Without doing any research I recently installed CleanMyMac , within a couple of days my computer was completely screwed, impossible to exit from safari for example, or earlier windows which popped up randomly, finally it just ‘froze ‘ and became unusable. Therefore I couldn’t even uninstall it or do anything at all . Considering my whole life is on the computer does this mean something very worrying and would be the solution?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13
You might try rebooting your Mac in Safe mode and uninstalling the CMM software (may as well be malware).
If rebooting your Mac doesn’t fix things, see if the problem still happens in Safe mode (hold the shift key down at startup). It can take much longer to safe boot (10 min) so be patient.
How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support
Safe mode disables loading third-party drivers, forces the OS to do disk repair, clear certain caches and logs and other miscellaneous housekeeping. It's non-destructive to user data so is safe to do. Very often certain weird software behavior is corrected by simply logging in this way as a troubleshooting method.
When you're in safe boot, the machine will not be at its best performance, especially with graphics, but that's expected.
Does the problem persist while in Safe mode?
Exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally and re-evaluate the issue again.
If the problem is still unresolved, please return here and post a reply and we’ll see what else we can come up with for help.
You might try rebooting your Mac in Safe mode and uninstalling the CMM software (may as well be malware).
If rebooting your Mac doesn’t fix things, see if the problem still happens in Safe mode (hold the shift key down at startup). It can take much longer to safe boot (10 min) so be patient.
How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support
Safe mode disables loading third-party drivers, forces the OS to do disk repair, clear certain caches and logs and other miscellaneous housekeeping. It's non-destructive to user data so is safe to do. Very often certain weird software behavior is corrected by simply logging in this way as a troubleshooting method.
When you're in safe boot, the machine will not be at its best performance, especially with graphics, but that's expected.
Does the problem persist while in Safe mode?
Exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally and re-evaluate the issue again.
If the problem is still unresolved, please return here and post a reply and we’ll see what else we can come up with for help.
You can removed all of the supporting files as follows:
1 - Boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac.
Note: if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode. This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will assure a successful boot into Safe Mode.
2 - download and run the shareware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's or the developer's name in the file name. For CMM software you'd do the following search(es):
1 - Name contains cleanmymac
2 - Name contains macpaw
Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.
FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.
Did you try to uninstall it, using the steps mentioned here?
https://macpaw.com/support/cleanmymac/knowledgebase/uninstall-cleanmymac-x
If found this link, posted by etresoft in this related discussion:
Clean My Mac X - Apple Community
Restoring from a backup you made, before you installed this software, would also be an option.
Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support
You may have to start in Recovery Mode to do that:
How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
CleaMyMac
