Wifi keeps cutting out and subjecting me to spinning beach ball

Ok, I ran EtreCheck. It found no major issues and only 2 minor issues. The minor issues were a heavy use of RAM and a lot of app crashes recently. I was not aware of the app crashes (seems to be Evernote). I will quit Evernote on the machine and see if it stops again...

Here is the report:

EtreCheck version: 6.0.2 (6A004)

Report generated: 2019-07-13 16:16:07

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 1:51

Performance: Excellent

Problem: Beachballing

Major Issues: None

Minor Issues:

    These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems or opportunities for improvement. 

    Heavy RAM usage - This machine is using a large amount of RAM.

    Apps crashing - There have been numerous app crashes.

Hardware Information:

    iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017)

    iMac Model: iMac18,2

    1 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-7500) CPU: 4-core

    32 GB RAM - Upgradeable

        BANK 0/DIMM0 - 16 GB DDR4 2400 ok

        BANK 1/DIMM0 - 16 GB DDR4 2400 ok

Video Information:

    Radeon Pro 560 - VRAM: 4 GB

        iMac 4096 x 2304

Drives:

    disk0 - APPLE SSD SM0512L 500.28 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

    Internal PCI-Express 8.0 GT/s x4 NVM Express

        disk0s1 - EFI [EFI] 315 MB

        disk0s2 [APFS Container] 499.96 GB

            disk1 [APFS Virtual drive] 499.96 GB (Shared by 4 volumes)

                disk1s1 - Macintosh HD (APFS) (Shared - 407.65 GB used)

                disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared - 44 MB used)

                disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared - 510 MB used)

                disk1s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)

    disk3 - HGST HUS726040ALE614 4.00 TB (Mechanical - 7200 RPM)

    External Thunderbolt 6 Gigabit Serial ATA

        disk3s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

        disk3s2 - G**********************t (Journaled HFS+) 4.00 TB (1.30 TB used)

Mounted Volumes:

    disk1s1 - Macintosh HD

        499.96 GB (Shared - 407.65 GB used - 89.45 GB free)

        APFS

        Mount point: /

    disk1s4 - VM [APFS VM]

        499.96 GB (Shared - 2.15 GB used - 89.45 GB free)

        APFS

        Mount point: /private/var/vm

    disk3s2 - G**********************t

        4.00 TB (1.30 TB used - 2.70 TB free)

        Journaled HFS+

        Mount point: /Volumes/G**********************t

Network:

    Interface en0: Ethernet

    Interface en6: iPad

    Interface en5: iPhone

    Interface en1: Wi-Fi

        802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

    Interface en4: Bluetooth PAN

    Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

    iCloud Quota: 1.55 TB available

System Software:

    macOS Mojave 10.14.5 (18F132) 

    Time since boot: About 9 days

Notifications:

    (Deleted)

        19 notifications

    /Applications/Evernote.app

        one notification

Security:

    Gatekeeper: App Store and identified developers

    System Integrity Protection: Enabled

32-bit Applications:

    None

[cont]

System Launch Agents:

    [Not Loaded] 16 Apple tasks

    [Loaded] 153 Apple tasks

    [Running] 132 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:

    [Not Loaded] 41 Apple tasks

    [Loaded] 159 Apple tasks

    [Running] 135 Apple tasks

Launch Daemons:

    [Loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2019-06-21)

    [Loaded] com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing.plist (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

User Launch Agents:

    [Loaded] com.dropbox.DropboxMacUpdate.agent.plist (Dropbox, Inc. - installed 2019-02-13)

    [Loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2019-05-10)

    [Loaded] com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2019-05-10)

User Login Items:

    Dropbox.app (Dropbox, Inc. - installed 2019-07-10)

        (Application - /Applications/Dropbox.app)

    Evernote Helper (Evernote - installed 2019-06-25)

        (Modern Login Item - /Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/EvernoteHelper.app)

    goproapp.devicedetection (GoPro, Inc. - installed 2019-02-06)

        (Modern Login Item - /Applications/GoPro Quik.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/goproapp.devicedetection.app)

    Skitch Helper (Skitch Inc - installed 2018-11-29)

        (Modern Login Item - ~/Downloads/Skitch.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/J8RPQ294UB.com.skitch.SkitchHelper.app)

Internet Plug-ins:

    FlashPlayer-10.6: 32.0.0.223 (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2019-07-09)

    Flash Player: 32.0.0.223 (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2019-07-09)

User Internet Plug-ins:

    ZoomUsPlugIn: 4.3.55307.0127 (Zoom Video Communications, Inc. - installed 2019-02-07)

Audio Plug-ins:

    AppleTimeSyncAudioClock: 1.0 (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

    BluetoothAudioPlugIn: 6.0.12 (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

    AirPlay: 2.0 (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

    AppleAVBAudio: 740.1 (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

    BridgeAudioSP: 5.46 (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

    iSightAudio: 7.7.3 (Apple - installed 2019-05-04)

3rd Party Preference Panes:

    Flash Player (installed 2019-06-21)

Time Machine:

