iMac rotating ball

[BIRMA]

I'm not a computer buff and I bought an iMac 27 inch late 2012 and an Macbook pro at the same time. Both are far better than the PC's and laptops I've had to date and of course I don't intend to update/replace.
Just recently I've had the rotating ball appear now and then. I avoided Mac Keeper after reading some very uncomplimentary reviews and I clear my history regularly. Are there any other steps I should take to keep them running properly and avoid the rotating ball. I have updated both when a software update comes available.

 

[MancMike]

Yes, steer clear of MacKeeper and anything else that'll "clean" your Macs.

What operating systems are the machines running? The beachball shows up when a process has temporarily hung, it could be because of a problem, or because of lack of resources, i.e memory (waiting for enough to be freed to do what it needs to do next).

Also, go to Apple menu (top left) and click "About this Mac". Hit Shift + CMD + 4 (the cursor will change to a crosshair). Select around that info panel and it'll be saved as a screenshot to your desktop. Attach that here if you can, both machines.

 

[BIRMA]

Both are current operating systems that do not need updating according to what has been displayed. When applying shift+cmd+4 the cross hairs read 1333 and 383 around the info box but when I go down to the advert at the bottom of this forum it reads 1514 and 1258 can't seem to get a screenshot

 

[MancMike]

You just click & hold as you drag over the info panel. It'll then drop a screenshot of the selected area onto your desktop.

You can also hold CMD + Shift + 4 and hit the spacebar. Your cursor will then turn into a camera, you can click the info window and it'll again drop the selected window onto your desktop.

The current OS is High Sierra. It'll be very slow if you've got 8GB of ram. 16GB is a good minimum for High Sierra. El Capitan will run well with 8GB of ram.

 

[BIRMA]

You just click & hold as you drag over the info panel. It'll then drop a screenshot of the selected area onto your desktop.

You can also hold CMD + Shift + 4 and hit the spacebar. Your cursor will then turn into a camera, you can click the info window and it'll again drop the selected window onto your desktop.

The current OS is High Sierra. It'll be very slow if you've got 8GB of ram. 16GB is a good minimum for High Sierra. El Capitan will run well with 8GB of ram.

Thanks I'll investigate further

 

[Deleted member 37751]

I had similar with my Mac laptop, upgraded the memory (doubled it iirc) and it’s fixed it, now back to being super fast.

 

[BIRMA]

You just click & hold as you drag over the info panel. It'll then drop a screenshot of the selected area onto your desktop.

You can also hold CMD + Shift + 4 and hit the spacebar. Your cursor will then turn into a camera, you can click the info window and it'll again drop the selected window onto your desktop.

The current OS is High Sierra. It'll be very slow if you've got 8GB of ram. 16GB is a good minimum for High Sierra. El Capitan will run well with 8GB of ram.

I've got 8GB should I revert to the other operating system El Capitan?

 

[BIRMA]

Not sure my local Apple outlet are too fond of me as I gave them a right dressing down over the battery issue with my iPad and older iPhones.

 

[Deleted member 37751]

My local computer shop fitted my bigger memory, didn’t cost too much either.

The newer Mac stuff memory can’t be changed so if you buy something with 64gb for example that’s it, you’d have to buy another laptop to get more.

 

[MancMike]

Not sure my local Apple outlet are too fond of me as I gave them a right dressing down over the battery issue with my iPad and older iPhones.

Why? It certainly isn't the store staff's fault. You don't need to go to an Apple store for any of this anyway.

If you're running High Sierra with 8GB of RAM, then I'd revert to El Capitan. High Sierra will use around 5 to 6GB of ram just sat doing nothing but running itself, it doesn't leave much room for applications and browsers. El Capitan will idle at around 3GB of ram, leaving quite a bit spare for doing stuff with. When ram is scarce, the operating system has to start swapping stuff out of ram into storage, and that's considerably slower, which causes the beach balling when data is required that's on the hard drive and it has to be read back into memory.

If you get that screenshot so I can see exactly what you've got, I'll be able to tell you if you've got the maximum memory the machine can support, or if your memory can be increased.

 

[BIRMA]

Hopefully this is correct

 

[MancMike]

You're running Mavericks. You're running 4 entire operating system revisions behind the latest. Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra.

You've got 4 memory slots under the access panel at the back. 2 are currently occupied by 4GB sticks. You can upgrade it to 32GB by swapping out the 2 sticks and putting 4 8GB sticks in it.

You should upgrade to El Capitan too, but I wouldn't go any further with that machine.

Both are current operating systems that do not need updating according to what has been displayed.

Incorrect, the latest update to Mavericks was 18 months ago, and it'll have only been security patches for a few years now. It's no longer updated. When you go to software update, it'll only show available updates for the current operating system, it won't show newer operating systems as updates, as they're not. The front page of the App Store probably shows you High Sierra as a big banner, but search for El Capitan, and it should be a free download for you.

