iMac has started locking up

[MrTrav15]

Hi Everyone,



I am new to the forum.



I have a mid 2011 21" iMac. When I first bought the iMac back in 2011 I added more ram so for all the whilst I have had it it has had 12GB ram.



I have recently been having some issues with it locking up on me. There is no one particular reason for the locking up, I could be doing anything, for example browsing the internet, all of a sudden the beach ball appears whenever the mouse curser is over the safari page. If I try to select another application it then locks up completely. I cannot access any other app or restart the machine but I can still move the mouse curser. It never fixes itself, I end up having to hold the power button in to turn off and restart.



So far this has happened 5-6 times in the space of 3 months. The only thing that has changed in that time is I have connected an external HDD to start doing time machine backups. I spoke with apple and mentioned the external HDD and they asked me to run first aid on it which showed no problems. They then asked me to carry out the hardware test (Restart and hold D and then run test) which again showed no problems.



No of course many of you will probably say disconnected the external HDD and see if it freezes again, which I will do, but for now does anyone have any other suggestions? I use my mac on a daily basis but have never carried out any maintenance or anything so maybe theres a few things I could try?



Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Oh and I am running the latest version of El Capitan.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

A few questions for you:
-Does the issue occur mainly when using Safari?
-Do you have any Safari Extensions installed?
-Is Adobe Flash and/or Oracle Java installed?
-Do you have any third-party utilities such as MacKeeper or CleanMyMac installed?
-Are you running any antivirus software?
-How much free space remains on your OS X startup drive?
-What brand/model is the external hard drive? Is it connected via USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt?

Things to try:
-Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac
-How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac
-Try running the Mac for a day or two with external hard drive disconnected (as you mentioned)

We'll see if we can help you get to the bottom of the issue.

C

 

[MrTrav15]

Hi, thank you for the quick reply. I've tried to answer all of your questions below and I will also try what you have suggested.

-Does the issue occur mainly when using Safari?
No, it seems to be completely random, I could be doing any number of things when it happens.

-Do you have any Safari Extensions installed?
No extensions installed

-Is Adobe Flash and/or Oracle Java installed?
No adobe flash player is not installed

-Do you have any third-party utilities such as MacKeeper or CleanMyMac installed?
I have Dr Cleaner installed

-Are you running any antivirus software?
No virus software, I always thought it wasn't necessary for apple products?

-How much free space remains on your OS X startup drive?
500GB HDD with 218 GB available

-What brand/model is the external hard drive? Is it connected via USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt?
The external HDD is a Samung M3 Slimline 1TB 3.0 connected via USB

 

[Cory Cooper]

Thanks for the additional information.

Correct - no antivirus is really needed with Macs, and they can cause hanging/slow down issues.

I would lean towards Dr. Cleaner. That app has been known to slow down Macs, and has been reported to contain a lot of adware. Did the issue start around the time you installed it?

C

 

[Bob Marsden]

My iMac is from 2007. Over the last year or so I’ve been getting the same sort of thing as MrTrav15, freezes of apps, s l o w d o w n s, and all sorts of thwartings and sabotage of my current usage. It’s as if the RAM is oozing treacle. Restart sometimes improves matters, as it were flushing out the gunge, for a couple of days, but I’m resigned to the possibility that the hardware has degenerated and there’s no fixes for it.


So I’m considering getting a replacement big screen iMac.


However, I’ve read that the latest generation of iMacs aren’t as good as the previous lot. So I’d appreciate anyone telling me what the situation is before I make a decision.

 

[honestone]

We need to know a couple of things before we can try and help you:

1. What Mac OS are you using?

2. What exact 2007 iMac do you have?

3. Have you done any disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs at all? And, do you have a robust disk maintenance program like TechTool Pro or Disk Warrior?

4. How much free space is on your internal drive?

5. Do you either MacKeeper or CleanMyMac on your machine (or something similar)? If so, get rid of them IMMEDIATELY, as they do more harm than good.

6. Do you have any anti-virus software on your machine? If you do, that will slow things down, and you really do not need it.

If the original internal hard drive has never been replaced, it could be going "bad".

 

[Bob Marsden]

1 El Capitan 10.11.5

2 24 inch Mid 2007; 2.8GHzIntel Core 2 Duo; memory 4GB DDR2 SDRAM + 2x2GB; Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB

3 Disk Utility and Onyx occasionally. Don’t have TechTool or Disk Warrior.

4 HD SATA Disk 1TB: 887.05 GB free of 999.35 GB

5 No, but each restart produces a MacKeeper window wanting me to buy it.

6 Avast.

7 Original HD broke and was replaced about 6 or 7 years ago.

 

[honestone]

1 El Capitan 10.11.5

2 24 inch Mid 2007; 2.8GHzIntel Core 2 Duo; memory 4GB DDR2 SDRAM + 2x2GB; Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB

3 Disk Utility and Onyx occasionally. Don’t have TechTool or Disk Warrior.

4 HD SATA Disk 1TB: 887.05 GB free of 999.35 GB

5 No, but each restart produces a MacKeeper window wanting me to buy it.

6 Avast.

7 Original HD broke and was replaced about 6 or 7 years ago.

OK, sounds good. You should remove Avast, as it will slow things down. Also, Onyx is good too. (Do you run its Repair Permissions feature (usually need to run it at least twice))? But, unless you have run Disk Utility externally, the disk maintenance it performs when you run it "internally" is not extensive enough.

