Slow, yet new iMac?

[Jake49190]

I bought my iMac a few months ago.

It has a

250GB HD
2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB of RAM.

and since I've gotten it, it seems slow to how it should be.

It makes loud noises, slow start up, and I get the "beach ball" constantly.😡

Should I put in the start up disks and reinstall Tiger? Or anything else I can do?


Thanks

 

[jsw]

I'd first go to System Preferences...->Accounts->Login items and make sure you're not starting a ton of stuff you didn't know about.

An Archive & Install would probably help enormously, but it's a pretty extreme step before you just try to see what's slowing you down.

 

[Jake49190]

Thank you

I looked into my login items, and nothing was checked under start up items. I would like to avoid the start up disk. But if that's my only choice, I guess I'll have to deal with it.

Thank you for your help 🙂

 

[jsw]

I looked into my login items, and nothing was checked under start up items.

Just to be sure: you mean nothing was there at all? "Checked" just means to hide it on startup. Anything listed there is run every time you login.

 

[Jake49190]

Ok. I just went back and deleted them off. Ill restart. Hopefully this will work. Thanks 🙂

 

[jsw]

Another thing to do is to create a new account and log into that. If it's speedy, it's your account, not your OS install, that's problematic. 🙂

Also, having almost no free disk space will cause major issues. You really should have at least double your RAM amount free, and I'd say 5GB or more free is a good idea.

 

[solvs]

Also, run Disk Utility and check the disk for errors. If you get anything, your hard drive might be going bad. Check that other stuff too though.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Loud noises? Please explain!

 

[neven]

Your computer should still be under warranty. If you have a store nearby, drive over and see what they say.

 

[Jake49190]

loud noises, especially when loading/start up/even small projects. I don't know how to explain the sound, but I'm not sure if it's normal.😕

 

[joebells]

The loud noises sound like hard drive noises(since you say they happen when you start up a program) which are generally a bit loud. Shouldn't be too loud but the hard drive is mechanical and so it will be somewhat noisy.

 

[siurpeeman]

it isn't clicking, is it? 😱