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2013 Imac running Mojave....very slow

Hi there I used Etre to check why my 2013 imac is so painfully slow after updating to mojave. I have been through the usual steps resetting RAM, reinstalling the OS etc as suggesting by apple. Reinstalling the OS seem to help for a few hours and then the iMac slows to an almost grinding halt....can anyone help me interpret the Etre report pasted below...it's not the pro version.



iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 11, 2020 2:23 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 11, 2020 3:03 AM

You are using a 5400 rpm mechanical drive that by itself is making your Mac slow — and then you are running two anti-virus products on top of that: 1) Symantec's Norton Utilities, and 2) Trusteer. One would be bad enough, and two are the kiss of death on top of that ultra-slow hard drive.


Recommendation:

  1. You need to remove both anti-virus products in their entirety per the vendors complete removal instructions from their respective websites. If you download files from locations other than the original vendor site, then keep Malwarebytes installed and updated. You don't need a subscription to it though.
  2. Purchase an external SSD (solid state drive) and after installing macOS on that, change your startup preferences to use that external drive as a boot device. It will likely be 10x faster than your slow, internal mechanical drive. Recommend that you look at the SSD options at OWC, or a Crucial MX-500 drive, neither less than 512GB.
  3. You have not installed subsequent macOS Mojave 10.14.6 updates, because you have it disabled. I recommend that you make the following changes in your System Preferences : Software Update : Advanced panel after the two previous changes:

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 11, 2020 3:03 AM in response to skippypartington

You are using a 5400 rpm mechanical drive that by itself is making your Mac slow — and then you are running two anti-virus products on top of that: 1) Symantec's Norton Utilities, and 2) Trusteer. One would be bad enough, and two are the kiss of death on top of that ultra-slow hard drive.


Recommendation:

  1. You need to remove both anti-virus products in their entirety per the vendors complete removal instructions from their respective websites. If you download files from locations other than the original vendor site, then keep Malwarebytes installed and updated. You don't need a subscription to it though.
  2. Purchase an external SSD (solid state drive) and after installing macOS on that, change your startup preferences to use that external drive as a boot device. It will likely be 10x faster than your slow, internal mechanical drive. Recommend that you look at the SSD options at OWC, or a Crucial MX-500 drive, neither less than 512GB.
  3. You have not installed subsequent macOS Mojave 10.14.6 updates, because you have it disabled. I recommend that you make the following changes in your System Preferences : Software Update : Advanced panel after the two previous changes:

Nov 14, 2020 3:13 PM in response to skippypartington

I've had instances of my Mac running slow. However it's usually caused by CPU hogging apps running in the background. And judging by the report it says you have a LOT of them running, hence it's running very slow. It doesn't help by having only 8GB of memory... near the end of the log it says you have 2.45GB of free RAM left!


Rather than getting an SSD drive, first upgrade your RAM (memory) to 16GB, if that is possible for your iMac - that should be your top priority upgrade. Then the SSD drive.


Also, I suggest you load up an Apple program called 'Activity Monitor' (comes with MacOS), and see what programs are using '%CPU', which should be the second column in the list. Note most apps take up nothing at all, most of the time.


If the program is taking up 50-90% of CPU time, then that is the culprit.


Try booting in safe mode, run a virus check first, then disable as many background applications as possible.

2013 Imac running Mojave....very slow

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