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Thousands of messages per minute in system console. Mac is slow by doing lots of things.

Long ago I was doing some sketchy stuff with my Mac and damaged the system. I can't recall what I was doing but almost sure it involved disabling some integrity checks or something. Now the Mac is slow by doing thousands of task every minute as per System Console. I'm almost sure the damage is reversible but I need someone who can have a look at it. I've downloaded EtreCheck and performing scans now. But they are not going too fast...


What can I do in the meantime? Should I post my console log?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 30, 2024 8:26 AM

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Posted on Jul 30, 2024 1:05 PM

  1. Don't use Console. Quit the app. It's normal for a Mac to perform thousands of tasks per minute, and merely having the Console app open will cause your Mac's performance to suffer.
  2. Post the EtreCheck report.


This is not a chat site.


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Jul 30, 2024 1:05 PM in response to sergeyfrommontchanin

  1. Don't use Console. Quit the app. It's normal for a Mac to perform thousands of tasks per minute, and merely having the Console app open will cause your Mac's performance to suffer.
  2. Post the EtreCheck report.


This is not a chat site.


Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question - Apple Community

Aug 16, 2024 9:46 PM in response to sergeyfrommontchanin

Besides a failing hard drive & the software issues already mentioned by the other contributors, you are also running very low on Free storage space on that macOS boot drive with just 8GB of Free storage space. You need to always keep at least 20GB+ of Free storage space at all times for the normal operation of macOS. For some workloads you may even need a lot more Free storage space. If an APFS volume completely runs out of Free storage space, then it may become impossible to even delete any files to increase the Free space due to how the APFS file system works.


As for checking the health of the hard drive each utility may interpret the drive's health information differently. A hard drive does not have to have any bad block to have severe performance issues. I know that if the Load Cycle Count exceeds the drive manufacturer's expectations that the hard drive can behave oddly including severe performance issues.....this is a very common issue with Macs since macOS causes the Load Cycle Count to get very high very quickly due to the aggressive sleep & wake macOS does with the system & drives. I believe DriveDx will show the Load Cycle Count as a Warning if this condition occurs, but I don't know how other utilities would report it. I do know that if DriveDx shows any "Warning" or "Failing" conditions, the hard drive should not be used. Unfortunately interpreting the health of SSDs is completely different and these types of apps can only alert to changes in an SSD's health attribute which then needs to be interpreted by someone familiar with SSDs.


I mention DriveDx here because it has the best formatted text report and includes more information than many other utilities. Plus it is a very nice & easy to use app for the average user. Other such apps may be fine as well (my organization has several of them over the years), then there are some which are not so good or useful.

Sep 8, 2024 2:49 PM in response to sergeyfrommontchanin

Another item shown in your EtreCheck report that must go is Chrome.


I really don't get what people think is so great about Chrome. It's a known, massive resource hog. On top of that, from the moment you turn your Mac on to the time you turn it off, it is constantly sending anonymized data of your computer and web usage to Google's servers. Chrome doesn't even have to be running. The keystone agents…


/Library/LaunchDaemons/google.keystone.agent.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons/google.keystone.xpcservice.plist


…do that by launching apps buried within the Chrome app, which load at startup. And then there's this.


We don't allow any software written by Google on our Macs. Not Chrome, Google Earth, or anything else. Google's real business is collecting marketing data. You are their unwilling and unpaid source for it when you use any of their junk. If Safari isn't a browser you care much for, try Firefox or Brave. If you have one, you do not need Chrome to access your Google/Gmail account. You can do that from any browser.


Brave in particular is an excellent replacement for Chrome. It’s built on the same open-source Chromium web code, but without any of Google Chrome’s intrusive data harvesting. What makes it a better alternative are dumb web sites (like some banks) which insist you use Chrome for access. In almost all cases, Brave also works.


And yet another reason to never allow any app written by Google on your computer.


Google told users that when using incognito/private mode, Chrome would not track your usage, or collect data. They lied. It did anyway. Google has now agreed to settle the 2020 lawsuit with a five billion dollar fine.


But even so, according to another article on the lawsuit, that 5 billion is still a drop in the bucket to what Google has made on the collected data.


Remove Chrome and its daemons. Never install it again.


I truly mean it when I say this. Why do people insist on installing Chrome? It is the worst possible choice of browsers out there. Without question, no contest. It should be everyone's dead last choice.

Sep 8, 2024 3:30 PM in response to sergeyfrommontchanin

Performance:
...
File system: 121.31 seconds (timed out)
Write speed: 9 MB/s
Read speed: 18 MB/s


Those values are just over the top massively absurd. The Mac is almost completely nonfunctional in its present state.


That does not diminish the presence of factors already mentioned by others ("Cleaning" garbage, Google products... it's a long list) but we must fix hardware before addressing anything software-related. Macs demand sound hardware at all levels... storage, memory, power, everything has to work.


For what it's worth I have used "DriveDX" on Macs with obviously failed hard disks such as yours, and it gave them a clean bill of health. For that matter so did Apple's own utilities such as Disk Utility and Apple Diagnostics. These were drives that were operating in an advanced state of failure.


Diagnostic tools certainly have their merits, but you have to balance their results with empirical observations and common sense. If it says something is wrong it probably is, but don't place too much importance on them.

Aug 13, 2024 3:00 PM in response to sergeyfrommontchanin

Forget whatever tool you may have used — the EtreCheck report conclusively reveals that Mac's hard disk drive is operating in an advanced state of failure. If you want to keep that Mac in service it can be replaced.


Should you decide to do that, I strongly recommend replacing it with a solid state drive from a reputable manufacturer such as OWC / MacSales. Their Mercury Extreme Pro 6G models are the only SSDs I have ever used and can personally recommend. The oldest one is well over a decade old and still works as well as it did when it was new.


The presence of the aforementioned non-Apple "cleaning" tool obviates everything though. Whether it caused or merely contributed to its early demise cannot be determined; the bottom line is that such things wreck perfectly good Macs. Uninstalling it won't help. The damage is done.

Sep 9, 2024 5:38 PM in response to sergeyfrommontchanin

sergeyfrommontchanin wrote:

Is that possible that the HDD is failing only for macOS partitions, but not for Windows. Because this is the case — when I boot into my Bootcamp partition it operates perfectly normal.

Yes, if the bad blocks are only on areas of the disk used by macOS this could happen.


As @John Galt mentions, 10MB/s drive speeds listed in the EtreCheck report are at about USB1 speeds which is not fast enough to run a current OS these days. Even USB 2 speeds of about 50MB/s is not enough to run macOS these days although I did boot macOS on USB2 20 years ago back when the OS was a bit leaner, but I gave that up a long time ago.

Jul 31, 2024 12:20 PM in response to John Galt

Ok, I'm sorry. Just had the impression that it will go unanswered.


Here's the report.


Report says it's a failing HD. Probably. How can I verify it? I have Windows that's also not so fast working but still significantly better. Like, it is usable.


System needs cleaning up — I gonna remove all this CleanMyMac apps, helpers and other fluff. Then, gonna try and get rid of recently installed big apps.


I also tried to create a new user, which was performing slightly better after I turned off iCloud sync.


I think, also I had installed clean macos on a new partition, will check it's performance now.



Thousands of messages per minute in system console. Mac is slow by doing lots of things.

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