Streamlining a Late 2013 MacBook Pro (2)

I made yet another mistake on my following reinstall attempt. Rather than keeping the fresh account in which I knew videos worked without a problem, I optimistically supposed that they would work with the migrated account also, as I thought I remembered (and maybe I did) that video had worked in the migrated account before and that the only problem was that it had the "Home 1" name I didn't like. In any event I decided to go through the process yet again and this time keep both accounts, which I did, calling the fresh account "Video" and figuring I would switch to it whenever I was getting the undesired pauses.

This last reinstall apparently wasn't absolutely necessary, however, as I had figured out how to avoid the pauses in the old main account. Inspired by the challenge that I be "willing & able to take the time to properly investigate", and not having anything like Conflict Catcher or Startup Manager like I had in the old days, I just started turning things off, checking each time to see if that particular change made any difference. Keyboard Maestro? No. Jumpcut (clipboard manager)? No. A couple of Activity Monitor processes? No.

When I turned off Bluetooth, however, there suddenly weren't any more pauses, and I found I could avoid them altogether simply by using my (Sony WH-1000XM4) headphone cable rather than Bluetooth. This was better than no solution, but I figured I'd still want to use the headphones wireless and so I went ahead with the further reinstallation. I'd migrated from my Time Machine backup before, but this time, out of curiosity and to experiment, I used one of my SuperDuper! clone backups. This was significantly slower than the Time Machine migration had been, but it also did something else right at the end, which was to announce two things that hadn't been migrated, a "bose" something and a "libusb" something. It referred me to System Preferences if I wanted to allow either or both of these. I was investigating whether I wanted to do this or not (I have a pair of Bose Bluetooth headphones I got in Italy nine years ago, but replaced them because I'm hard of hearing and they weren't loud enough), when I noticed that Migration Assistant hadn't waited for me to make up my mind but had finished the migration and restarted – as if to say, "You don't need these," and maybe indeed I don't (at least the bose thing) if the problem had to do with Bluetooth as it appears to have, since it disappeared when I turned Bluetooth off. In any event the videos are now working with Bluetooth turned back on but without the bose thing. I'm happy about this and also about having gotten 200GB of old stuff off of my hard drive, which will relieve me of having to do any more major cleanups for a good while. Thanks again to the people who helped me on this here.

MrHoffman: "Restoring a full backup usually (and arguably should) restores the corruption."

Me: "It seems you are recommending both Migration Assistant and restoring a full backup."

Oops, I misread "restores" as corrective – and sure enough, the Time Machine restore I wound up doing gave me what I had before, with the slow video.

I couldn't face trying to manually export all of my Mail mailboxes, so I resorted to Migration Assistant and it worked far better than I expected – except for one thing. It asked me at one point if I wanted one user called "Home", in which case the provisionally installed files would be moved to a folder called something like "Discontinued Users", or did I want two users. I said I wanted just one "Home" user. It gave me a single user, but called "Home 1" rather than "Home". The other files were moved to a folder called not what it said it would be, but "Home", which is what I wanted my user folder to be. It had let me change "home" (which it had stuck me with during the install from the partition) to "Home", so I figured I could likely similarly get away with renaming this folder to "Home" too. I think I tried doing this after booting from one of the clone backups, but it still messed everything up. My second clone backup got messed up at this point (the first one having been messed up by SuperDuper!, which indicated a successful complete backup when it wasn't – from now on I'll take "verified" to mean seeing if you can boot from it and checking the disk space occupied), so I restored from Time Machine and am back where I started. I'll make two verified clone backups and start over, once I've found out (hopefully here) how to manage Migration Assistant so that my account name is "Home". I could simply request two users rather than one, but then I'd want to be sure that the right one had the desired name (or that it's possible to change the user names, and if so how).

If someone from Apple is reading this and can pass something on, I have two suggestions. First, I think Migration Assistant really did mislead me at the point of choosing one or two users, as it didn't do what it said it would do and it gave my account a different name than I wanted. (This may have been corrected post-Mojave.) Second, when you launch Mail after bringing back a Time Machine backup, it says it has to import your mailboxes; and if you don't okay that, Mail won't open. This is okay, it apparently does have to import the mailboxes, but this will throw terror into the heart of anyone who has experienced the importing of thousands of duplicates, as has happened to me once or twice. If the importing is sure-fire and will never cause such a problem, I think there should be some text providing this assurance. I fretted for maybe a half hour before finally relenting and letting it import the mailboxes, which occurred without mishap and with great relief on my part.

Thanks again. Sorry I messed up by trying to change the name of my user folder, though I wouldn't have done that if my account hadn't been (irrevocably?) renamed in a surprise way I didn't want and after I'd been told it would have the same name.

Thanks ku4hx. I assure you I'll be as careful as possible whatever I do, but I'm wondering why you recommend this method when it says, "You don't need a bootable installer to upgrade macOS or reinstall macOS, but it can be useful when you want to install on multiple computers without downloading the installer each time," and I'm not installing on multiple computers. I'm pretty sure there's a good reason, and I'm also sure there are various important things I don't understand; but I'd like to know what the main reason is before I pursue this route rather than reinstalling the system via MacOS Recovery.

