All my browsers keep crashing constantly! I am loosing my mind...

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Level 1

6 points

All my browsers keep crashing constantly! I am loosing my mind...

While browsing I continually get the wheel of death and have to force close the browser. This happens with firefox and chrome primarily when have 1-10 tabs open in the window and trying to open a new tab from an email link or bookmark.

This has been going on for the last 3 months. Happens probably every 1-2 hours. I've deleted the browsers and re-installed them several times. I don't know if my next step is to wipe my mac and start over (I want to avoid this if it all possible). Could this be a hardware issue? Logic board failure or something of the like?

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)

2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB

OSX 12.3

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on Mar 16, 2022 1:32 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dialabrain

Level 10

124,631 points

Mar 16, 2022 2:12 PM in response to BigBear_13

You have a large number of system modifications, some of which I'm not familiar with. I would try booting into Safe Mode as a test to see if you are still having the issue. If not, that means one of the third-party add-ins is causing the problem.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

etresoft

Level 9

50,608 points

Mar 16, 2022 4:01 PM in response to BigBear_13

BigBear_13 wrote:

Where do you specifically see the "system modifications" listed?

Those would be the kernel extensions, launch daemons, launch agents, and system launch agents. However, you specifically mentioned Firefox and Chrome. EtreCheck does not show anything about Firefox or Chrome extensions. It's not possible to keep up with 3rd party apps that have their own extensive extension collections.

Do you think it's necessary to use Malwarebytes?

That's a real can-o-worms. Luckily, we can avoid the topic in your case. On your computer, MalwareBytes has been flagged (by Apple) for abnormally high CPU usage 163 times in the past 30 days. That's very unusual. It seems likely that MalwareBytes could be the cause of this problem. Uninstall it and see if the problem goes away.

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Answer 3

BigBear_13 Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 16, 2022 4:06 PM in response to etresoft

Thank you for the help. As far as browsers, I only use one extension; Bitwarden. I will start with removing Malwarebytes. Another thing is that my company had us install "JumpCloud" over the last 2-3 months. That might be an issues as well.

If I have everything backed up, would it hurt to wipe it and start over or does that not seem necessary at this point?

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Answer 4

etresoft

Level 9

50,608 points

Mar 16, 2022 5:33 PM in response to BigBear_13

BigBear_13 wrote:

Thank you for the help. As far as browsers, I only use one extension; Bitwarden. I will start with removing Malwarebytes. Another thing is that my company had us install "JumpCloud" over the last 2-3 months. That might be an issues as well.

Uninstall Bitwarden too. It could be Bitwarden that is incompatible with Malwarebytes. There is no way to tell without removing the software.