catalina update killed my mid-2012 MBPs

AFAIK - the Only Full Version of Catalina offered by Apple is version 10.15.7.

There have been various Security Updates since that 10.15.7 version.

Would not suggest using the " Patcher " version one referenced in above posting.

You don't believe the issue is hardware related, but I recommend that you run an EtreCheck evaluation of your Mac. EtreCheck is a safe and recommended utility from a trusted developer and respected ASC contributor. The diagnostic app gathers important info about your hardware and software and reports it back to you. It is very highly regarded and meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help others help you troubleshoot and resolve your Mac problems.

Please navigate to EtreCheck.com and download the free version. Be sure to enable full disk access when you install the app. Once you’ve run the app and created your report please post it with your reply to this message. 

You must upload the full report. To see how, please click >  How to use Add Text when posting… EtreCheck Report.

We can use the EtreCheck report to look for the more obvious things that may be causing your problem and advise how to correct them.

And if there is nothing concerning in the report(s) generated, then no harm done and you will have eliminated the hardware as a potential culprit.

As for the EtreCheck report there is a possibility of malware associated with the Teams app as shown here, so you may want to run MalwareBytes to see if this has been infected with malware:

Launchd: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.microsoft.teams.TeamsUpdaterDaemon.plist

Executable: /Applications/Microsoft Teams.app/Contents/TeamsUpdaterDaemon.xpc/Contents/MacOS/TeamsUpdaterDaemon

Details: Restrictive config permissions - possibly malware

Uninstall Adobe Flash since it is no longer supported on any platform and is very vulnerable to exploits which can be used to compromise a computer.

What is the make & model of the memory upgrade? Also, how long have you had the memory upgrade installed?

You should check the health of the hard drive using DriveDx. A failing hard drive can very easily affect the performance of the laptop even when booted to the internal SSD. Any "Warning" or "Failing" items indicate a worn out or failing drive respectively. Depending how you are utilizing the hard drive it may be possible to ignore the "Warnings" depending on which health attributes are affected and how far over spec they are. You may want to check the SSD as well and post the complete DriveDx text report for the SSD here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. Unfortunately drive health monitoring apps don't always correctly interpret the health of an SSD.

Did you replace the internal hard drive SATA Cable when you installed the SSD? This cable tends to fail especially when using an SSD (especially booting from an SSD). You can remove the SSD and connect it externally using a USB to SATA Adapter, drive dock, or enclosure to see how the laptop performs when booting the SSD externally. Just make sure they are USB3 so you can get the full speed of the SSD. If this works, then either the internal cable is bad, or the SSD has a compatibility issue with this laptop.

Run Disk Utility First Aid on the hidden Container on the SSD. You may need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Even if First Aid says everything is "Ok" click "Show Details" to see if any unfixed errors are listed in the report. If there are any unfixed errors listed, then run First Aid from Internet Recovery Mode, otherwise you will need to erase the whole physical drive and restore from a backup.

When you are using the laptop for your normal workloads check the memory utilization using Activity Monitor. See if the Memory Pressure is yellow or red which indicates a memory issue (especially if red). Also monitor the amount of "Compressed" memory and "Swap Outs". If these items are in the GB range, then it may indicate a low memory issue as well which can result in performance issues. This information in the EtreCheck report is inconclusive since the laptop had only been booted for about an hour and likely had not experienced a normal workload. Maybe the macOS update has affected the compatibility of one of your regular apps. Make sure all your third party apps are fully up to date.

Make sure to disconnect all external devices in case one of them is interfering which is a real possibility after an OS update.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode to see how it works? Safe Mode disables a lot of third party apps from automatically launching during boot so some devices may not work. Safe Mode also disable some built-in Apple hardware such as the Camera or only providing a very basic video driver which may cause the display to flash or flicker due to not being able to update the screen quickly enough.

You have the 15" model which may even potentially have a bad GPU. Many of the 2008 - 2011 models of the 15" MBPros are known to have GPU issues, but even some later models are known to have some issues at times like the 2013 model. Unfortunately the GPU issue can not easily be detected since many of those GPU failures may not show up with video glitches and usually won't show up in the diagnostics.