One reason I can imagine is that it might enable me to install straight to Mojave (the latest system for my model), rather than have MacOS Recovery install Big Sur, which I'd then have to update (not that this would necessarily be overly time-consuming or painful). When I was briefly in MacOS Recovery before (and decided I didn't want to proceed), it appeared that it would only install Big Sur. I think I tried the modifier-key variations and Big Sur kept coming up regardless of which ones I was pressing. In any event I found the instructions at "How to reinstall macOS" a little confusing. The usual combination is Command-R, but: "On an Intel-based Mac, you can use Shift-Option-Command-R during startup to be offered the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available. Or you can use Option-Command-R during startup to be offered either the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac, or in some cases the macOS that came with your Mac or the closest version still available." I figured out the difference between "the closest version still available" (of the model's original OS) and "the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac" – but Command-R is supposed to give me "the current version of the most recently installed macOS", only it says it's going to install not Mojave, the most recently installed OS, but rather Big Sur, the model's original OS. I suppose I should try Option-Command-R, then, if I use MacOS Recovery – which I nonetheless won't (right?) if create a bootable installer per your recommendation, for which again thanks.

Thanks for providing the rationale and Disk Utility instructions. I don't remember ever having messed up formatting a disk, but I've sometimes had doubts while doing it.

I have three backups (two clone, one Time Machine) and am starting the process. I'll create a new admin user account with a different login name as advised, but I don't know how to "easily determine if the laptop's hardware is good or if the hardware may be causing a problem." Advice on how to do this is welcome. Also, I don't understand "Migrating from a backup may bring the problem back," since if I don't migrate somehow from a backup I suppose I'll be reverting to one of my backups entirely (restoring the disk), which would also bring the problem back.

Actually, I don't even know what migrating procedure is being referred to. I'm not planning on doing any complete migration, as I suppose this would bring the problem back. A large part of the idea is jettisoning a maximum amount of the old junk that appears to be slowing things down, for example simply by (almost) filling up the disk.

My basic question here is: How do I test with the new account? Is it supposed that I will delete it afterwards? Thanks, and my apologies for missing anything that should be obvious.

I clicked on "MacOS Mojave" in "How to create a bootable installer for MacOS". It said the download was 14.7GB, but now it says it's downloading only 6.04GB. Should this be of concern? I'm afraid it might be updating my current Mojave installation without downloading the installer file to the Applications Folder as it's supposed to be doing. I guess I'll see in about 24 minutes. Thanks.

Thanks for this also. The clean install went well, and this morning I watched a two-and-a-half hour livestream without a single hitch, so there was a very obvious improvement. There was however a hitch when I started to deal with transferring my POP Mac Mail account and mailboxes. The advice at Migrating Mail to a new Mac - Apple Community seemed sound, but the idea of manually exporting all of my mailboxes seems unthinkable, considering how many of them I have. I anticipate other problems also, though perhaps I'm being pessimistic. It seems you are recommending both Migration Assistant and restoring a full backup. I suppose I'll try the latter first, as it seems a bit late for Migration Assistant. I guess I could try it, though, if I'm going to wind up restoring a backup anyway.

One thing that is disturbing is that I still have a kernel_task process showing with 130-134 threads and a virtual memory size of 70-71GB. I'm told that the number of threads isn't particularly unusual but that that much VM is. I was counting on the reinstall to clear this up, but it didn't.

Ahhh... I didn't understand about creating a new admin user account after reinstalling, and now I don't see how it would be possible to avoid creating a new account, test or otherwise, after the install. Just so my mistake is understood: since I didn't understand about creating a test account, I didn't think I was doing this and so I didn't foresee that the problem mentioned would occur in my case. But now I get it. Whether the first account is a test account or not, whether it's avoidable or not, and whether it's later deletable or not (I now remember it is, and all its files disappear with it – sorry I'm fuzzy on accounts, I haven't dealt with them in a while and don't remember ever dealing with any other than Guest), I don't "pick the name [I'm] going to migrate". I didn't know that the migrated material would come in as a separate new user – and again, it said, or appeared to say, that I was going to get a single user called "Home". If there's a recurring exception in the case of identical names, as apparently there is since you said so (and since a lot of people are going to want to keep their same names), the dialogs might be modified to account for this and avert the problem – again, if they haven't already been post-Mojave. Thanks!

"If there's a recurring exception in the case of identical names, [...] the dialogs might be modified to account for this and avert the problem..."

Oh, but it would be too late if you were already in Migration Assistant. Maybe a brief caveat for Migration Assistant users could appear in the installer dialog where the name and folder name are entered. (I don't think it's "your name", by the way; if I'm not mistaken, it's more the computer's name than yours.) I will put something arbitrary for the first entry (knowing I can change that later) and "temp" for the to-be-deleted second (I can later get the same setup creating a Guest account, right?), unless someone tells me any different. Thanks again.