webpages do load relatively quicker like this which is good. Having said that, I've disabled all login items already and it's not this quick as it is in safe mode.

Any other ideas?

Thanks

PS Just to add, in my activity monitor, it says that I have 7GB of RAM out of 8GB and I'm only running safari and iTunes and Activity Monitor. Surely that's not right is it?

Bruno09 said:

Hi,

the Safari .plist file is located at :

Macintosh HD / Users / YourUserName / Library / Preferences

Not :

Macintosh HD / Library / Preferences

To access your user Library : Finder, menu bar, "Go", press the Alt key to reveal the Library.

Or hit Shift + Cmd + g, type in : ~/Library

How to :
- quit Safari
- move the com.apple.safari.plist file to the trash, do not empty the trash
- restart the computer

Click to expand...

I'll try that now. Thanks

Ok tried that and safari is still slow!
Ah this is doing my head in.

Would is be anything to do with the amount of RAM that is being used?
At the moment, all that I have running is Safari and apparently I've already used 6.3GB of the 8GB available. That's not right surely.

I'm running the free Yosemite trial. Although the internet was still very slow on Mavericks as well.

I've just downloaded an app from the store called Memory Clean and when it first loaded up it told me I had about 600mb free and over 4gb was app data. I pressed Clean Memory on it and it freed up a lot of memory so now I have over 4GB free which is great.

None of that has improved the speed in which the webpages load though

PS and yes, RAM Pressure is all green

----------

Ok, I've just uninstalled my three extensions and it's helped.
All webpages load quicker than before. Still not as fast as when I first got the computer but an improvement over what it was just like.

Ok I'll try those things.
Thanks

Bruno09 said:

Sorry, no offense here, but these "Utilities" are non-sense.

"Free memory is wasted memory".

Mavericks and Yosemite are using a totally new way of handling RAM, see link above.
No app can handle RAM better than the OS does. Period.

Freeing memory can only SLOW DOWN your computer.

Back to your problem, some thoughts :

1. try another browser : this will help understanding if the issue is Safari related OR network setup related.

2. try another account (new account or Guest account) : this will help understanding if the issue is user related or system related

3. since your iPhone has fast Internet browsing, compare its network setup with the Mac's network setup.

iPhone : Settings / Wifi, hit the "i" (info) button : what are the DNS settings ?

Mac : System Preferences / Network ----> DNS server = ?

Click to expand...

Ok so another browser doesn't help at all. Same speed.
Another account has the same speed.
The DNS settings and servers are the exact same on my iPhone and iMac.

EtreCheck version: 1.9.15 (52)
Report generated 16 September 2014 19:39:59 BST

Hardware Information: ?
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012) (Verified)
iMac - model: iMac13,1
1 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 4 cores
8 GB RAM

Video Information: ?
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - VRAM: 512 MB
iMac 1920 x 1080

System Software: ?
OS X 10.10 (14A361p) - Uptime: 0 days 1:47:43

Disk Information: ?
APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E662 disk0 : (1 TB)
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 699.35 GB (382.98 GB free)
Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
BOOTCAMP (disk0s4) /Volumes/BOOTCAMP: 300 GB (103.17 GB free)

USB Information: ?
Areson USB Device
Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Thunderbolt Information: ?
Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Gatekeeper: ?
Mac App Store and identified developers

Kernel Extensions: ?
[not loaded] com.bresink.driver.BRESINKx86Monitoring (9.0) Support
[not loaded] com.seagate.driver.PowSecDriverCore (5.2.4 - SDK 10.4) Support
[not loaded] com.seagate.driver.PowSecLeafDriver_10_4 (5.2.4 - SDK 10.4) Support
[not loaded] com.seagate.driver.PowSecLeafDriver_10_5 (5.2.4 - SDK 10.5) Support
[not loaded] com.seagate.driver.SeagateDriveIcons (5.2.4 - SDK 10.4) Support
[loaded] com.sophos.kext.sav (9.1.55 - SDK 10.7) Support
[loaded] com.sophos.nke.swi (9.1.50 - SDK 10.8) Support

Problem System Launch Daemons: ?
[failed] com.apple.wdhelper.plist

Launch Daemons: ?
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support
[loaded] com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.autoupdate.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.configuration.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.intercheck.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.notification.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.scan.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.sxld.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.webd.plist Support
[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist Support

Launch Agents: ?
[loaded] com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist Support
[running] com.sophos.uiserver.plist Support
[loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist Support

User Launch Agents: ?
[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist Support
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support
[loaded] com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist Support

User Login Items: ?
None

Internet Plug-ins: ?
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 3.2.0.16 - SDK 10.8 Support
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 14.0.0.145 - SDK 10.6 Support
Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10
AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 11.0.07 - SDK 10.6 Support
AdobePDFViewer: Version: 11.0.07 - SDK 10.6 Support
Flash Player: Version: 14.0.0.145 - SDK 10.6 Outdated! Update
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
Unity Web Player: Version: UnityPlayer version 4.1.5f1 Support
Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20913.0 - SDK 10.6 Support
JavaAppletPlugin: Version: Java 7 Update 60 Check version

Safari Extensions: ?
AdBlock
Turn Off the Lights-2
YoutubeWide

Audio Plug-ins: ?
BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 4.3.0 - SDK 10.10
AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.10
AppleAVBAudio: Version: 300.22 - SDK 10.10
iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.10

iTunes Plug-ins: ?
Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.5 - SDK 10.10

User iTunes Plug-ins ?
TuneUp Visualizer: Version: Unknown

3rd Party Preference Panes: ?
Flash Player Support
Flip4Mac WMV Support
Java Support
Paragon NTFS for Mac ® OS X Support

Time Machine: ?
Mobile backups: OFF
Auto backup: YES
Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU: ?
7% com.apple.WebKit.Plugin.64
5% uTorrent
3% WindowServer
1% launchd
1% coreaudiod

Top Processes by Memory: ?
172 MB Safari
164 MB mds_stores
156 MB SophosScanD
147 MB InterCheck
105 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

Virtual Memory Information: ?
4.12 GB Free RAM
1.64 GB Active RAM
1.21 GB Inactive RAM
963 MB Wired RAM
2.89 GB Page-ins
19 MB Page-outs


Usually my RAM is about 600mb free but I ran the Memory Clean app just before i ran that check.