 

[MancMike]

PS. You'd be looking at around £130 for 16GB ram, which is loads in that machine.

Two of these.
8GB ( 1 x 8GB ), 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3L-12800 memory module (for Mac), CT8G3S160BMCEU

About the only other upgrade you can do with it, but it is a biggie, is swapping out the hard drive for a solid state drive, but that's a much bigger job, you'd want to take it to someone who can do it. A 250GB Samsung SSD will be about £80, the speed boost is night and day as access times are basically non-existent.

 

[BIRMA]

You're running Mavericks. You're running 4 entire operating system revisions behind the latest. Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra.

You've got 4 memory slots under the access panel at the back. 2 are currently occupied by 4GB sticks. You can upgrade it to 32GB by swapping out the 2 sticks and putting 4 8GB sticks in it.

You should upgrade to El Capitan too, but I wouldn't go any further with that machine.



Incorrect, the latest update to Mavericks was 18 months ago, and it'll have only been security patches for a few years now. It's no longer updated. When you go to software update, it'll only show available updates for the current operating system, it won't show newer operating systems as updates, as they're not. The front page of the App Store probably shows you High Sierra as a big banner, but search for El Capitan, and it should be a free download for you.

Thanks for that, I'd better go and do some updates. I will probably stick with what I have as I only use the iMac for my survey reports etc and It's fine at that.

 

[clk320x]

Easy to upgrade ram yourself on that iMac, as above I wouldn't install the latest OS on that machine..

Sometimes a fresh install of the OS can do wonders.

As Mike said above try upgrading to 16gb, should be plenty.

 

[BIRMA]

I couldn't find el capitan so filled in my details and sent them of to Apple, got a phone call minutes after and a very helpful chap spoke to me. Now I know I have a 1 TB SATA with 829 GB free and two slots free for RAM still not sure about opening up the mac to install the extra RAM but I guess it's just a case of plug and play. Forgot to mention I have not bothered with a back up drive so ordered one on Amazon Prime so as to do the upgrade.
Blimey just checked out youtube about upgrading not exactly brain surgery is it. It says max 32 so I guess just buying two additional ram cards will work.
So I couldn't just buy two more 8GB's and stick them in along with the 2 4's could I ?

 

[clk320x]

I couldn't find el capitan so filled in my details and sent them of to Apple, got a phone call minutes after and a very helpful chap spoke to me. Now I know I have a 1 TB SATA with 829 GB free and two slots free for RAM still not sure about opening up the mac to install the extra RAM but I guess it's just a case of plug and play. Forgot to mention I have not bothered with a back up drive so ordered one on Amazon Prime so as to do the upgrade.
Blimey just checked out youtube about upgrading not exactly brain surgery is it. It says max 32 so I guess just buying two additional ram cards will work.
So I couldn't just buy two more 8GB's and stick them in along with the 2 4's could I ?

You could but it wouldn't be optimum, I would get 4x 8GB sticks, slightly overkill but what the hell RAM is cheap now anyway...

Always get 4 identical sticks.

or if you want to spend less, get another 2 identical 4 GB sticks (to the ones you already have), so you will have 16GB total...

Anyway I am sure Mike will be here soon to advise further

 

[BIRMA]

You could but it wouldn't be optimum, I would get 4x 8GB sticks, slightly overkill but what the hell RAM is cheap now anyway...

Always get 4 identical sticks.

or if you want to spend less, get another 2 identical 4 GB sticks (to the ones you already have), so you will have 16GB total...

Anyway I am sure Mike will be here soon to advise further

I'm not too fussed about optimum just that I might as well buy two 8's as long as it doesn't cause a problem.

 

[MancMike]

Didn’t you read my messages? You were told exactly what I told you.

As said, you could plug in two 8GB along side the two 4GB but it’d be running single channel at considerably reduced speed.

The 2 8GB sticks will run dual channel and will be better for performance overall.

The 1TB “sata” you’ve got is the HDD I suggested swapping out for a SSD. Both will connect via sata.

Search for Yosemite on the App Store.

 

[rockits]

I would start by adding 2 x 8gb sticks to to your existing 2 x 4gb to give you 24gb. Should be fine for you for what you need. If you still have issues you can go further but start with the easiest/cheapest step forward first.

The difference between ram speeds even when mismatched or running as single channel or dual channel is negligible in minor day to running/operation. The change from 8gb to 24gb is a big change & should be enough for general use.

If you don't use lots of applications or multiple applications at the same time or bigger docs then once you get to the point of optimum memory any more is wasted unless it is used. Some applications just don't use it if they don't need it. Something like Exchange Server eats as much memory as it can get & runs all the better for it.

Of course if you are no a super fast user then sometimes the machine can be faster than you so again pointless going too far if not needed.