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I updated my MacBook Pro 13 inch mid 2012 to Catalina because it was struggling with many websites.
Catalina is horrible. My computer is s.l.o.w.
Can I downgrade to Mojave? Mojave will not download successfully from the appstore. It's probably because Catalina is is horrible and slow.
Before you downgrade you might want to know why your MBP is running so slow on Catalina. 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 in the app's Privacy preference pane 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 determine the root of the problem.
You have three things working against you here:
1 - WebRoot. There is no reason to ever run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" or anti-virus apps on your Mac. This user tip describes what you need to know and do to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community.
Uninstall WebRoot according to the developer's instructions: SecureAnywhere Mac You want to know how to uninstall.
2 - You're only running 4 GB of RAM. That's the bare minimum to run the current operating systems. You model can utilize up to 16 GB of RAM. I recommend you get a couple of 8 GB RAM modules from Crucial.com or MacSales.com. You will definitely see improvement.
3 - Time since boot: About 7 days: one should boot more frequently, at least 2=-3 times a week. With an SSD hard drive the boot time is not very long at all. Rebooting cleans out temporary system, cache and memory swap files. Doing so will help with performance and memory usage.
4 GB RAM - Upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600
BANK 1/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600
...
Swap Used: 4.56 GB <<<--- that is a lot of paging to disk
More RAM. Your Mac can support 16GB of RAM. With 4.56GB of memory paged to disk, you are spending a lot of time waiting for code and data to move in and out of the small amount of RAM you have.
disk0 - SanDisk SDSSDA240G 240.06 GB (Solid State - TRIM: No)
Enable TRIM
https://blog.macsales.com/31619-how-to-execute-trimforce-command-with-your-owc-ssd/
https://www.imore.com/os-https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8841
SSDs require pre-cleared storage cells when you do a write. TRIM allows the file system to tell the SSD when you have deleted a file, so that the SSD can add that file to the garbage collection queue for pre-clearing. Without TRIM all your deleted files still look like data still in use to the SSD, and that gives the SSD a lot less storage cells to pre-clean and give to you when you write. And because you are doing a lot of RAM paging to/from disk, you are asking the SSD to do even more writes, requiring more pre-cleared storage cells.
Remove the 3rd party anti-virus
Kernel Extensions:
/Applications/Webroot SecureAnywhere.app
SecureAnywhere.kext (Webroot Software, Inc., 9.0.10 - SDK 10.14)
macOS provides ample protection. Please read:
Effective defenses against malware and other threats
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8841
Other processes 308.17 % (?)
I do not know what "Other processes" are, but you can use
Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor -> View -> All Processes
to monitor CPU usage and that should give you an idea.
NOTE: If one of the high CPU processes is 'kernel_task', this is the heart of macOS, as well as whatever the SecureAnywhere.kext kernel extensions is doing inside your macOS kernel. So high kernel_task numbers can very well be your anti-virus package.
Rerun Etrecheck and post the entire report here as follows (it was described in my earlier post):
Copy the report
and paste into your reply using the Additional Text button:
Also in Etrecheck's preference enable Full Disk access:
This is the report (with some personal stuff pulled out). The battery is on my to do list. One thing that worries me is the thing called configuration profiles present. That seems to indicate possible adware or something worse. I wonder if that is HotSpot Shield, a former vpn I used, because it shows up on user profile, and I don't know what it would do that.
treCheck version: 5.5.5 (5111)
Report generated: 2020-05-24 17:02:33
Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com
Runtime: 3:31
Performance: Good
Sandbox: Enabled
Full drive access: Disabled
Problem: Computer is too slow
Description:
I have a MacBook Pro (13 inch mid 2012) with 2.5 ghz dual core intel c
ore i5 and 4 gb 1600 mhz ddr3 memory.
I upgraded recently to Catalina 10.15.4 because of poor internet perfo
rmance. Now the computer itself is running extremely slowly.
Is Catalina incompatible? I’d like for my Mac not to be a brick. But i
f it’s incompatible can I downgrade to Mojave to at least have somethi
ng like a modern OS?
Major Issues:
Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.
No Time Machine backup - Time Machine backup not found.
Battery failure - Your battery is reporting that it needs to be serviced.
Runaway process - A process is using a large percentage of your CPU.
Minor Issues:
These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems or opportunities for improvement.
Configuration profiles present - This machine has configuration profiles. These are sometimes used by adware and malware.
Unsigned files - There are unsigned software files installed. Apple has said that unsigned software will not run by default in a future version of the operating system.
