Macbook Pro (early 2011) lagging, fan spinning, kernel_task taking over
Hello,
My daughter just inherited a Macbook Pro from her grandfather who said it started behaving oddly lately and got himself a new computer. His complaints were related to an unusual kernel-task activity that would reach 600-700% and would leave the computer unusable.
Most of the time the fan starts spinning really fast when the start-up bar has just halfway through. Other times, it starts just a couple of minutes after logging in. The cursor behaves slowly and erratically.
The computer isn't particularly hot.
— I reformated the disk and did a clean install. The problem persisted.
— I ran the Apple Hardware Test — no problems found.
— I replaced the old battery, expecting it to the culprit, but the problem persisted.
— I tried SMC reset, and the problem persisted.
I decided to try to reset the PRAM and the computer apparently started running normally. But as soon as I restart it the problem comes back.
Restarting and resetting the PRAM again, and it seems to go away again...
Any ideas? Thank you!
I'm adding an Etrecheck report which I run with the computer running in Safe Mode, which also seemed to prevent the problem.
MacBook Pro