iMac running slow all of a sudden.

[SeanTheMacUser]

Hi all,

So recently (within the past week or so), my iMac's performance has decreased drastically. Programs take forever to load and buffer, and when I have applications such as Mail and Firefox open simultaneously, everything slows down further. A week ago I could be running 10 different programs at once and not experience a significant slowdown, but now I struggle with simply one.

I've restarted and hardbooted multiple times. I've watched the Activity Monitor, and the percentage of my computer's CPU stays between 90-95%. I've tried clearing caches (I think). I'm not fluent in Mac yet (convert from a Dell 4 months or so ago), so I apologize in advance for my ignorance, haha.

The only remembered big change was that I loaded 800 or so RAW format photos into my computer, which I sifted down into about 300. But out of my TB, only about 125GB has been used.

What else should I do to further diagnose this extreme lag?

 

[sniffs]

Hi all,

So recently (within the past week or so), my iMac's performance has decreased drastically. Programs take forever to load and buffer, and when I have applications such as Mail and Firefox open simultaneously, everything slows down further. A week ago I could be running 10 different programs at once and not experience a significant slowdown, but now I struggle with simply one.

I've restarted and hardbooted multiple times. I've watched the Activity Monitor, and the percentage of my computer's CPU stays between 90-95%. I've tried clearing caches (I think). I'm not fluent in Mac yet (convert from a Dell 4 months or so ago), so I apologize in advance for my ignorance, haha.

The only remembered big change was that I loaded 800 or so RAW format photos into my computer, which I sifted down into about 300. But out of my TB, only about 125GB has been used.

What else should I do to further diagnose this extreme lag?

A sudden change like that could mean that Spotlight is just indexing them.. I bet if you just let it do it's thing for a few hours, it'd normalize.

 

[SeanTheMacUser]

But would the computer take 5 days to do that?

 

[sniffs]

But would the computer take 5 days to do that?

Depends.. if you use it for 10 minutes here and there and put the lid closed(it goes to sleep), sure could.

but if you had it on and awake for 5 days, no way.

So you checked your activity monitor for CPU usage, did you check for disk r/w usage? disk activity?

Slowdowns aren't always caused by CPU usage.

 

[SeanTheMacUser]

My Disk Activity is as follows (accounting for fluctuations within):

Reads in: 116034
Writes out: 115834
Reads in/sec: 0-170 (changes quickly)
Writes out/sec:
Data read: 3.77GB (and rising slowly)
Data written: 3.38GB (and rising slowly)
Data read/sec and data written/sec vary widely.

My Disk Usage is that of 123.9GB out of 999.35GB, with 875.45GB of free space.

 

[AlphaDogg]

If this really is sudden and you didn't change your usage at all (like opening more things at once, using higher RAM usage programs such as photoshop, etc), then I'm thinking your HDD is failing. Never trust a mechanical device. EVER.

 

[BrianBaughn]

If you're looking at Activity Monitor, what exactly is using the CPU?

 

[SeanTheMacUser]

If this really is sudden and you didn't change your usage at all (like opening more things at once, using higher RAM usage programs such as photoshop, etc), then I'm thinking your HDD is failing. Never trust a mechanical device. EVER.

The only program I had installed recently was Lightroom, and I was using that seamlessly for a couple weeks prior to the slowdown. What exactly is my HDD?

If you're looking at Activity Monitor, what exactly is using the CPU?

The normal ones, such as the programs up (Firefox, Activity Monitor, Processor), but there's also 'kernel_task' that can take up a large portion, and 'mds'.

 

[Isamilis]

mds is taking account for spotlight process. You may exclude photo folders first in Spotlight preference and remove exclusion later after finish copying
(if you still need).

 

[BrianBaughn]

He means your hard drive when he says HDD.

There's a lot of posts out on the internet about high "kernal task" cpu usage and there doesn't seem to be any consistent answer for the problem.

To check if it's a particular bit of software you're going to have to make sure only the minimal stuff is running (including login items), then start adding processes. I would also disconnect any external devices. If you've got any network devices that normally connect, stop those also. This includes any network printer which you'll probably have to remove from preferences.

Have you verified your hard drive with disk utility?

 

[justperry]

The only program I had installed recently was Lightroom, and I was using that seamlessly for a couple weeks prior to the slowdown. What exactly is my HDD?



The normal ones, such as the programs up (Firefox, Activity Monitor, Processor), but there's also 'kernel_task' that can take up a large portion, and 'mds'.

Post a screenshot of Activity monitor with ALL selected in the Top drop down menu and then click on the CPU tab to show the top most processes.

There is a way to easily see if the problem is in your account, make a new User account, preferably admin, then logout of the normal one and into the new one, better even is to do a restart and log into the new account, do you still have the problems there, if not your normal Account has issues.