joettgen

Q: Is there somewhere I can find a list of items that can be expected to be running in the Activity Monitor and those which should raise red flags?  I realize the list will vary depending upon apps and processes installed but a baseline would be nice

Is there somewhere that I can locate a list of explanations or definitions of apps that are running in the Activity Monitor as well as a known list of items that should raise red flags?  I realize the list will vary depending on apps and programs installed and running, but it would be nice to have a baseline of what should be expected and considered safe or normal.  There are too many items there to search them one at a time. 

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Activity Monitor

Posted on Mar 17, 2016 11:33 AM

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Q: Is there somewhere I can find a list of items that can be expected to be running in the Activity Monitor and those which should ra ... more

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  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Mar 17, 2016 11:36 AM in response to joettgen
    Level 7 (23,571 points)
    Notebooks
    Mar 17, 2016 11:36 AM in response to joettgen

    No not so much.

     

    Are you having a problem you are trying to solve?

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 17, 2016 12:08 PM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2016 12:08 PM in response to leroydouglas

    System is hanging at random times when I am in the middle of something. I have searched the support communities repeatedly but it feels like I'm taking stabs in the dark.  I tried all that I could find to correct, but will be in the middle of something and it will lock up on me and give me one or the other spinning discs (blue or rainbow) and then refuse to do anything I instruct it, including disconnect from wifi or pull up the activity monitor.  Command/Opt/Esc does not work - only powering off works.  If I power off, restart, close my internet connection, run ccleaner and/or First Aid, empty caches, and basically get all paranoid, it'll give me a break for a bit, but it starts up again. 

  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Mar 17, 2016 12:12 PM in response to joettgen
    Level 7 (23,571 points)
    Notebooks
    Mar 17, 2016 12:12 PM in response to joettgen

    What are the specifics of your Macbook pro, model , year,  etc

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 17, 2016 12:21 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2016 12:21 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT

    Much of the second link appears basic and their instruction to pull up Activity monitor or hit command/esc/delete is useless to me, but there is a lot of information here, so I will  take a closer look and check back to let you know.  Thank you for the lead.

    Somehow I missed the first link - I have lots of homework to do....thanks again!  I'll check back when I have taken time to review in detail.

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 17, 2016 12:21 PM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2016 12:21 PM in response to leroydouglas

    Mid 2009, 13inch, 2G - running El Capitan 10.11.3

    what other info would you need?

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Mar 17, 2016 12:22 PM in response to joettgen
    Level 10 (207,973 points)
    Applications
    Mar 17, 2016 12:22 PM in response to joettgen

    First, get rid of "CCleaner," which is a scam, just like any other software that purports to automatically "clean up" or "speed up" a Mac. If you have anything else like it, get rid of that, too.

    When you see a beachball cursor or the slowness is especially bad, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.  

    These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

    Launch the Console application in any one of the following ways:

    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

    ☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

    ☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

    The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

              SYSTEM LOG QUERIES All Messages

    from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

              View Show Log List

    from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

    Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

    Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

    Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

    The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

    Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

    Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

    Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

    When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

    If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Mar 17, 2016 2:18 PM in response to joettgen
    Level 7 (23,571 points)
    Notebooks
    Mar 17, 2016 2:18 PM in response to joettgen

    joettgen wrote:

     

    Mid 2009, 13inch, 2G - running El Capitan 10.11.3

    what other info would you need?

    I would under any condition make sure you have a current backup of your machine preferably a boot clone on an external drive. Carbon Copy Cloner is good software and has a free trial. External enclosure are cheap. The price of drives has also dropped including SSD.

     

    You can poke around on OWC site for HD,  here is one example of a combination w/ SSD: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/Y3SSD6E240/

     

    In this way you can boot off the external drive to verify if your problems have gone away, bypassing the internal drive.

     

    If this is the original HD in the 2009  I would highly suspect your drive is failing, or the SATA cable or both provided the symptoms you express.

     

    The SYSTEM LOG QUERIES from the Console may provide a clue.

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Mar 17, 2016 2:21 PM in response to joettgen
    Level 9 (71,450 points)
    iTunes
    Mar 17, 2016 2:21 PM in response to joettgen

    Try running this program and then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor.  Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read.
      

    Etrecheck – System Information

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 17, 2016 4:44 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 17, 2016 4:44 PM in response to Linc Davis

    I will do this as soon as I get my beachball cursor & extreme slowdown again.  Thanks for the detailed instructions.

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 19, 2016 12:19 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 19, 2016 12:19 AM in response to Linc Davis

    OK this is the first event.  It seemed to stabilize after this, but then it started again less than half an hour later.  That time I got a black screen, spinning wheel and unresponsive keyboard/mouse/trackpad, so I shut it down.  I haven't included that log because by the time I was able to get rebooted and it was cooperating it was almost 20 minutes - hence a very long stream of log entries, which you've indicated you don't want here.  If there is nothing obvious here and you would like the other log entries, please advise.

