Errant Kernel File In System Settings Login Items - Seek to resolve & DELETE.

RobertJBoren wrote:

Thank you for endeavouring to prevent me from doing some, perhaps, irreparable damage to my MBP.

You can't do any irreparable damage. The operating system itself is on a sealed, read-only volume. Your biggest risk is breaking your installation of Paragon NTFS.

The new Login Items user interface in macOS Ventura is proving to be worse than I had imagined.

RobertJBoren wrote:

I have long forgotten what Paragon NTFS was for, though I vaguely remember installing it at some point for a, heretofore, unremembered reason. Their website: https://www.paragon-software.com/us/home/ntfs-mac/ states: ". . . If you work on a Mac computer and need to read or write files from HDD, SSD or a flash drive formatted under Windows, you need Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Paragon Software. Write, edit, copy, move and delete files on Microsoft NTFS volumes from your Mac! Fast, seamless, easy to use. Mount, unmount, verify, format or set any of your Microsoft NTFS volumes as a startup drive." I do not seem ever to do this. My MBP interacts with no other computers or Microsoft drives; just personal macOS formatted peripherals.

Then you should probably uninstall it to avoid problems later on. See https://kb.paragon-software.com/article/4500

In the future, I recommend carefully reviewing any software before installing it. Make sure it works on your computer. Make sure you know how to uninstall it. Make sure you know who to contact if something goes wrong.

So far, you've simply been lucky. Paragon still uses a kernel extension. They have an uninstaller. They have a good product with good support. All those things are becoming increasingly rare. Next time, you'll likely be reinstalling the entire operating system.

The new Login Items user interface in macOS Ventura is proving to be worse than I had imagined.

I am afraid I do not understand what you mean by that comment.

It's a long story.

RobertJBoren wrote:

Thank you for your advices. I need double-check one device I use (a flash drive), which READS on my companion's PC (Micro-soft OS) to determine whether if deleting Paragon NTFS will prevent that device from being used cross-platform or whether that is does read on her PC has anything to do with Paragon. No, I did not mention this earlier when I stated that I have no interaction between my machine (T2-chip 2019 MBP) & Micro-soft OS, but similarly I had not thought it all that important — & more: Did not want to overload this post with possibly unrelated issues.

It depends. The macOS system can already read NTFS volumes. It just can't write to them. That is the capability that Paragon NTFS provides. However, flash drives usually aren't NTFS.

Most flash drives are formatted with FAT32 or ExFAT which macOS supports. It is possible someone formatted it with NTFS which would not normally be necessary unless they wanted to apply permissions via ACL - Access Control Lists.

Paragon NTFS is useful if you dual boot Windows and macOS on an Intel Mac and you wish to access the Windows partition (formatted with NTFS) while booted in macOS. Or you have external drives that are NTFS formatted.

Yes, macOS can read NTFS but not write to it. The included NTFS support in macOS does have an option to enable NTFS write but it's considered experimental and not trustworthy. Paragon NTFS is supported by Paragon and works well.

By all means, if you don't need it you can remove Paragon NTFS. You must have bought it for a good reason at some point in the past.

No need for Paragon NTFS software unless you have other disks to evaluate.

FYI - Judging by the disk capacity, that is an extremely old disk. Flash drives can wear out after so many writes. It's also ridiculously slow. I recommend you buy a few new flash drives and copy the data off that old flash before it dies.

Newer flash drives are much improved on storage size, speed, and reliability. Go with major brand names. Newer larger flash drives will come with FAT32 or ExFAT out of the box. No need to format it. It will work with every computer.

I just bought a few of these:

SanDisk 128GB Ultra Dual Drive Luxe USB Type-C - SDDDC4-128G-G46

It has massive storage, it's fast, and it flips around between USB-A and USB-C connectors on both ends. It's metal so it can dissipate heat created when writing. It's normal to get rather hot on extensive copies but it's shedding the heat efficiently. Cost is $15/ea on Amazon. You don't need 128GB but hey, for $15 it's a bargain.

I think I know what happened... I've witnessed it with other software. The difference being that other software removed itself properly. While it seems Paragon did not automatically remove everything which is why their KB article had you run a couple of uninstall scripts after uninstalling within the graphical App.

As Apple changed security via the last several macOS updates since High Sierra and gradually tightened the security over each subsequent upgraded version of macOS. I've witnessed my enterprise security software change from LaunchDaemons and kernel extensions to system extensions and LaunchAgents. In my security vendors case, they were better about removing the old extensions fully and transitioning to newer methods. Not all 3rd party vendors are as skilled or knowledgable with all the changes Apple has been making. Most of my other venders require us to be very diligent to verify the software will run on newer macOS versions and in some cases, specific dot release versions.

