Macbook Pro 2019 high CPU load, fan going crazy

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zoe.eoz Author

Level 1

4 points

Macbook Pro 2019 high CPU load, fan going crazy

EtreCheck report

Macbook Pro 2019 high CPU load, fan going crazy

Hi there,

Hoping for some insight or help with what to do next to sort out my Macbook Pro.

For around a year or more now, it has barely been coping with light usage, let alone heavier tasks. The fan is constantly running very loudly, the laptop is overheating, and the CPU load of background tasks has been very high. The Macbook also restarts pretty much any time I shut it and walk away from it for a while, and uses a lot of battery both when it is and is not in use.

I took it to Apple a week ago who said there seemed to be nothing wrong hardware-wise, battery health is fine etc. They reinstalled the OS and told me to use my Time Machine backup to reinstate my data and see if the issue persisted, which it has.

I have run an EtreCheck report today after reading similar threads on here, which I will attach below. Major issues identified were heavy CPU usage (to nobody's surprise) and kernel panics.

Some of the processes using a high CPU % I have noted include:

cloudd
cloudphotod
MTLCompilerService
PasswordBreachAgent
photolibraryd
bird
unzip
XprotectService
fileproviderd
QuickLookSatellite
backupd
kernel_task
fileproviderd
contactsd
corespotlightd
CGPDFservice
mdwrite

Would love any and all advice, bearing in mind I do not have a lot of technical computing knowledge.

Thanks in advance for any help or input.

Update:

The Genius staff member had also suggested there may also be issues specific to my user settings. Just now, I have tried making a fresh 'test' login user, and found that I still had some background tasks running at a high CPU load, but the problems were nowhere near as bad.

The tasks I still found running at a high load were:

lsd
MTLCompilerService
MicrosoftWord (when I ran it)
Safari (when I ran it)
corespotlightd
mediaanalysisd
Spotlight (this one was the most excessive)
mdbulkimport

as well as any and all websites I opened in Safari.

MacBook Pro 13″

Posted on Dec 28, 2024 7:23 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

etresoft

Level 9

56,822 points

Dec 29, 2024 7:56 AM in response to zoe.eoz

zoe.eoz wrote:

I took it to Apple a week ago who said there seemed to be nothing wrong hardware-wise, battery health is fine etc. They reinstalled the OS and told me to use my Time Machine backup to reinstate my data and see if the issue persisted, which it has.

There is another part to this. Once you restore the problem with Time Machine, you know precisely where the problem lies. What you need to do now is erase the computer yet again and then reinstall the OS again. But this time, don't do a full restore from Time Machine. You can safely restore only your user files and user accounts. Do not restore any apps, software, system settings, or "other files".

You will need to manually reinstall only the apps that you absolutely can't live without. And here's an EtreCheck cheat code for you. Pretty much anything listed on your EtreCheck report is software that you can live without.

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Answer 2

MartinR

Level 7

24,672 points

Dec 29, 2024 7:18 AM in response to zoe.eoz

At first glance in your Etrecheck report, I would get rid of the following, then do a fresh restart and see if behavior changes:

Soundflower - old, hasn't been updated in 6 years. Surprised it can even exist on Sonoma.
Java - could be the culprit
Google - is a known system resource hog
Cursorcerer - an admitted hack by the author

You also had a fileprovider crash. Make sure you have the most recent Sonoma supported versions of Dropbox & One Drive installed. Both use fileprovider.

You also had a CPU CATERR crash, which indicates a hardware issue. Difficult to identify the reason. Your Etrecheck report indicates it happened last Sept. Presumably your Mac has been running since then without another CATERR, so it may have been triggered at the time by an external device (disk, flash drive, etc).

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Answer 3

Dec 29, 2024 8:00 AM in response to zoe.eoz

while malwarebytes has the best-respected list of Mac Viruses, no one here recommends that you run its scanner all the time. Scan your files ONCE, then shut it off, else you allow it to do unneeded busywork that punishes performance overall (but never ends up on the top CPU-use list, because it is doing lots and lots of disk I/O.)

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Answer 4

zoe.eoz Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 29, 2024 9:20 AM in response to MartinR

Cheers Martin. Have applied your suggestions and it seems to be running a little better, but only time and heavier usage will tell. Appreciate your help.

Not sure about the CATERR - I don't believe I would have been using an external device at the time (September, when this post is originally from).

Thanks heaps!

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Answer 5

zoe.eoz Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 29, 2024 9:23 AM in response to etresoft

Hey, thanks for your reply! Yes, I left out that I was told to do this, and am yet to bite the bullet and do so.

Appreciate your help (and the kick up the proverbial to do the reinstall and partial restore).

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Answer 6

zoe.eoz Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 29, 2024 9:25 AM in response to zoe.eoz

Since I can't edit my post anymore, I forgot to add that this is a reposted thread from September (alas, I received no replies at the time).

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Macbook Pro 2019 high CPU load, fan going crazy

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