beachball of death constant is it the ram???

[redgaz26]

Beachball is constant. Repaired permissions, verified disk says fine, ran hardware test says fine, also ran onyx which doesnt say theres any problems, is there anything else I can do to test this mac before I buy some new ram?
its a 20" imac aluminium from 2008 with 1g ram(not mine my mums)

 

[Dave Braine]

What are you trying to do with your mum's iMac. Basic stuff like the internet, emails etc, or something a bit more demanding like heavy duty video editing? If it's only the first, then 1 gig should be plenty.

 

[Jason Beck]

Copy apps, docs, and pics to a backup drive and do a clean reinstall.

 

[redgaz26]

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It's just the basic stuff she uses, bit of photo editing nothing heavy duty. The mac is running so slow it's almost unusable. I'll do a clean reinstall see what happens.

 

[Dave Braine]

The mac is running so slow it's almost unusable.

My daughter's MacBokk got like that. The reinstall fixed it.