macos The worst PC I have worked with - Slow F iMac

Sh000ter · December 4, 2023

Hi, I'm a Computer Science student, my painful journey begins when a friend told me that he had an old iMac (iMac 21.5, Mid 2010 [11,2]) that wasn't turning on and because I study this he thought I can fix it. I have to clarify that this is my first time really fixing a Mac, I used one for around a month at work, but I then changed it for a Windows one because I'm more conformable with it, so I know the bare minimum about macOs.

When I just plug it in my house the PC just turned on but it was showing just a blank screen, my friend told me that he took it to a repair shop and they told him that it was a hard drive issue and that it would cost a lot. I started trying to open recovery (Command+R) but it just wouldn't open, like it was corrupted, so I opened it and take the hard drive out for testing. The guy was correct, the drive was dead, so I installed it an SSD, took a USB with High Sierra installer (last supported OS for this mac) and install it.

I taught it was an easy job, spoiler, this was almost a month ago, I'm still dealing with this F iMac.

When I started the OS everything looked ok, but when I test everything the PC was getting REALLY slow, it was unusable. So I checked the temps and they seem a bit high, so I thought it was a thermal issue, because this mac has more that 10 years and has never been cleaned. So I opened it again, cleaned everything, changed the thermal paste, remove the dirt of the fans, and everything. After all of this the Mac was as slow as it was before. It had no sense, the temps were ok, no CPU usage, RAM ok, an upgrade from the HDD to SSD, no dirt, fresh OS, but it was still unusable slow.

After all that, I thought macOs was the problem, so I took an Ubuntu USB and installed Ubuntu. The installer was all ok, but when it booted to Ubuntu the screen was completely black, the backlight of the display was also off, it was super strange. Tried turning it on and off but nothing worked. When booting it makes the "mac sound", white screen, then completely black until you shut it down. I tough it was an Ubuntu problem, so I tried with windows 10, but exactly the same happened.

After a bit of research I found that it was a problem with the dedicated AMD GPU and the drivers, so I installed macOS again (because I erased it thinking Ubuntu or Windows would work perfect), then opened the bootcamp app -> Action -> Download Drivers. I thought it was it, but no, this iMac wanted to continue ruining my life. When I selected where the drivers to download, click OK, but then an error popped up, "Can't download the software because of a network problem". The Mac is connected to ethernet and also to wifi. My internet connection is great, it also worked great on the Mac for browsing (when you could, because it keep freezing) and things downloaded fast. I couldn't find any answers on internet. The only guide I found for installing Windows on older Macs was to modify the macOS bootcamp app to enable a 3rd option that helps installing windows. I created an USB with the Windows 7 iso using bootcamp but without the "Download drivers" option, because apparently Apple servers are not working or something and it can't download them, and also created the partition. So when the process finished I rebooted, hold Alt, but the USB was not showing. I tried the same process with Windows 8.1 (I know is a horrible OS, but it was supposed to be the last officially supported Windows). To my surprise, it booted the usb and I installed it correctly (almost). Obviously, it needed drivers because audio was not working etc. So I launched Brigadier (also searched on the apple website but this was easier), and found out, after having the drivers downloaded, that the latest Bootcamp drivers for windows on this mac where for Windows 7 (BootCamp-041-84868). Tried installing them anyway but all windows crashed.

Now, I'm back on macOS, it's still VERY slow, idk what to do next, because for some reason Windows 7 installer doesn't want to show up, and the UEFI version of Windows 7 needs secure boot disabled and it can't be done on this iMac. At this point I just want to throw a brick to this F machine, nothing works, and EVERY TIME i taught i found the right path it just keeps failing or having some apple things that make thing even harder (Apple being Apple).

Someone, please help, I don't know what to do next, I can say that I LITERALLY TRIED EVERYTHING, and don't know what to do now. I don't want to give back to my friend his PC that's more usable as a door stoper than as an actual PC. Makes me feel like an awful technician, I brought back to life laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo that are actually working great, and this PC with an i5 can't even open facebook.

Thanks.

Biohazard777 · December 4, 2023

1 hour ago, Sh000ter said:

so I took an Ubuntu USB and installed Ubuntu. The installer was all ok, but when it booted to Ubuntu the screen was completely black, the backlight of the display was also off, it was super strange. Tried turning it on and off but nothing worked.

Someone, please help, I don't know what to do next, I can say that I LITERALLY TRIED EVERYTHING