iMac running slowly suddenly

[rotgut]

iMac late 2009
Current version of mountain lion


The other morning I woke to my computer making a very loud noise (fan I'm assuming), after waking up the computer the noise stopped but suddenly any program I touched made the color wheel come up and the program to either become unresponsive or insanely slow and delayed.

I've repaired and verified through disk utility with no success. I checked activity monitor and I have 90% idle roughly and almost 2Gb free ram.

Nothing new has been installed. The only thing I've done differently was I had a gaming amp and headset powered through the USB.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

 

[comatory]

could be failing hard drive but strange that disk utility didnt report anything.

loud fans could mean that something is overheating inside the iMac - maybe something went wrong with the hdd as they tend to have temperature sensors on them. or maybe there is a lot of dust inside your iMac (but that seems unlikely).

i dont have that much experience with iMacs but it really sounds like bad drive. try creating new user account and see if that helps.

 

[rotgut]

I tried under another profile and got the same results. I vacuumed out the vents and the fan hasn't been loud since but it's still running horribly.

Smart status is verified which I believe indicates the hard drive is okay, but perhaps I'm wrong.

 

[HenryDJP]

I tried under another profile and got the same results. I vacuumed out the vents and the fan hasn't been loud since but it's still running horribly.

Smart status is verified which I believe indicates the hard drive is okay, but perhaps I'm wrong.

I have had limited success with Apple's built-in S.M.A.R.T status tool. A couple of times I've had failing hard drives and Apple's tool always returned perfect results from the hard drive. I installed a 3rd party S.M.A.R.T reporter app and it verified my hard drives were bad. Took the Macs to the Apple store and they verified this too. They replaced both. I would recommend that you try this.

http://download.cnet.com/SMARTReporter/3000-2086_4-49263.html?tag=rb_content;contentBody

 

[rotgut]

I found out there was a recall on hard drives installed in models sold 2009-2011. So apple is taking care of the faulty hard drive.