Mac is SUPER slow suddenly - Urgent Help Needed

[seamuskrat]

iMac 1.8 with Snow Leopard up to date.

Was runnign fine and then I began to notice some minor slow downs with Safari and the finder.

Rebooted, repaired permissions and rebooted again.

Now machine is nearly unusable.

Safari takes 3 to 5 minutes for each task. Spinning beach ball all around. Just typing this post each letter appears after 40 seconds or so. Loading a web page takes minutes.

Tried to launch Word and it took 32 minutes.

I have rebooted a few more times.

I have applied no updates recently or done any installs.

I am in the middle of a huge school project that I need to get done, so I am dreading a total rebuild of my iMac.

Is there a common system preference I can trash to reset things?

Any thoughts as to what would cause a system wide slowdown?

I have 150 gigs free drive space. 4 gigs of ram and only safari open as I type this.

Something is seriously wrong and I am at a loss.

Activity monitor shows only 5% CPU usage. It shows Flash for Safari using 32%. I suspect it is related to that POS plug in.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Is it slow when Safari/Flash aren't running?

Is all your RAM showing up under About This Mac?

Have you done a Verify Disk with Disk Utility?

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?

Have you tried running Apple Hardware Test?

Have you tried creating a new user test account and logging in with it to see if the problem persists?

 

[kunze50]

My guess is Hardware, maybe a failing hard drive.

 

[mysterytramp]

What does the system.log say in Console?

mt

 

[toolbox]

Have you done the PRAM and SMC reset?

 

[skate71290]

My guess is Hardware, maybe a failing hard drive.

sounds like the most obvious problem... fetch as much off the HDD as possible (i.e. irreplaceable photos/coursework/projects etc) and download http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582/onyx and run basically everything possible... restart your computer and try again... if that doesn't help anything... http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html and uninstall Adobe Flash Player... if still no luck... i have to make sure that 1. you are holding the laptop level (not always necessary but still...) and 2. you do not have anything magnetic near the laptop... perhaps on your wrists/arms etc... best of luck and report back

 

[Pax]

Make a full backup NOW using either Time Machine or Superduper.

You could check the SMART status of your HDD in System Profiler > Serial-ATA. Not sure how reliable the results are though.

 

[bluskale]

first, do backup anything you can immediately... then after that...

on the off chance that it is not some terrible hardware issue, you might try creating a brand new user account, log out of your normal one, and see if things work better over there (in case there is some preference-type issue).

Alternatively, try running through all the tests provided by applejack ( http://applejack.sourceforge.net/ ), including the expert mode ram test (see below; make sure you choose to install memtest during installation, as it is not on by default). If your poor performance persists in single user mode, something hardware-related is almost definitely the cause.

ram testing via memtest:
after booting to single user mode w/ cmd-s at startup, type applejack press return, then at the main option screen, type x press return, type 2 and go with the defaults for the next couple of questions. a full memory test might take 3 or 4 hours, and an error with the ram will not necessarily show up on the first or second pass (which is why the default is 3x testing)

 

[jho288]

iMac 27" 2009 3.06GHz and SSD Super slow

I have the same issue except:

When I was on snow leopard and the original Apple 1TB HD, it was actually quite fast.

Then I upgraded the main drive to a Runcore Sata SSD and took out the optical drive so I can put the 2.5" SSD in. The main 1TB got upgraded to a 2TB Black WD Caviar. Have 16GB of RAM. Upgraded to Lion.

OS Lion is on the 240GB SSD and user Documents moved to the 2TB.
240GB SSD is sitting in where the optical bay was (with a caddy to hold the 2.5" SSD) and the 2TB plugged into the SATA input.

Now my issues are exactly the same as what Seamuskrat is experiencing.
So my issue isn't a failed drive. After reboot it gets faster and normal, but after some usage it gets very laggy. (as i type words come out 5-10 seconds later).

Any ideas?