    Auto backup: Yes

    Volumes being backed up: 

        Macintosh HD: Disk size: 499.96 GB - Disk used: 410.52 GB 

    Destinations: 

        G**********************t [Local] (Last used)

            Total size: 4.00 TB

            Total number of backups: 50

            Oldest backup: 2018-12-03 15:09:31

            Last backup: 2019-07-13 15:55:34

    10 local snapshots

    Oldest local snapshot: 2019-07-12 16:10:46

    Last local snapshot: 2019-07-13 15:54:00

Performance:

    System Load: 1.46 (1 min ago) 1.25 (5 min ago) 1.27 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O speed: 0.16 MB/s

    File system: 14.41 seconds

    Write speed: 1112 MB/s

    Read speed: 2573 MB/s

CPU Usage Snapshot:

    Type Overall

    System 1 %

    User 1 %

    Idle 97 %

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

    Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

    WindowServer 4.12 % (Apple)

    EtreCheckPro 3.04 % (Etresoft, Inc.)

    kernel_task 1.36 % (Apple)

    com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (19) 0.30 % (Apple)

    Dock 0.02 % (Apple)

Top Processes Snapshot by Memory:

    Process (count) RAM usage (Source - Location)

    com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (19) 3.75 GB (Apple)

    RapidWeaver 8 2.72 GB (Realmac Software Limited)

    com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService (2) 1.14 GB (Apple)

    mds_stores 804 MB (Apple)

    com.apple.WebKit.Networking (16) 784 MB (Apple)

cont...

Top Processes Snapshot by Network Use:

    Process Input / Output (Source - Location)

    mDNSResponder 48 MB / 6 MB (Apple)

    Dropbox 5 MB / 1 MB (Dropbox, Inc.)

    netbiosd 840 KB / 176 KB (Apple)

    Mail 339 KB / 319 KB (Apple)

    cloudd 63 KB / 11 KB (Apple)

Top Processes Snapshot by Energy Use:

    Process (count) Energy (0-100) (Source - Location)

    WindowServer 3 (Apple)

    CalendarAgent 0 (Apple)

    tccd (2) 0 (Apple)

    trustd (4) 0 (Apple)

    com.apple.WebKit.WebContent (19) 0 (Apple)

Virtual Memory Information:

    Physical RAM: 32 GB

    Free RAM: 3.75 GB

    Used RAM: 19.88 GB

    Cached files: 8.37 GB

    Available RAM: 12.12 GB

    Swap Used: 0 B

Software Installs (past 30 days):

    Install Date Name (Version)

    2019-06-26 Keynote (9.0)

    2019-06-26 Numbers (6.0)

    2019-06-26 Pages (8.0)

    2019-07-04 Gatekeeper Configuration Data (171)

    2019-07-09 Adobe Flash Player (32.0.0.223)

    2019-07-11 MRTConfigData (1.45)

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):

    2019-07-12 22:15:46 Evernote.app - Crash (37 times)

        Executable: /Applications/Evernote.app

        Details: 

            abort() called

    2019-07-11 13:20:41 backupd - High CPU Use

        Executable: /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd

    2019-07-08 03:08:29 com.apple.WebKit.WebContent - High CPU Use

        Executable: /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

End of report

Thanks CT - since I posted the above, I quit Evernote and Skitch on this machine and I didn't have any problems for about 2 days and thought I'd cracked it.... then, today, it has happened three times today :( AARRRGGG.

If the problem is Evernote and/or Skitch, should just quitting them eliminate them as a possible cause? Or do I actually need to uninstall them and all files created by them, to rule them out?

Here is another clue: Whilst the issue can occur any time, even whilst the machine is running, it is ESPECIALLY likely to occur when the machine wakes from sleep. Like it's caused by something which is trying to run after I wake it up, which involves the wifi... does that help give any further clues???

I'm almost tempted to erase the machine and reinstall/re-download all programmes from scratch.

I finally booted the computer in Safe Mode. I'd only been using it about 5 minutes (if that) and the wifi-freeze-beachballs happened again.

The only programme I had open, was Mail - possibly Safari. Definitely nothing else.

My backup hard-drive was connected, though. I've just disconnected it.

I don't get it. I've had about 5-6 occurrences of this today alone. For the last 2 days, I've had none. (Trialling not opening Evernote or Skitch.) After reinstalling the OS, I had over a week of zero instances of this and thought I'd fixed it.

I don't see how it can be hardware - if it's hardware, it should be ongoing and consistent, no? Reinstalling the OS shouldn't get me a week without it if it's hardware???

No idea what to try now...

Thanks - I’ve already tried both of those as one of my first efforts.

Ive booked the machine in next week with the shop I bought it from. Total pain to have to schlep it there and if it’s a part that it needs I will probably be without it for a week. I just hope they find something wrong and don’t just repeat stuff I’ve done....

Hi - The problem is that I would need to use the computer for many hours (if not a full day or more) in either Safe or Guest mode before I would know that the problem is really not occurring - and that's just not practical because I can't really use it to work on or do anything, in those modes...

I have downloaded EtreCheck and will give that a go.... Thanks.