24" iMac - Black Screen when woken from Sleep & Very Slow Moving

[lesleybogan]

Hi Everyone..

Would appreciate some thoughts, feedback and HOPEFULLY a solution to my little iMac issue.

For the past few weeks it has been going to a black screen when trying to wake it up from sleep. Either I've put it through too much work lately editing all these photos and its really tired, or its just being a little **** .

So, often it wakes up normally and functions fine... well, not really... It is seemingly VERY slow. It requires a lot of time (more than before) to open up a program or it gives me the "spinning wheel of death" when trying to go to a different page on the internet or open up a folder on my desktop. Amongst other things that require it to think... so It's just a lot slower in general than before.

Has anyone else experienced this issue or heard of this before?

 

[TEG]

I would highly recommend downloading 'smcFanControl' for your iMac. My parents' iMac was having a similar issue ever since upgrading to Snow Leopard, and it also would just scramble the screen or go to black while in the middle of working. I used smcFanControl to get the fans to run faster, 24/7, because I deduced that the system was overheating. I came to this conclusion after running the iMac in Windows XP, where the fans run at full-speed because they have no controls, but I had no issues when in Windows. See if that helps.

TEG

 

[jim4spam]

I would recommend running a diagnosis of the hard disk. When the hard disk on my 24" iMac died a few months ago, I did think "oh yeah, in hindsight maybe that why I was seeing so much more beach-balling". When the iMac wakes from sleep it reads the 'status' of the computer from the hard disk and puts it back into RAM. So it could explain your symptoms.

Checking out the health of your drive won't do any harm in any case.

 

[ThirteenXIII]

I dont see how installing another app like smcFanControl will improve anything.

I think upgrading the ram if possible would definitely help and doing a permissions repair to maybe clear up any cache and system preferences.
Try a quick restart too and try to let it sleep a few times, wake it and get back to work, etc.