2010 core i5 iMac 27" - running like a pig on Lion?

[bulldoze]

So we upgraded the wifes iMac 27" to Lion a few weeks ago and she has been complaining that it is running slow.

I have a new Macbook pro that runs Lion fine; on paper, the iMac is faster but it runs like a pig! she only really uses safari and iPhoto and maybe the odd word document and I just cannot understand how it has slowed down so much - I thought it was only Windows machines that slowed down after use?

Any ideas what I should be looking for? could it be the iMac itself?

 

[rkaufmann87]

Really difficult to say, the list of whys can be anything from a failing HD, inadequate RAM, a corrupt download or install etc or something as simple as booting from the Restore Partition and Repairing Disk Permissions a couple of times.

 

[gnasher729]

So we upgraded the wifes iMac 27" to Lion a few weeks ago and she has been complaining that it is running slow.

I have a new Macbook pro that runs Lion fine; on paper, the iMac is faster but it runs like a pig! she only really uses safari and iPhoto and maybe the odd word document and I just cannot understand how it has slowed down so much - I thought it was only Windows machines that slowed down after use?

Any ideas what I should be looking for? could it be the iMac itself?

Open "Activity Monitor" and see what is happening. Check whether anything uses the CPU a lot; there should be some "free" or "inactive" system memory, and there shouldn't be any unexpected disk activity.

 

[thekev]

I thought it was only Windows machines that slowed down after use?

It's not as simple as that. The bugs in Windows are more annoying without even going into security vulnerabilities or potential for viruses. OSX gets bugs too. The directory system with OSX can be a bit buggy but it's been better SL onward than it was on previous versions.

That being said if you just experienced a sudden slowdown after installing Lion it's not an issue of gradual slowdown. There are plenty of threads in the Apple discussions relating to Lion bugs, but hearing some details would help here.

I think you should look at activity monitor like the other poster, but I'd like to know more including how much ram the imac has, and if we're talking spinning wheel, applications taking too long to load, is it freezing, etc.

Also have you updated applications since installing Lion? You do need to be on compatible versions or these kinds of issues may occur.

 

[AndyMoore]

Did you upgrade using Migration Assistant or was it a clean install?

When I upgraded mine with MA, Lion wasn't as smooth as I was expecting. It was a bit of a dog to be honest. Eventually I bit the bullet and did a wipe and fresh install but something I did find beforehand that might help you without taking this drastic step is to clear out the system cache files.

I found that OS X was loading up a couple of gig of cache files on booting which ate up valuable RAM and caused a huge amount of paging which obviously didn't help. My machine only had 4Gb of RAM at the time too.

So check these locations and make sure they aren't taking up much space and clear them out if they are and check you aren't loading up any old Safari Extensions -

HD > System > Library > Caches
HD > Library > Caches

HD > Users > name > Library > Safari > Extensions