     

    2016-03-19 2:15:55.847 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:15:55.847] <<<< Boss >>>> figPlaybackBossPrerollCompleted: unexpected preroll-complete notification

    2016-03-19 2:16:03.227 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:02.938] FigAgglomeratorSetObjectForKey signalled err=-16020 (kFigStringConformerError_ParamErr) (NULL key) at /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/CoreMedia/CoreMedia-1731.15.33/Prototypes /LegibleOutput/FigAgglomerator.c line 92

    2016-03-19 2:16:03.447 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:03.447] <<<< Boss >>>> figPlaybackBossPrerollCompleted: unexpected preroll-complete notification

    2016-03-19 2:16:07.553 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:07.553] FigAgglomeratorSetObjectForKey signalled err=-16020 (kFigStringConformerError_ParamErr) (NULL key) at /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/CoreMedia/CoreMedia-1731.15.33/Prototypes /LegibleOutput/FigAgglomerator.c line 92

    2016-03-19 2:16:08.575 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:08.575] <<<< VMC >>>> vmc2PostDecodeError: posting DecodeError (268451843) -- PTS was 10.077 = 906906/90000

    2016-03-19 2:16:08.606 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:08.606] vtDecompressionDuctDecodeSingleFrame signalled err=268451843 (err) (VTVideoDecoderDecodeFrame returned error) at /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/CoreMedia_frameworks/CoreMedia-1731.15.33 /Sources/VideoToolbox/VTDecompressionSession.c line 3480

    2016-03-19 2:16:08.609 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:08.609] <<<< VMC >>>> vmc2DequeueAndDecodeFrame: frame failed - err 268451843

    2016-03-19 2:16:12.708 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:12.708] <<<< VMC >>>> vmc2PostDecodeError: posting DecodeError (268451843) -- PTS was 10.077 = 906906/90000

    2016-03-19 2:16:13.037 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:13.037] vtDecompressionDuctDecodeSingleFrame signalled err=268451843 (err) (VTVideoDecoderDecodeFrame returned error) at /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/CoreMedia_frameworks/CoreMedia-1731.15.33 /Sources/VideoToolbox/VTDecompressionSession.c line 3480

    2016-03-19 2:16:13.117 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:13.117] <<<< VMC >>>> vmc2DequeueAndDecodeFrame: frame failed - err 268451843

    2016-03-19 2:16:14.472 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:14.472] <<<< VMC >>>> vmc2PostDecodeError: posting DecodeError (268451843) -- PTS was 60.868 = 16363036908/268830000

    2016-03-19 2:16:14.472 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:14.472] vtDecompressionDuctDecodeSingleFrame signalled err=268451843 (err) (VTVideoDecoderDecodeFrame returned error) at /Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/CoreMedia_frameworks/CoreMedia-1731.15.33 /Sources/VideoToolbox/VTDecompressionSession.c line 3480

    2016-03-19 2:16:14.472 AM com.apple.WebKit.WebContent[2041]: [02:16:14.472] <<<< VMC >>>> vmc2DequeueAndDecodeFrame: frame failed - err 268451843

    2016-03-19 2:16:14.505 AM watchdogd[177]: [watchdog_daemon] @(_wd_daemon_service_thread) - service (com.apple.WindowServer) reported as unresponsive

    2016-03-19 2:16:19.212 AM loginwindow[92]: magsafeStateChanged state changed old 1 new 2

    2016-03-19 2:16:19.849 AM WindowServer[147]: disable_update_timeout: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Safari" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.

    2016-03-19 2:16:20.523 AM WindowServer[147]: common_reenable_update: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Safari" after 1.82 seconds [0.55fps] (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.14 seconds [1.00fps])

    2016-03-19 2:16:28.967 AM watchdogd[177]:  [watchdog_daemon] @(__wd_service_report_unresponsive_block_invoke) - failed to gather a spindump for (com.apple.WindowServer)

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: MacAuthEvent en1   Auth result for: 84:c9:b2:5d:78:b6  MAC AUTH succeeded

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP virtIf = 0

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: wl0: Roamed or switched channel, reason #8, bssid 84:c9:b2:5d:78:b6

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: en1: BSSID changed to 84:c9:b2:5d:78:b6

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: en1: channel changed to 1

    2016-03-19 2:16:42.000 AM kernel[0]: en1::IO80211Interface::postMessage bssid changed

    2016-03-19 2:16:43.000 AM kernel[0]: Sandbox: ostraceutil(2358) System Policy: deny(1) forbidden-link-priv

    2016-03-19 2:16:44.000 AM kernel[0]: Sandbox: ostraceutil(2358) System Policy: deny(1) forbidden-link-priv

    2016-03-19 2:16:45.000 AM kernel[0]: Sandbox: ostraceutil(2358) System Policy: deny(1) forbidden-link-priv

    2016-03-19 2:16:45.000 AM kernel[0]: Sandbox: ostraceutil(2358) System Policy: deny(1) forbidden-link-priv

    2016-03-19 2:16:45.105 AM diagnosticd[2357]: ostraceutil returned error 18176 while linking caches

     

    Thank you

    Janet

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 19, 2016 12:31 AM in response to joettgen
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 19, 2016 12:31 AM in response to joettgen

    Note that I was uncertain as to whether to expand the arrows before copying. 

    Let me know if more info is required.

    Thank you

  • by joettgen,

    joettgen joettgen Mar 19, 2016 1:06 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 19, 2016 1:06 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

    Thank you for these links -particularly the MAC one.  Although it didn't help me with the apps it did provide excellent info for future reference.  thank you

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Mar 19, 2016 7:53 AM in response to joettgen
    Level 10 (207,973 points)
    Applications
    Mar 19, 2016 7:53 AM in response to joettgen

    This procedure will delete some cache files. The files are automatically generated and don't contain any of your data. Occasionally they can become corrupt and cause problems such as yours.

    Please back up all data.

    Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:

    open $TMPDIR..

    Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

    Launch the built-in Terminal application in any one of the following ways:

    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

    ☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

    ☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

    Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. Depending on which web browser you use, you may have to press the return key. A folder with a long, random name should open. Inside it, there should be a subfolder named "C". Drag that to the Trash.

    Log out or restart the computer. Empty the Trash. Test.

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