I thought I would bite the bullet and soup up my iMac which I bought in mid-2017.
RAM
I’ve been running on 2x4Gb RAM since I bought the computer and noticed recently it had been slowing up especially with Adobe products and Firefox. So I went ahead and bought 2X16Gb RAM to upgrade it to a total of 40Gb. I ordered Crucial RAM from Amazon. If I had bought the RAM from the Apple Store it would have most likely cost me 2 or 3 times that cost, quite unaffordable. The RAM was so easy to install, instructions on how to do that are on the Apple website, and everything worked perfectly, what a relief.
Mojave
Next, was to upgrade the operating system from Sierra (yes I was still using that) to Mojave. This is where the horror story began. Generally, I read that the upgrade should take between 45 minutes to 1 hour, well 4 hours later it finally finished. Then when I went to log in to my user it wouldn’t work. I looked online and saw literally hundreds of people have faced the same issue, I wasn’t happy. So, these are all the things I went through to get my system to work, with assistance via Apple on the phone:
- Went into Recovery Mode to change my user password to something else, twice. Still couldn’t log into my computer.
- Found that I could log onto my computer in Safe Mode.
- Created a TEST user with administration rights and could logon with no problems.
- Back in Safe Mode, I deleted Comodo, a virus checker I had installed on my system.
- In Safe Mode, I deleted my scanner software from login items as I thought it might not be compatible with Mojave.
- In Recovery Mode I ran First Aid
- Checked the Activity Monitor to see if something was tying up my computer.
Well, none of this worked so I was booked into the go-to Genius Bar to see if they could resolve the issue. It was a strain on my back to get the computer all the way there, I was not a happy person.
- Apple performed their diagnostics and couldn’t find any issues with my computer
- They went through some of the steps I had already gone through just to double check
- Then they went through the startup files to see if there was anything in there, this is where they found the issues.
So, the resolution was to delete DivX player and Comodo Virus scanner from the startup files, the computer returned to normal. I was extremely happy.
What I’ve Learned From This
- Many people have had the same issue and ended up re-formatting their hard drives, I didn’t want to go through this and tried to see it through so I didn’t have to do this.
- Trying to resolve this issue with Apple on the phone was a mistake. I was actually on the phone for 6 hours without making any progress. While I appreciate their time it wasn’t very productive for either of us and just made me more upset and frustrated.
- When I visited the Genius Bar at the Apple Store the engineer didn’t take long to diagnose and resolve the issue. While lugging the computer all the way to the store, and iMac’s are very heavy, it was worth it to get a quick fix.
So, unless it’s a quick question I always recommend taking your computer to the Apple Store.
At least now I can sit back and enjoy my souped-up computer.