You can try to see if the command line utility "softwareupdate" utility allows you access to an earlier point release of macOS 10.15.x. Sometimes it will allow you access, and other times it will only provide the most recent version.

softwareupdate  --list-full-installers

If it does show earlier point releases, then you can download it with the following command making sure to replace the "X" with the one of the proper version numbers listed:

softwareupdate  -d  --fetch-full-installer  --full-installer-version  10.15.X

https://osxdaily.com/2020/04/13/how-download-full-macos-installer-terminal/

Quick review here on only some of the obvious issues.

Will step back for D.I Johnson, who suggested using Etrecheck, to dissect Full Report and offer suggestions and possible solutions.

1 - Automatic updates disabled - Automatic updates are disabled. This computer is at risk of malware infection.

2 - Security updates disabled - Security updates are disabled. This computer is at risk of malware infection.

3 - System modifications - There are a large number of system modifications running in the background

4 - Kernel boot arguments - This computer has custom kernel boot arguments.

5 - Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 914

6 - disk0 - APPLE HDD HTS547550A9E384 500.11 GB (Mechanical - 5400 RPM)

7 - 499.90 GB (Shared - 449.48 GB used, 35.82 GB available, 34.11 GB free)

8 - Boot args: -no_compat_check

I see your EtreCheck report. Apparently quite a few issues are identified.

As a point of discussion, I am replying to this thread from my MBP mid-2012 running Catalina 10.15.7 (19H1922) fully updated and I have experienced no issues whatsoever.

P. Phillips has already touched many of the items noted in your report.

1 & 2 - You've disabled the automatic updates, but I don't believe the Mac's performance was compromised by these updates. I believe you'd do well to reenable these features.

3 & 4 - System mods and custom kernal boot arguments. Not sure why these would be necessary. Can you do without?

To my eye, the following are critical contributors to your Mac's poor performance:

6 - 5400 rpm mechanical drive

Since this drive is still connected to the communication bus it's important that it is performing well. Run Disk Utility First Aid to confirm that. Better yet, take a look at DriveDX for a more through evaluation of the drive. Any drive that may be failing should be disconnected from the computer to avoid problems with data transfer. A ten year old drive must be suspected of failure.

7 - 34.11 GB free space on your SSD startup drive appears critically low and likely to be an issue here. It's considered best practice to keep ~20% of the drive capacity available to keep macOS happy. The read/write speeds (527/425) are fine, but the free space is very low. If it gets too low the Mac may refuse to boot.

To P. Phillips' list I'll add...

9 - Security Risk! - Adobe Flash Player installed! Flash Player is famously problematic on Mac, from both security and performance standpoints. It is no longer supported and should be removed.

Please see > Uninstall Flash Play for Mac OS - Adobe

10 - Only 8GB RAM onboard. Bare minimum by today's software standards. Google Chrome is a known resource hog, so best to keep the tabs number low when using it. Quit that app rather than allow it to idle in the background.

I really don't think the OS updates are the cause of your issue, per se. I think performance was already marginal, and only coincidentally nosedived.

You might consider ensuring a current backup and then wiping the startup drive and reinstalling macOS. If I were in your position that would probably be my choice. Then only reinstall those apps that you need and use.

111Pete111 wrote:

Thanks. I tried to list the full installers but just got an unrecognized option error. Apologies, probably using the wrong syntax or something. I'm not very experienced with Terminal:

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Apparently you did nothing wrong. It seems the option to "--list-full-installers" was not available with Catalina, but was introduced in Big Sur according to this article even though the article I previously reference implied it was an option with Catalina:

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2021/03/03/listing-the-full-os-installers-available-from-apples-software-update-feed-on-macos-big-sur/

I guess you could try using the "softwareupdate" command to download a point release to see if it will download the point release. From the article I just posted, it seems we need to give the "softwareupdate" command admin privileges to run by prepending the command with "sudo". So to attempt to download macOS 10.15.6 use the following command:

sudo  softwareupdate  -d  --fetch-full-installer  --full-installer-version  10.15.6

This command will prompt you for your admin password. Nothing will appear on the screen as you type the password. Press the "Return" key to submit the password. If it doesn't work, then you should try the most recent version which should be 10.15.7.

Catalina version 10.15.7 is the Only full version available from Apple.

All the Security Updates were released AFTER the 10.15.7 was released.

The command has worked in some instances and not in others on Catalina.

Have never been able to pinpoint the exact circumstance whereby it did work though.