32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps will not work on macOS 10.15 "Catalina".
Limited drive access - More information may be available with Full Drive Access.
Kernel extensions present - This machine has kernel extensions that may not work in the future.
Hardware Information:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
MacBook Pro Model: MacBookPro9,2
2.5 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 (i5-3210M) CPU: 2-core
4 GB RAM - Upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600
BANK 1/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600
Battery: Health = Service Battery - Cycle count = 422
Video Information:
Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: 1536 MB
Color LCD 1280 x 800
Drives:
disk0 - SanDisk SDSSDA240G 240.06 GB (Solid State - TRIM: No)
Internal SATA 6 Gigabit Serial ATA
disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB
disk0s2 [APFS Container] 239.85 GB
disk1 [APFS Virtual drive] 239.85 GB (Shared by 5 volumes)
disk1s1 - M************* Data (APFS) [APFS Virtual drive] (Shared - 56.01 GB used)
disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared)
disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared)
disk1s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)
disk1s5 - M***********D (APFS) (Shared - 10.96 GB used)
Mounted Volumes:
disk1s1 - M************* Data [APFS Virtual drive]
239.85 GB (Shared - 56.01 GB used, 171.67 GB available, 170.04 GB free)
APFS
Mount point: /System/Volumes/Data
disk1s4 - VM [APFS VM]
239.85 GB (Shared - 2.15 GB used, 170.04 GB free)
APFS
Mount point: /private/var/vm
disk1s5 - M***********D
239.85 GB (Shared - 10.96 GB used, 171.67 GB available, 170.04 GB free)
APFS
Mount point: /
Read-only: Yes
System Software:
macOS Catalina 10.15.4 (19E287)
Time since boot: About a day
Configuration Profiles:
This computer has configuration profiles installed.
Notifications:
Notifications not available without Full Drive Access.
Unsigned Files:
Launchd: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist
Executable: ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent -runMode ifneeded
Details: Exact match found in the whitelist - probably OK
Launchd: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist
Executable: ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent -runMode xpchost
Details: Exact match found in the whitelist - probably OK
32-bit Applications:
8 32-bit apps
Startup Items:
HP Trap Monitor Path: /Library/StartupItems/HP Trap Monitor
HP IO Path: /Library/StartupItems/HP IO
System Launch Agents:
[Not Loaded] 17 Apple tasks
[Loaded] 169 Apple tasks
[Running] 127 Apple tasks
System Launch Daemons:
[Not Loaded] 35 Apple tasks
[Loaded] 180 Apple tasks
[Running] 121 Apple tasks
[Other] One Apple task
Launch Agents:
[Other] com.adobe.ARMDCHelper.cc24aef4a1b90ed56a725c38014c95072f92651fb65e1bf9c8e43c37a23d420d.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-05-08)
Launch Daemons:
[Loaded] com.adobe.ARMDC.Communicator.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-04-21)
[Loaded] com.adobe.ARMDC.SMJobBlessHelper.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-04-21)
[Loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-04-24)
User Launch Agents:
[Loaded] com.dropbox.DropboxMacUpdate.agent.plist (Dropbox, Inc. - installed 2019-08-21)
[Loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (? 0 - installed 2020-03-13)
[Loaded] com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist (? 0 - installed 2020-03-13)
Internet Plug-ins:
AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: 17.012.20098 (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-05-22)
FlashPlayer-10.6: 32.0.0.371 (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-05-12)
Flash Player: 32.0.0.371 (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-05-12)
AdobePDFViewer: 20.009.20065 (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-05-22)
User Internet Plug-ins:
User Internet Plug-ins need Full Drive Access
User Audio Plug-ins:
User Audio Plug-ins need Full Drive Access
User iTunes Plug-ins:
User iTunes Plug-ins need Full Drive Access
3rd Party Preference Panes:
Flash Player (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2020-04-24)
Time Machine:
Time Machine Not Configured!
Performance:
System Load: 4.36 (1 min ago) 4.20 (5 min ago) 4.05 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O speed: 0.38 MB/s
File system: 57.74 seconds
Write speed: 84 MB/s
Read speed: 514 MB/s
CPU Usage Snapshot:
Type Overall
System: 35 %
User: 44 %
Idle: 21 %
You're not reading the instructions on posting an Etrecheck report.
Thank you. I did the TRIM thing. Got rid of 3rd party virus.
Thank you. Got rid of WebRoot and rebooted. I'll upgrade RAM soon as I have the cash.
How do I get rid of Catalina?
