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Slow and quirky on an older Mac

yossarian084

yossarian084

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Intel Mac, approximately 9 years old


  • Safari won't launch — icon bounces and gives up
  • Messages wouldn't open, showed a force quit warning (fixed by clicking "Don't Reopen")
  • Terminal is unresponsive — Enter key has no effect
  • About This Mac opens but takes over a minute
  • Clearing Safari's saved state folder had no effect
  • Unable to enter Safe Mode — wireless keyboard doesn't register during startup, and Terminal is unresponsive so can't force it via command line
  • Issues persist after a full restart
  • Photo of the About my Mac attached
Anyone have an idea of where to start?
 

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How full is the disk? I would keep Activity Monitor open, and see if anything is using excessive CPU or Memory.

If the problem still occurs in Safe Boot mode -- and also in a brand new user account -- then that may point to something other than software...
 
benwiggy said:
How full is the disk? I would keep Activity Monitor open, and see if anything is using excessive CPU or Memory.

If the problem still occurs in Safe Boot mode -- and also in a brand new user account -- then that may point to something other than software...
Click to expand...
It's a 2TB disk and it's half full.
 
yossarian084 said:
The biggest process shows up as kernel_task. Is that normal?
Click to expand...
How big? CPU or memory? kernel task can use large amounts of CPU as a means of throttling the machine (by preventing other processes from using the CPU). That normally suggests overheating.
 
benwiggy said:
How big? CPU or memory? kernel task can use large amounts of CPU as a means of throttling the machine (by preventing other processes from using the CPU). That normally suggests overheating.
Click to expand...
Right now it's showing it's running at 10-11% of the CPU
 
Is the "failed" drive still inside your iMac? Was that originally a Fusion drive? That is two devices, one normal (spinning platter) hard drive, plus an SSD card, connected to PCIe bus, to make up the fusion drive. Could be causing an issue for you after all this time.
 
The fusion drive is a storage configuration, which uses both a spinning hard drive, and a second drive, an SSD, which will be plugged into a PCIe slot on the logic board. If you don't know what was originally in the iMac, and one (or both) devices have failed, then the only real "fix" is to open the iMac, and see what is still in place. If the failed device(s) are now causing problems, then one possible solution is to open the iMac, and remove those storage devices. Even better, swap in a good drive, either an SATA SSD, or replace the existing SSD card on the back of the logic board (if there is one)
You COULD also do a quick check (if the system as it works now will let you), by opening the terminal, and typing the command "diskutil list" (without the quotes), press enter, and see what appears. Hopefully that will show both internal and external devices. You are interested in what THAT shows for internal devices, if anything.
iFixit.com can help you with disassembly steps (if you want to try that). It's a big job, not something that I would recommend unless you have other experience with Mac hardware repairs.
 
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It's actually working better today, but i remain skeptical that somethings not right. I guess there is a Fusion drive...
 
How did you install ventura to this external? Your drive is 3/4 full, that maters. Is it plugged into thunderbolt 3? 8G ram is the bare minimum. Run black magic speed test, you should be getting 800-900 MB/s minimum.

I run Catalina on a Late 2015 Imac from a usb 3 external and it screams, but I have 32G ram.
 
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