Sudden duplicates of volumes (10.13.6)

Here's what I did

1. Did a SMC reset (machine off mains for over 15 mins).
2. Booted in Safe Mode.
3. Disabled iCloud drive.
4. Restart in normal mode.
5. Created a TextEdit document and saved on desktop. Still says ‘retrieving...’ instead of ‘staff’.
6. Logged out.
7. Logged in as TestUser.
8. Nvidia Driver Manager not available.
9. Created a TextEdit document and a Pages document and there was no option to save it on the Desktop.
10. Logged out.
11. Logged in on main user account.
12. Nvidia Driver Manager not available.
13. Back to square one.

Any thoughts?

Thanks DB Aqua. In the /volumes folder all drives show up under their normal name, so no ‘1’ attached to any name. And they have their pull down triangle in front of them. Except for the startup volume, that is shown as an alias. So, if I understand correctly, that looks like it should look. I already did a reboot as the article I read had advised.

The past few days I did a lot of copying and deleting of huge chunks (20+ gb) on this ssd. Maybe I should run TechToolPro for some diagnostics. Since this issue I every now and then I loose my pointer and have to blindly hit the top menu bar to get it back. I never had this issue before, so my observations could be inaccurate.

I will look into that kb-article and maybe perform those terminal commands as well.

Thanks BDAqua. In the meantime, I ran TechTool Pro 11 from an emergency disk which of course is not able to handle apsf and after that ran DiskUtility. No real issues were found but the problem is still there. The machine boots a little bit faster but that's it. Here's the new link to the EtreCheck report.

https://pastebin.com/embed_js/2Euq3jWA

Another thing I found out is that the Wacom software can interfere with the Nvidia drivers.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-graphics-cards/5/215071/unable-to-open-nvidia-driver-manager-el-cap-gtx-/

I acted on the advice given there but that didn't solve the issue regarding the Nvidia Driver Manager.

Thanks BDAqua. TTP didn't mention RAM issues. I ran the suite first before moving to Tools. I also zapped P-Ram. Would EtreCheck give different results if the initial question was different? At startup you can choose an issue you want to have diagnosed. I choose ‘Computer is too slow’ over ‘Other’.

As for speed, I don't really have a reference. But it made quite a difference when I moved to ssd's. The videocard keeps me on 10.13 but would like to move to 10.14 for Creative Cloud upgrades I currently can't use but do pay for.

Thanks BDAqua. Sorry for having those mixed up. The machine seems to behave more stable after what I've done. So far, no more pointer glitches but removing a tiny document (just a few Kb) from the trash still takes about half a minute. So somewhere the pathways are still not ok I guess.

The only thing I can think of is a few years back I had a "staff" permission issue on this machine. This was partially resolved, meaning on some files in the Info-panel it says "retrieving..." where it should say "staff". But other that that the machine worked fine. Could that be somehow related?

Thanks BDAqua. So we can rule that one out. What I forgot to mention is that on startup, when the progress bar is roughly around ¾, the screen goes black for about half a minute, then comes up again and completes the startup.

I thought I could conclude that from your previous response, but given your last response I was wrong, so that's back on the table again. The pointer thing is also back so basically I'm back to square one.

Thanks BDAqua for sticking with me. So far I'm in the remaining 10% camp.

I ran the 10.13.6 updater again and did a restart. Still a slow machine and the Nvdia Driver Manager not supported. Then I ran the security update 2020-005 in which it STILL hangs for about 2 hours now. The screen is black with only the pointer visible. I clicked on the top end and bottom end screen in the hope to activate something and switched the screen on and off for the same reason. Not a fan of giving a hard reset (especially during security updates) but for now it's the only thing I can think of.

Bit the bullet and switched the machine off and booted in Safe Mode. SoftwareUpdate said I needed to reboot in order for the Security Update 2020-005 to take effect. And here things get weird. After a restart the screen remains black with only the arrow pointer visible. I tried to reinstall 10.13.6 from a flashdrive (which went ok) and a manual install of the Security Update which also hangs. Somehow the machine can't get passed this update. I tried to install Security Update 2020-006 but was rejected. It needs the installation of 2020-005 first. Any ideas?

Some progress. I installed 10.13.6 from a flashdrive onto the 2nd ssd. Also copied over my stuff from the main ssd during installation. On this ssd I was able to install security updates 220-005 and 2020-006 and the Nvidia web driver. Still lot's of things to sort out but first some sleep.