iMac Mid 2010 2.8gb intel core i5 runs slow

Google Uninstall MacKeeper and you will find the developers instructions. To be honest, I would probably do an erase and install and start over!!!!

I will ask the moderators to correct the typo in the title to prevent further confusion.

MacKeeper can be a bear (a Russian bear!) to uninstall. Their procedure tends to leave stuff behind.

Normally I don't recommend to getting another app to remove one, but evicting MacKeeper is an exception. MalwareBytes is the work product of a respected Apple community member. It has a function that removes "PUPs" short for "potentially unwanted programs."

Its author has a blog entry here: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/detections/pup-mackeeper

Get MalwareBytes ONLY from the developer's site: https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac

Still, the root cause of your issue is the entry-level mech hard drive. When new, it could only do about 70-80MB/sec transfers. Your speeds:

Performance:

System Load: 1.59 (1 min ago) 1.77 (5 min ago) 1.50 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 2.16 MB/s

File system: 70.03 seconds

Write speed: 48 MB/s

Read speed: 53 MB/s

Another indicator of a potentially unhealthy drive is the 70-second File System Score. My experience with iMacs and EtreCheck reports is that File system scores for healthy drives are under about 60 seconds.

If you are not ready to replace your 2017 iMac (I'm keeping mine), the external solid-state boot drive in its least expensive incarnation will do transfers at ~400MB/sec. You have Thunderbolt ports; the more expensive external ThunderBolt option may exceed 2000MB/sec.

Bittersweet522 wrote:

D.I., this iMac was just as slow with the OS that it came with when new. Ventura was installed via Apple's update feature!

Okay, I'm going to admit I had to look at that report again because I didn't read the hardware info – iMac mid-2017. I saw your post title stating mid-2010. So I apologize for that. Obviously your iMac has not been hacked to run Ventura.

As for the speed, yes, I'm sure it was that slow when it was new. There were several iterations of iMac that Apple chose to fit with particularly slow 5400 rpm hard drives. These macs weren't built for performance, but to hit an entry level price point. It looks like yours is one of those. You could greatly speed things up by installing macOS on an external SSD and booting and running the iMac off that. Please see this excellent guidance in the Community on the subject. Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community (Thanks, Jack-19).

I agree with user @rkaufmann87 regarding MacKeeper's software. It's junk, and you should uninstall it per their own guidance found here.

Of course it’s slow, first it only has a 5400 RPM HD which are just glacially slow. Then someone installed the MacKeeper malware. That it runs at all is kind of incredible!j And finally it has been hacked! What a mess!!!

According to the report, it's a 2017, not a 2010... That's a pretty significant difference.

Ventura is supported on that machine, but that's as far as it can go.

The biggest problem you have is MacKeeper, as has already been pointed out.

It's garbage and will do nothing but cause problems.

Get rid of it. Until you do that, further troubleshooting is pointless.

The slow mechanical hard drive is the next thing when it comes to performance.

Given the fact that the machine is now vintage and if and it will not be able to run a supported version of macOS after the next major release (probably this fall), I don't think I'd put too much time, effort, or money into it.

It's time to start planning to replace it.

You are most welcome.

I forgot to attach this user tip about the external SSD boot option:

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

I'll just throw out the fact that you've squeezed an unsupported OS (Ventura) onto hardware that it was never intended to run on, and leave it at that.

.Look at the EtreCheck Report!!