Mac 10.14.3 behaving very oddly - slow, some apps don't work, passes all of Apple's diagnostics

This is hard to describe, so apologies in advance. I thought I'd post to see if there were some ideas before taking my Mac Mojave 10.14.3 Retina 5k, 27", 24GB memory system into the local Apple shop. All of a sudden the system has changed its behavior from a fairly fast and responsive one to a system with erratic response times and behaviors. For example, some apps are extremely slow to startup (ccleaner) and the app icon bounces for a minute before the app fires up (not unique to ccleaner - other apps are doing this as well). I can't delete applications - for example, with launchpad up, I cannot get the black 'X' to appear to delete any app. The app icon vibrates but there isn't a 'X'. Nor does the app show up in the Applications folder. While CCcleaner finds my critical apps (like Lightroom) it doesn't find many other apps to enable me to delete (but the apps show up in Launchpad and are able to be launched). CleanGenius app hangs while looking for apps (in the Uninstall option). DriveDX gets 90% through it's short self-test and then hangs (over an hour). However 2 out of 3 of their system status reports give a 100% thumbs up. One report says drive failure pending. I'm not sure of the trustworthiness of the data they provide after seeing the discrepancies. Avast (which has been running in background as I thought the issue might be a virus, is about a third the way through a scan (1M files) and I can see the number of files being scanned steadily increasing and the names changing, but the progress bar is pegged at 16% and hasn't changed in 12 hours.

I've run the Apple system health check ( D key on startup), Disk Utility (R key) and all report no issues. I've reinstalled the OS as well (all of the above events were done after a new OS install). In the System Report (Apple icon upper right, under About) , under Software -> Applications it says "The plug-in did not respond quickly enough while gathering the information'. After a couple of days of bouncing around trying different utilities, I don't feel I've made much progress. My system is 'useable' but something's broken.

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 17, 2019 1:12 PM

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24 replies

gmarcos Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 18, 2019 3:10 PM in response to Tesserax

I'll be looking into the 6TB drive from OWC which should be plenty sufficient. I understand BackBlaze's reports about HGST but I don't need 12TB for $200 more. I'll regret that decision if the 6TB fails and I go through another replacement I suppose. As an aside, I used BackBlaze for a while but got surprised by Comcast who noted my online backups and wanted to charge me a fortune for over usage so I stopped. I now have my system backed up on two drives, one on-sight and one that I take offsite once a month.

But, back to topic at hand...once I install the new drive (OWC's videos are excellent), I assume I can use TimeMachine to restore my system. I haven't found any good instructions on that as of yet.

Carbon Copy Cloner looks interesting, but I don't have an extra drive available on which to install. Since I have 2 time machine backups as mentioned, would you recommend using one of them for the Carbon Copy Cloner? I don't have experience in understanding the differences between installing/rebuilding my system from CCC vs Timemachine and whether the $40 for CCC is worth it. I do understand your point that I could boot off the copy whereas I could not from Timemachine, but if I don't need to immediately boot and can afford the day for a reinstall (or however many hours), then couldn't I use Timemachine?

Thanks.

babowa

Level 9

78,580 points

Mar 18, 2019 4:08 PM in response to gmarcos

You do not rebuild your system from a CCC clone - it is bootable, so you simply plug it in, boot from it, and then Clone it back onto your new internal. Do not forget to format it first. The process is much easier. And, if you use Time machine, you will need to format the drive before you attempt to install the OS, which appears to be a bit glitchy judging by the number of posts here.

gmarcos Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 18, 2019 6:54 PM in response to babowa

Ah...got it.

I have decided to go with Other World Computing's 6TB solution (mentioned by Tesserax above) and it comes with the drive formatted "For your convenience, the included drive has been SoftRAID pre-certified and formatted for use with the Mac OS."

The drive is:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/YIMAC272H6.0/

Hopefully the formatting works and I won't have to do it again.

You all have been very helpful and I grateful for your time and insights. In a few days I hope to update this thread after I've installed the new drive in case others run across the same symptoms as me.

Thanks!

gmarcos Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 19, 2019 12:15 PM in response to Tesserax

CCC does sound interesting. In thinking about the topic some more, I realize I have 3 working copies of my system. The first is the hard drive which is working in the system right now (and I'm about to replace), the second is my local timemachine backup and the third is my offsite timemachine backup. I could us one of the TM backups as the clone disk and this would leave me with 2 copies of my original system. I don't have a caddy in which to put the new drive and make it the clone at this time but I like the idea of that process and testing before inserting and using.

My understanding of method 1 above is that I would not have to use Migration Assistant. I thought that choosing 'restore from timemachine backup' will restore both the OS and the files as a single process. That is what I get from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981#macos

under the part labeled "Restore macOS and your files".

Is this not correct?

babowa

Level 9

78,580 points

Mar 19, 2019 3:06 PM in response to gmarcos

I could us one of the TM backups as the clone disk

Just as an aside, TM does not produce a bootable “clone”. If you use TM, you will be booting into recovery, install the Os and then restore your stuff from TM.

gmarcos Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 17, 2019 2:24 PM in response to gmarcos

Part 3

Unsigned Files:

Launchd: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.avast.osx.secureline.init.plist

Executable: /Library/Application Support/AvastSecureLine/hub/init.sh