Catalina has made my machine unuseable....

[Ski52]

Never should have let it upgrade. Now it takes 6 - 8 min to boot, almost every key I push wants a password which is way out of character, used to boot with no password, and allowed me to do what I needed to do with no further passwords. To get on line with Firefox, well let's see, it's been 16 minutes so far..... I sent a small file from the Mac to an HP Win10 box that sits right next to it. It took less that a minute. Went to sent it back to the Mac - 3+ hours. No changes to either machine, no new software except the lousy Mac upgrade. These 2 machines have sat next to each other on the same small home network for over 5 years. A good portion of the software on the Mac is now defunct, won't run with a strict 64 bit box.
How do I get my 'old' 32 bit system back, or do I have to throw this POS drive in the pool and get a new one. Also the small network I have has 2 TB in the HP 1.7 TB in the Mac and 3 TB shared external, which the Mac no longer sees.
I denied the upgrade since it's inception, but the box decided to upgrade itself. How do I get my old working system back?

PO'ed

 

[Ski52]

Trying now to copy a 2GB file from the Win to the Mac. Mac tells me it's gonna take 5 days...

 

[Jigs]

Trying now to copy a 2GB file from the Win to the Mac. Mac tells me it's gonna take 5 days...

Ignore all of that for now. After the Catalina install, you need to let the box sit for 24 to 36 hours to let the machine re-index itself. U can see the progress of the indexing operation by trying to search for anything using the spyglass, upper left. But nothing good will happen until that process is complete. Best, Jigs

 

[Harry Trent]

What model and year is your Mac? How much RAM does it have? Catalina is resource hungry. It takes more CPU processing power and memory in order to run efficiently. Older Macs that technically meet the requirements for upgrading to Catalina may not be able to run it efficiently.

 

[mbiviano]

I feel your pain. I just bought a new 16” MacBook Pro (2020) a week ago to update from my 2010 MacBook. Apple Support said to use Migration Assistant. Big mistake! So many of my programs no longer work on Catalina. I had to totally erase the hard drive and start over. Apple Support took control of my machine and transferred programs and files that were 64 bit only. We’ve been on the phone daily ever since because my computer goes to sleep and then crashes. Waiting now to hear from Apple technical support because they’re not sure why it’s happening. Catalina is a nightmare!!!

 

[MACCANDY]

Never should have let it upgrade. Now it takes 6 - 8 min to boot, almost every key I push wants a password which is way out of character, used to boot with no password, and allowed me to do what I needed to do with no further passwords. To get on line with Firefox, well let's see, it's been 16 minutes so far..... I sent a small file from the Mac to an HP Win10 box that sits right next to it. It took less that a minute. Went to sent it back to the Mac - 3+ hours. No changes to either machine, no new software except the lousy Mac upgrade. These 2 machines have sat next to each other on the same small home network for over 5 years. A good portion of the software on the Mac is now defunct, won't run with a strict 64 bit box.
How do I get my 'old' 32 bit system back, or do I have to throw this POS drive in the pool and get a new one. Also the small network I have has 2 TB in the HP 1.7 TB in the Mac and 3 TB shared external, which the Mac no longer sees.
I denied the upgrade since it's inception, but the box decided to upgrade itself. How do I get my old working system back?

PO'ed

I agree 100% every time they have an upgrade there are always problems with the upgrade. The biggest problem is that you cannot go back to the older system.

 

[Ski52]

My machine is a late 27 inch 2013, 3.2G core I5, 16GB 1600 DDR3 that I bought new.
I went back to Mojave 10.14.6. Took 4 hours. It works, kinda.. Connects only with WiFi, says ethernet has it's own unchangeable IP address. I've tried every recommended fix I can find. Nope!. I'm trying to copy some movies for the 4 kids across the street that are driving their single non-working mother crazy. My HP Win 10 junk box got ate up with some kind of virus and now neither optical drive shows up, so I was transferring movies to the Mac to burn - HA! The kids will be back in school before I get anything done. The movies play fine on the HP in regular DVD format, the Mac won't play or burn a one - invalid format. I suppose Apple expects me to run out and buy a new copy of Office. My 2011 copy works just fine on a 32 bit machine. My brother AIO printer and my old HP B/W laser don't have a 64 bit driver available. Got a 3D printer and a laser burning printer that don't have 64 bit available. Catalina also will not turn off.... Ran all nite in a shut-down mode.

 

[Harry Trent]

I would be concerned that the hard drive on your iMac may be failing. It's seven years old now. I run a computer repair business and I can tell you that after that amount of time there is a significant failure rate with regard to hard drives.

As far as your printers go, that is a bummer! But just a word of wisdom. As a general rule, I suggest to people that they need to start looking at replacing computer equipment once it gets to be about five years old from date of it's commercial debut. I know, it's frustrating and when you are talking about 3D printers it can get expensive. Unfortunately, change in the technology sector marches steadily on, and in some cases it takes leaps. It's the price that must be paid, however, to fund technological progress. These companies would all go out of business if we quit buying new stuff and then we would have nothing when all the old stuff finally dies.

A great free (yes, free) substitute for MS Office is LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/?type=mac-x86_64&version=6.4.0&lang=en-US

It opens MS Office files and you can also save them in MS Office format if you want. It works with the new 64-bit apps only Mac operating systems.

 

[Ski52]

Well, I managed to get everything back yesterday somehow. I disconnected the router and modem and took them into the garage and blew them out good! I have a large white German Sheppard who by all rites should be bald from the amount of hair she sheds. It's in everything. Hooked everything back up - the Mac now has an ethernet connection. Ran every virus scanner I have plus a few that I don't, and I now have both optical drives back on the other box after about a month. Everything works for now. Gonna try to stay with the 32 bit Mac. Really don't see the advantage of strict 64 bit for me and I think Apple may loose a substantial amount of clientele over it, I mean, how many folks to you know that are willing to run out and get new software and maybe a new printer just because their machine was upgraded? I don't use the Mac much, nothing of importance is kept on it, it sits sleeping for months at a time, so if the HD goes, I will put another in. I need to research and find an older I7 chip that will use the old architecture of my board, maybe double the RAM who knows...
Not PO'ed anymore
Thanx for your response

 

[Harry Trent]

I'm not sure when Apple started making them this way but for the last few years they have made it very difficult to get inside an iMac. It's not like you can remove a few screws that hold the back panel on to get to the innards like you can on Windows-based AIO computers. The unit is sealed. The only way to crack one of those open is to remove the the front glass. It is secured to the body of the computer with an adhesive strip/seal. I've seen videos of it done and it requires a heat gun and (believe it or not) guitar picks for wedges. It's a bear!