Whenever you run 3rd party software that extends the capabilities of an operating system at a very low-leve,l such as Paragon NTFS. Or security software or sophisticated add-on hardware using 3rd party drivers. You need to pay special attention to that vendors compatibility with new macOS versions and understand they can interfere with the normal operation of the computer as Apple makes changes, you typically need to upgrade this type of 3rd party software or even replace the software with an alternative. Frequently, they are not ready day-one for a new macOS version and you have to wait until they are ready. Some of this software will not auto-update themselves.

As for security software in enterprise. My employer has a whole technology risk team responsible for all the vendor security software covering Windows, macOS, and Linux. Each member of the team is a subject matter expert for one or two of these applications. We have support contracts with the vendors and at times need their assistance with complex problems.

Point being, don't feel bad about the troubles you experienced. Hopefully, you have experienced a bit of satisfaction that the problem has been resolved. While such problems can be extremely frustrating and exhausting, IT people like myself derive a considerable kick after tackling a difficult problem. I keep a bottle of single malt scotch that I only touch after a major issue has been resolved. A salute to victory over the technology gremlins.

I recently spent a several days fighting with a Linux server upgrade that broke an important feature only to find a confirmed and well documented bug has gone unfixed, unaddressed, and unassigned by the Linux kernel developers since October. No ETA in sight and apparently there is a transition to a new alternative method that is ongoing but my file system of choice (OpenZFS) is not yet supported. The OpenZFS developers need to add support for this new method. The fix was to downgrade the Linux kernel to the version just prior to the changes that broke my Linux Containers. Meanwhile, I'll need to keep my ear to the ground on three different developer communities to know when it's been fixed. But this is merely a day in the life of an information worker. Countless compatibility issues and endless change. All we can do is tread water while we adapt and overcome obstacles.

As to the FAT16 issue with your companions PC. Over time, the FAT file system evolved as hardware storage sizes grew.

FAT16 has a partition size limit of 4GB and a maximum file size of 2GB. It is an extremely old disk format from the year 1981.

FAT32 has a partition size limit of 2TB and maximum file size of 4GB. ExFAT (not really FAT) has enormous partition and file size limits which will last well into the future. 128 PetaBytes maximum partition size and a file size limit of 16 ExaBytes.

Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 added support for FAT32 as well as VFAT which supported long file names beyond the 8.3 limit. Windows NT (New Technology) a version of Windows for business that became XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 and Windows 11. Using a file system called NTFS which was a significant improvement over the FAT based file systems. But it wasn't compatible with anything but Windows. Open source developers reverse engineered NTFS and added rudimentary read-only support with experimental write support. Apple adopted the same code or received a limited license from Microsoft. Paragon Software specializes in making proprietary file systems available to other operating systems. Their NTFS product is available for Windows and Linux. They even have APFS for Windows, Linux and Android.

FAT16 is still used for SD camera cards and many older hardware devices such as commercial manufacturing machines, etc.

The graphical macOS Disk Utility no longer supports FAT16. There are ways to format a flash drive with 2GB partition(s) on macOS but it's all via the command line in Terminal. Likely a combination of partitioning the disk as MBR (Master Boot Record) via command line 'diskutil partitionDIsk' and then using 'newfs_msdos -F 16 /dev/<diskID>'. But it might be easier to format the flash drive on the old PC and verify it is FAT based so you can write to it on the Mac.

Just some information to keep on your radar, because eventually that 2GB flash disk is going to fail. Just make sure you keep copies of the data elsewhere as a precaution. All flash chips have a limited number of writes and the old ones have far fewer than modern ones. Modern ones are much faster. But if you have a real FAT16 limit on the companions PC, it might only be capable of USB 1.1 and not USB 2.0 or USB 3.0. But most likely it supports at least USB 2.0 but could still have a couple of USB 1.1. ports. Although you can't buy USB 1.1 flash drives a USB 2.0 should be backwards compatible enough to work on a USB 1.1. port.

My guess is you tried a larger disk formatted with NTFS and at some point in history you purchased the Paragon NTFS in order to write to the disk effectively on Mac while still plugging it into the old PC. Or perhaps you worked with someone else with an external NTFS disk which could have been a hard disk and not a flash disk.

That file in your list of Login Items is unrelated to Proton Mail. Whatever you are trying to do, you should probably stop.