iMac didn't wake up

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iMac didn't wake up

I have an 21.5 inch iMac (late 2013) running Catalina 10.15.2. I use my iMac on a daily basis and put it to sleep and wake it up multiple times a day. Yesterday morning when I hit my mouse to wake it up it did not respond. I then tried hitting the power button, and again nothing. I checked the power strip to make sure it was active, it was. I unplugged the iMac power cord, plugged it back in and then hit the power button. Then it came to life. I haven't had a problem today after multiple sleep/wake cycles.

My daughter-in-law also has an iMac and she said she had a similar problem a while back and it progressively got worse. Apparently her hard drive eventually bit the dust.

Has anyone else had a similar issue? Am I probably looking at a dying machine?

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 8, 2020 1:17 PM

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Answer 1

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Old Toad

Level 10

215,748 points

Jan 8, 2020 1:30 PM in response to John - Proj

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

ALSO important:

Then we can examine the report and see if we can if there are any potential problems.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

215,748 points

Jan 10, 2020 4:21 PM in response to John - Proj

I don't see any of the usual suspects in the report. If it hasn't not wakened up since that one time I wouldn't worry about it. If it does it again boot into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isolate issues with your Mac) and then reboot normally and test to see if it does it again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing.

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

215,748 points

Jan 11, 2020 9:19 AM in response to John - Proj

Download and use the free GO64 app. It will identify the 32 bit apps and tell you where they are located.

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Answer 4

John - Proj Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 10, 2020 4:00 PM in response to Old Toad

OT,

Sorry for not getting back sooner. I did run etreCheck with full disk access. The report is attached. The one item I'm interested in is how to identify the 39 32 bit apps so I can remove them. I'm also curious about the "tar" process that it "hogging" my CPU. It says it's an Apple process, so should I be concerned?

etreCheck report

John

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Answer 5

John - Proj Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 11, 2020 7:50 AM in response to Old Toad

OT,

Okay thanks for reviewing the data but you didn't answer my questions, namely, how do I identify the 32 bit apps so I can delete them and should I be concerned about the "tar" process hogging CPU time?

John

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Answer 6

John - Proj Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 11, 2020 1:45 PM in response to Old Toad

OT,

Thanks again. I didn't realize that it is easy enough to just look at the System Report/Software to see which apps are 64 and which are 32. In my case, it looks like most if not all the 32 bit apps are imbedded in several virtual machines running Windows XP or Windows 7 and none of those apps are relevant to what I do with my virtual machines, so I think I'll just let sleeping dogs lie.

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Answer 7

John - Proj Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 12, 2020 1:15 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua,

Turns out I plodded through the whole list of software applications provided by System Report and deleted everything that was 32 bit. I ran etreCheck again and it flagged one remaining 32 bit app. I found that (I thought) and deleted it but a subsequent run still showed one 32 bit app so I downloaded GO64 and ran it. It showed me the remaining file which I then deleted. So, I can't answer your question as to whether 32 bit Microsoft apps in my virtual machines would run, because I got rid of them.

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