iMac running super slow

[AndrianaArt]

Hello, my parents have a late 2009, 27inch iMac running Lion 10.7.4 They say that ever since they upgraded to Lion they have been experiencing random freezes, slow start up and lagging apps. They took it into the Mac store and they reported nothing wrong with it, wiped it and clean installed Lion again. They brought it home and the same slow downs began to happen again. I have been playing on it and it starts up super slow, opening apps is a nightmare, I have been looking around the forums but haven't seen any solutions to this issue with 10.7.4 Wondering if it has something to do with the graphics card? ATI Radeon HD 4670? Any advice or a point in the right direction would be helpful, thanks!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

How much RAM does it have?

Also open Activity Monitor and go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used and report back.

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

* Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor​

Performance Tips For Mac OS X

You can use the following applications to benchmark the speed of your HDD / SSD, to see, if it is the culprit:

• AJA System Test
• Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
• Xbench

 

[mmomega]

My wife's 2009 iMac 27" i5 runs everyday tasks, safari, mail, iMessage, iPhoto, etc practically just as quick as my '11 iMac.

Both are running ML with full clean installs currently and were running the latest Lion installs before ML. No problems, I would have heard about it as my wife is not very patient with slow computers.

I did upgrade the RAM on the '09 to 8GB, as well as installed an Intel X-25M 80GB SSD back when those drives were new

 

[AndrianaArt]

Ram

It has 4G of RAM, and it is slow doing simple tasks, like opening safari and address book. These slow downs happen randomly, one min you are cursing the thing, the next it is loading everything as quick as can be.

 

[Virgule82]

It has 4G of RAM, and it is slow doing simple tasks, like opening safari and address book. These slow downs happen randomly, one min you are cursing the thing, the next it is loading everything as quick as can be.

Same thing happened to me. Lion eats memory, so I upgraded to 8G of RAM. Check memory usage in Activity Monitor, if you're using any swap you could benefit from a RAM upgrade.. Also, upgrading to Mountain Lion helps.

 

[AndrianaArt]

Thank you!

Thank you guys, all of this info is super helpful. Upgrading them to Mountain Lion.