iMac randomly slow and other weird problems.

[Goose!]

Recently, like of the past week, my iMac(2010 i3 model only about 3 months old) has become ridiculously slow, slow to load the applications folders, sometimes takes like a second or to load drop down menus and register clicks.

Another thing is, stuff on websites, such as this forum not working like this dropdown on other website.

iMac (i3 2010 model)

MacBook (C2D 2008 model)

Both using chrome and well same chrome account and on the same connection. Any idea what the problem here is considering chrome is supposed to update flash itself? but ive tested it on firefox and safari too to it still not working on the imac but being fine on the macbook.

Any other ideas to fix the general slowdown....theres nothing fishy in activity monitor, only caffeine and cloud on login, bluetooths and those extras swtiched off, hardware test done with nothing coming back, half of my boot drive is free...I simply don't get why it's now so messed up....my macbook hasn't been cleaned or anything in like 2 years and is faster, same with my windows 7 computer...its taken me forever to put everything i've needed on this imac and now im thinking of re-installing it within 3 months, ugh.

Also checked the activity monitors with nothing else on of both macs and the stuff the imac had that macbook didn't were....

CVMSComp
Netsession
applespell.service

nothing dodgy from other google searches.

So any ideas? I REAAALY don't want to re-install since that's vista-esque crap thing to do, and well it'll take forever to setup again.

 

[dh2005]

Is it slow the whole time, or only immediately after booting? My iMac does that, and the hard drive can be heard trundling away to itself for a short while. I figure it's OS X doing file maintenance. Defragging, etc.

 

[Goose!]

Well the general speed of the computer seems fine now after a few tweaks.

But still the browser problem continues to irritate me, like if I go to download something of Fileserve/Filesonic/Hotfile, the countdowns will not start and I cannot even login on some sites without using an alternative route...this isn't browser specific either.