Moving from 1T down to 512gb hard drive with a known corrupt file.

This Apple Support article describes how to use Migration Assistant and the choices it provides you: Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

With Migration Assistant, you can select the following to be migrated:

• Applications
• User Account(s)
• Other Files and Folders
• System & Network

So one option would be to only migrate the User Account(s) and System & Network to your new Mac.

But the better option would be to diagnose the "malware" you haven't been able to delete before migrating to the new Mac, and delete said "malicious" files. If you can provide some details on the old Mac, we should be able to assist with the deletion of these files:

• Full description of your old Mac, including model/model year. (Apple menu-->About This Mac will provide this information).
• Any details on the file(s) you can't delete.
• Any details on what leads you to believe you have this malware.

A good place to start would be to download/install/run a free program, Etrecheck. (See This Link Here). This is a completely benign application that can tell us what might be going on. Please allow full disk access to Etrecheck to provide the most comprehensive report. This Apple Discussions post details how to use the program and post the results here: How to Post Etrecheck Report

Hope this helps.

First, you should uninstall Bitdefender, CleanMyMac, and Sophos by following the developers' instructions. There is no need to ever install these programs on a Mac. Anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software are not needed on a Mac. They usually cause more problems than they solve and they impact system performance because they all interfere with the normal operation of macOS. macOS already has great built-in security especially when the user also practices safe computing habits such as those outline in the following excellent article written by a respected forum contributor:

Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community

If anyone was ever to use an anti-virus app on any system (please don't, but if they were to do so), then they should only install one anti-virus app at a time. Running multiple anti-virus apps at the same time just causes even more problems because then the two AV apps start stepping on each other's toes and may falsely report an infection from one of the other AV's files.

Everything I've mentioned here applies to both macOS & Windows.

After you uninstall these three apps, run EtreCheck again and post a new report. These three apps really clutter up the EtreCheck report making it hard for us to identify any other possible issues. I really don't think you have the problem you think with this "infected" file....I think one or more of these apps is the problem. All three of these apps require you to run the app developer's uninstall app to completely remove these apps from the system. Sometimes these apps may include an "uninstall" option on one of their own menus or within their settings/preferences options. Other times the developer may require you to download a separate uninstaller app to remove their app.

Further to what HWTech has said:

To uninstall BitDefender: Instructions Are Here

To uninstall CleanMyMac: Follow These Instructions

To uninstall Sophos: Look Here

We stress the importance of using the vendors' uninstallers, as otherwise there will be files left behind that may still interfere with your Mac's normal operation.

And again...sorting out the issues on your old Mac prior to migrating anything will make the move to your new MBA much smoother.

Uninstalling these three apps will free up some space on your hard drive, which I see is pretty full (and in itself is most likely causing some issues all by itself).

Here is the new report. I was unable to remove Bit defender the traditional way. I must have removed parts of it before so whatever is left I'm stuck with. I removed Clean My Mac and Sophos successfully though. I have my new iMac up and running. I used a thumb drive to transfer the few file that I want on there. Although my bookmarks are kind of a mess. I think this will be better done manually though, I do have a lot of stuff saved that I don't nee so it will just take some time.

While I didn't see any sign of Sophos in this report, it appears that both Clean My Mac and Bitdefender are still there. (Another reason I hate these apps...they can be a royal pain to uninstall sometimes, even if you use their uninstallers!).

What I think I'd do in your case is to not include Applications when you migrate from your old Mac to the new one. All the Apple apps will be on your new Mac, as they're part of the MacOS installation. Migration Assistant provides the following choices to migrate over to the new Mac:

1. Applications
2. User Accounts
3. Other Files & Folders
4. System and Network

As I mentioned, I'd uncheck the Applications when you get to this step.

Hope this helps.

lisafromwalker wrote:

I will do that and send another report as soon I can. Thanks you guys for all the help!

You're welcome...we look forward to your progress after you've had a chance to clean those things up. (I'd probably run another Etrecheck report after deleting those apps, BTW).

Congratulations on your new Mac! Glad we were able to help.