Beach ball and slower performance of new iMac and MacBook Pro

I recently upgraded from my old iMac and from my older MacBook Pro. In both cases, I used the Time Machine backup from my old iMac to set up the new computers. I find beach balling frequently, especially with the Finder window freezing at times. Moving files from one folder to another takes a long time. I think somehow it all goes through DropBox. I am afraid I am somewhat technically naive. I bought EtreCheckPro and have run a check and there are numerous issues...very few of which I understand. I have a lot of apps and files I do not want to lose. I have Catalina 10.15.7 loaded.

Please advise. Do you want me to send the EtreCheckPro generated report?

Many thanks in advance

AVAL

iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 10, 2021 5:52 PM

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

215,778 points

Posted on Feb 16, 2021 9:30 AM

Log into another vanilla admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac, and see if the problem persists. (This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide).

The mds_stores process seems to be running away. It's associated with Spotlight and indexing of files on all mounted hard drives. Check it out in the Activity Monitor/CPU section. Then boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down, open Activity Monitor and check there to see if the problem persists, particularly when you try to drag a file . Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following;

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

View in context

Beach ball and slower performance of new iMac and MacBook Pro

Similar questions