Do you make backups to an external device? The ideal scenario would be if you use either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to backup/clone your system to an external device. You can then boot your machine from that backup/clone, and run Disk Utility externally from there.

 

[Cory Cooper]

I agree with honestone's recommendations.

-Did you uninstall Dr Cleaner?
-MacKeeper IS installed, if it asks you to purchase it at startup. Here is how to remove it: Uninstall MacKeeper

C

 

[Bob Marsden]

It’s not MacKeeper that appears on restart, but Norton Secured, which doesn’t appear in my Applications.


Avast has blocked infections in emails as they arrive, before I’ve opened them, so perhaps it might be worth retaining. Anyway, all this treacling and beachballing was happening before I put Avast in.


I used to use Time Machine, but it broke 4 external HDs and I gave up on it. So now I put valuable current files on a 32GB memory stick that slots in.


I’ve never had Dr.Cleaner

 

[Cory Cooper]

5 No, but each restart produces a MacKeeper window wanting me to buy it.

You had mentioned MacKeeper in your previous post, so follow the instructions I gave above: Uninstall MacKeeper

Ooops...was quoting the Dr Cleaner info from MrTrav15's posts...sorry.

Maybe this will help remove Norton Secured: Removing all Norton programs for Mac by using the RemoveSymantecMacFiles removal utility

See if that helps.

C

 

[Bob Marsden]

In Applications window there’s no Norton or Symantec names.


I ran the RemoveSymantecMacFiles app. but when in Terminal got this:


-bash: sudo/Users/bobmarsden/Downloads/RemoveSymantecMacFiles: No such file or directory


and: -bash: [my password]: command not found


My computer doesn’t seem to want to do as it’s told.


Another app is Malwarebytes Anti-malware I’d forgotten about. Is that a problem?

 

[Bob Marsden]

This is the Norton window that pops up.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Ahhh...that image helps. It's not a Symantec/Norton app that is launching at startup, it is some form of online backup app. Try looking in your Login Items for OnlineBackup or something to that effect.

Malwarebytes is not a problem - it's the best app out there for removing malware. You could run it to see what it finds.

C

 

[Bob Marsden]

No Login items to do with OnlineBackup, Norton or Symantec but there is a thing called TuneupMyMac which I’ve now hidden.


Malwarebytes scan found nothing. Avast Mac Security 2015 Full System Scan in progress - so far 4000 files scanned, 26 Unable to scan, 0 infections, in 25 minutes.

 

[Bob Marsden]

Avast: 946176 files scanned, 803 unable, 8 infections deleted. Took 4 hours 11 minutes. [in 2014 it found 461 infections]

 

[Cory Cooper]

Definitely uninstall TuneUpMyMac - How Can I Uninstall TuneUp From My Computer? It is in the same class as MacKeeper and CleanMyMac - apps known to cause more issues than they are worth.

C

 

[honestone]

Cory to the rescue again! It would be wise if you followed the part of the instructions to remove ALL files associated with the TuneUpMyMac app.

The other way you can do it is to download the excellent freeware application AppCleaner. You can get it from here:

https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/)

Install it, launch it, and then just drop the TuneUpMyMac app/icon onto it. AppCleaner should find ALL files associated with TuneUpMyMac.

 

[Bob Marsden]

I think I’ve done it, but there was no Tuneup ... app in Applications, in Prefs I deleted com.tuneupmymac.TuneupMyMac.plist, and in Caches the only thing was an empty Tuneup folder which I trashed, and I deleted it from Startup.

 

[honestone]

Good to hear that. Looks like that was typical "sneaky" software that hides on your system.

You might want to consider to start making backups again. Sine you apparently had issues with Time Machine, you should consider a backup/cloning program like either SuperDuper! (that's the one I use), or Carbon Copy Cloner. They make bootable backups/clones of your system. There have been a couple of instances where having that kind of backup (via SuperDuper!) "saved my bacon", so to speak. Also, that is whatI have used, and will be using, whenever Apple comes out with a new version of the OS.

Here is where you can get those products:

SuperDuper! - http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Carbon Copy Cloner - https://bombich.com/features

The primary difference between the two (besides price) is that Carbon Copy Cloner also backs up the (hidden) Recovery HD Partition, whereas SuperDuper! does not. But, for me, that is not an issue, as 1) I have TechTool Pro that I can use for disk maintenance/repairs, etc., and 2) it is actually easy to re-create that Recovery HD Partition.