iMac mid-2010 slow help needed

[timsun]

Hi guys,

My mum has an iMac mid-2010 and she works a lot with the latest photoshop and lightroom. But the iMac is running slow today. It is running OSX 10.9, but it started with snow leopard.
I was thinking about reinstalling the OS to give her a fresh start. Is that a smart decission and what is the easiest way to do that?
Hope you guys can help out!
Timsun

 

[r0k]

Hi guys,

My mum has an iMac mid-2010 and she works a lot with the latest photoshop and lightroom. But the iMac is running slow today. It is running OSX 10.9, but it started with snow leopard.
I was thinking about reinstalling the OS to give her a fresh start. Is that a smart decission and what is the easiest way to do that?
Hope you guys can help out!
Timsun

I have found an OSX install does wonders. By an OSX install, I mean simply allowing OSX to install over itself. Boot to the recovery partition, by holding down option while booting then allow OSX to install to Macintosh HD. You do have everything backed up, right, RIGHT?

Typically, when you allow OSX to install over itself, everything comes back just like you left it but it's always a good idea to have a fresh backup before doing any sort of install.

The biggest "bang for the buck" upgrade is RAM. Putting in more RAM should help, especially with Photoshop. The next good (but more expensive) upgrade to consider is putting in an SSD. When I put in an SSD, I pick up the disk I want, connect it via a USB to SATA cable, install OSX to it, migrate from the old disk, test boot a few times and ONLY THEN do I crack open my Mac and put the new disk in.

Hope this helps...

 

[2012Tony2012]

Hi guys,

My mum has an iMac mid-2010 and she works a lot with the latest photoshop and lightroom. But the iMac is running slow today. It is running OSX 10.9, but it started with snow leopard.
I was thinking about reinstalling the OS to give her a fresh start. Is that a smart decission and what is the easiest way to do that?
Hope you guys can help out!
Timsun

There's your problem...it's called Maverick.

My iMac 2007 with 4GB RAM runs smooth, fast and great on Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion, which I currently have installed, but slow and sluggish when I had Maverick installed.

So go back to Mountain Lion is my recommendation.

 

[timsun]

Thanks

Thanks everyone for the replies,
I will go and try the first method by reinstalling os x. The iMac is already going with 8 GB of RAM. So i guess that wont be the thing, and i'm not planning on putting an ssd in it.
But if that doesnt work, how will i be able to put osx mountain lion on it? Should i downgrade with time machine or is there a way to give the mac a fresh start? (i would prefer the second method)

Thanks in advance,
timsun

 

[soamz]

I dont think, we can install SSD to 2010 iMac ?
Is it so ?

I have 2 iMac and both are bloody slow.

One is 2010 and one is 2012.
Both are rock slow.