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Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

After years of no problems, laptop keeps crashing repeatedly, and EtreCheck and DriveDx's apparently conflicting reports

Hello,

Essential background first.

I have been on Catalina final 10.15.7 on MB Air 2017 for a long time and have been using my laptop in exactly the same way – many apps open with several-to-many windows in some of the apps, as I work-work, personal-work, read, research, play, in an interleaving way.

I seldom had any problems.

(To head off advice, I should mention that: (a) I keep a good eye on ActivityMonitor's dock icon set to CPU history, and (b) I don't abuse my laptop – while I work, etc. on it, sports streams are on the iPad and Spotify is on the smartphone.)

In early October my SSD failed and I got a slightly-used one in good health. All went well without any change for about 50 days.

Then I got three system crashes in a single day – one panic, one hang/freeze, and then a restart. The crash report window didn't stick around (or got obscured by the automatically opening apps and windows – I tried to find it, to no avail) and I could not find anything in Console.(?) The only possibly relevant message I found, I snapshotted and am attaching.

Then my laptop restarted overnight when it was sleeping with the lid closed – when I opened it, it was on the login screen.

So that's four crashes in 24 hours. I just left it at the login screen. An hour or two later I thought I heard its fan – and it was! Touched the metal around [esc] and it was hot as ****! (Why?) So I shut it down.

By this time the battery was done for, having earlier been on the skids. CoconutBattery had showed the health at 70-something percent, quickly degrading into the 60s, then down to 47 percent.

I had to replace the battery anyway but it wasn't easy to find one though managed to get a slightly-used battery. The technician said that the crashes were surely due to the battery.

CoconutBattery shows the replacement battery's health at 87 percent.

Logged into my account at the shop and brought the laptop home. Left it with lid shut (had to go out again). When I opened it at night, it had restarted – showed the login screen. So the crashes have a cause other than the battery.

So then I logged into the first-created guest account (and am still logged into that without any crash for 24-plus hours). I am not using it remotely like I normally use my laptop (so yes, work, play, everything is suspended or offloaded to the iPad and smartphone).

Did some research and then got and ran Avast, EtreCheck, and DriveDx.

No virus found. I've attached EtreCheck and DriveDx reports, and looking forward to your input.

Re EtreCheck's recommendation, I am loth to allow anything to auto-update, having been bitten by it and not trusting Apple after the passing of Jobs, and the Lion fiasco (and all this craziness of auto-syncing everything, the O.S. and apps trying to second-guess you and essentially 'taking over,' etc.).

The biggest point of confusion for me is that DriveDx says that my SSD is in very good health while EtreCheck, giving a 'Performance: Poor' grade, apparently says that the SSD is done for, as reads/writes are taking too long(?)

So all I can surmise is:–

1. Some app, daemon, or file in my user-account is infected and causes these crashes.

2. The SSD is not as good as DriveDx indicates and it is unable to deal with my heavy usage of the laptop (disk mediation, and VM swap-ins/swap-outs).

Would appreciate experts' feedback.

Thanks,

Kersie

EtreCheck Report

DriveDx Report

MacBook Air (2018 – 2020)

Posted on Nov 30, 2024 11:10 AM

Top-ranking reply

g_wolfman

Level 4

2,416 points

Posted on Nov 30, 2024 6:31 PM

So, a few things things:

Without running Etrecheck with administrator privileges, you can't access the Diagnostic Report system and get the details of any Panic Reports - which is probably the critical piece that someone needs to see.
Etrecheck and DriveDX aren't checking the same things. There could have very different outcomes. The analogy isn't perfect, but DriveDX is assessing disk health (is the disk going to have a heart attack and die) while Etrecheck is assessing fitness (can the disk run 100m sprints without having to stop and throw up).
Given the other things you have mentioned, you might have multiple hardware issues - possible after SSD and battery, the motherboard is also dying...

View in context

47 replies

HWTech

Level 9

61,844 points

Dec 6, 2024 6:14 PM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad wrote:

As you've already been told your disk speed is abysmal:

Write speed: 625 MB/s

Read speed: 764 MB/s

They should be about 3x of what you're getting.

FYI, the OP has an older style MBAir which uses a SATA based SSD, so these speeds are actually very good for a SATA III based SSD. The 2017 Air is an older style model that does not have USB-C ports like the 2017 MB Pro where the internal SSD speeds would be 3x.

The MBAir did not get an NVMe based SSD integrated onto the MLB until 2018.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2024 6:54 AM in response to Old Toad

This is the only time I ever tried any anti-virus on any Mac and for the reasons please see my other replies.

Thanks for catching BitDefender! Though I'd installed it, I don't think I ever used it so:

• I wonder how it showed up on any of the reports,

• In my frazzled state of mind I'd forgotten about it.

I've deleted it now.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2024 7:03 AM in response to HWTech

HWTech wrote:

Kersie wrote:

I've asked OWC a couple of questions, if you know:

1.What do the stars (*) before some of the products indicate.

I don't see any on the page you linked. Usually somewhere further down the page either at the end of a section or perhaps at the bottom of the page there should be a footnote with "*".

Sorry, I should have copy-pasted a couple of examples. Stars appear to the left of certain products on the results-set pages. OWC explained that '*' indicate refurbished/overstock/discontinued products.

2. Why do the SSDs (from the same manufacturer) have such wildly disparate warranty periods – two years through five years.

They are usually two different tiers of drives. One is either low end or average, while the other one is a higher end drive.

Thanks, this is good to know. I tried to order an SSD set with a five-year guarantee.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 8, 2024 6:47 AM in response to Kersie

I understand that owc is considered the gold standard but they refuse to ship to Karachi (on transparently and demonstrably) false pretexts -- not even on their list of countries

So are there any online stores that are considered silver- and bronze-medallists?

In the meantime I am trying to find a local brick-and-mortar store but no luck so far.

Thanks for any tips.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 9, 2024 7:36 AM in response to Old Toad

Actually I used to live and work over there until 2003 but after a few years I lost contact with the few persons I had kept in touch with.

I did email an old 'partner-in-crime' (i.e. a successful skunkworks) but no response. I can't even be sure if the email reached him.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 9, 2024 7:43 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you, again.

Actually I bought a new laptop – same specs and size, only an M1 processor – a few hours back but I certainly don't want to junk this one so I'm going to try to place an order.

May have a follow-up question, though will post it in a proper section, about copying my ~/Library (from a backup disk) to replicate my environment.

That's because – I don't know if you all realized – but Apple changed the format of the 'Music' (iTunes) Library in-between/during Catalina (minor) versions! I got caught (because of the replacement SSD) and had to spend some time figuring it out and restoring my music that I would rather not have wasted.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 9, 2024 7:45 AM in response to John Galt

Thank you. Between this and HWTech's lead I may be able to get what I need . . .

It's tough to do this research on a slow android smartphone which I need to do as this laptop can just crash anytime, even in safe mode.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 9, 2024 10:33 AM in response to Kersie

Worth mentioning something unexpected and something that I hadn't thought of trying.

I have been using the laptop for a good some hours now trying to get a few things done expecting it to crash/restart, as it has done but for the past few hours I've had an increasing number of windows in both TextEdit and Safari open. Right now it even has some windows in Brave open.

The only difference is that it is on battery power as I never got around to putting it on mains (which is how I usually use it) and the longer it stayed up, I thought I'd let it go on battery just to see.

Perhaps it's just an exception. Or can mains power cause an SSD to behave in such a way so as to cause system panics? (I at least have never known of such a thing.)

Old Toad

Level 10

211,063 points

Dec 9, 2024 10:44 AM in response to Kersie

Kersie wrote:

Perhaps it's just an exception. Or can mains power cause an SSD to behave in such a way so as to cause system panics? (I at least have never known of such a thing.)

One way to find out is to connect the mains and continue to use the laptop.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2024 8:11 AM in response to g_wolfman

Thanks for the tip. I shall try to find out how to check the grounding of that point/outlet as well as the pins, and do so.

But if that is actually the case, why did the EtreCheck report, apparently strongly, point to the SSD and the crash reports also imply an SSD problem.

Kersie Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 10, 2024 10:43 AM in response to Kersie

Back on smartphone

First there has not been any tingling/shock at all if that is a clue

Was doing homework like checking the earthing (as it's 3pin) using multimeter etc but it crashed on battery twice -- same thing, indefinite pinwheel and couldn't recover SATA in crash report

So that eliminates mains power use as a cause

It was prob a false dawn