mdworker process suddenly high CPU usage

Removed all this junk from spotlight folder making it empty

Everything old (2014, 2010, 2012, 2010, 2012, 2011, 2010)

Cine.mdimporter

GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter

iBooksAuthor.mdimporter

iWeb.mdimporter

iWork.mdimporter

Microsoft Office.mdimporter

Wolfram Notebook.mdimporter

Not interested to find the culprit

Perfect, thanks a lot

Now the Mac is cold and quite

I was having the same problem, and a second level support person at Apple helped me solve the issue today:

Look in the \library\spotlight folders both at your drive root level and your user folder. These folders contain spotlight plugins, with the extension .mdimporter. Some of those plugins, if defective, can make the Spotlight indexing processes to run continuously.

Move the contents of those folders to the desktop.

You may need to actually delete the files from the spotlight folders, once they are on the desktop: in my case, the Finder made a copy of them, instead of moving them.

Restart the computer.

Check the activity of mdworker on Activity monitor.

If the problem is gone, put back those files one by one in the spotlight folder, until you find the culprit. I think in my case it was an old Parallels Desktop plugin.

Good luck

Antonio

In my case it was the BritannicaBookmark.mdimporter that was a PowerPC mdimporter. But it was not in \library\spotlight but inBritannica 12.0/Ultimate Reference Suite.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight.

You can see what spotlight plugin is choking on you by selecting the mdworker process in the Activity monitor and click on Open files and processes.

David Losada

This solved my questionRe: mdworker process suddenly high CPU usage

Nov 28, 2012 1:41 AM ( in response to antobal)

In my case it was the BritannicaBookmark.mdimporter that was a PowerPC mdimporter. But it was not in \library\spotlight but inBritannica 12.0/Ultimate Reference Suite.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight.

You can see what spotlight plugin is choking on you by selecting the mdworker process in the Activity monitor and click on Open files and processes.

Sounds helpful, but I don't see "Open files and processes" in Activity Monitor. If I click on inspect, I get a choice to "Sample" processes. I get a system log that is a bit beyond me.

antobal Brussels, Belgium

Re: mdworker process suddenly high CPU usage

Oct 3, 2012 12:47 PM ( in response to asfafa)

I was having the same problem, and a second level support person at Apple helped me solve the issue today:

Look in the \library\spotlight folders both at your drive root level and your user folder. These folders contain spotlight plugins, with the extension .mdimporter. Some of those plugins, if defective, can make the Spotlight indexing processes to run continuously.

Also sounds helpful, I found .mdimporter files in my system library, but nothing looked unusual. I didn't see a spotlight folder in my user library. I looked in application support and several other places. I used Onyx to repair permissions, rebuild spotlight index, clear caches etc, rebooted, it seems to be OK now.

Thanks - I think this must be the same as the "Sample Process" button - I am in Lion, not Mountain Lion, perhaps this is why. In any case, I'm afraid these log entries are a bit beyond my comprehension. One thing I did which I think arrested the runaway mdworker processes was to go into user/library/saved application states and remove the file of a program I was having trouble with at the time. I had also used Onyx to rebuild the Spotlight index, but the mdworker problem had come back.

As far as finding all the mdimporter files, Easyfind found more of them than the Terminal command.

Hi,

I also had this problem. Your answer pointed me to the solution. Thank you very much! 🙂

Thanks it was driving me crazy

When I searched for mdimporter files in easyfind, I found a lot of duplicates. I had included hidden volumes in my search - these duplicates are in a hidden "(Original)" HD. Is this my recovery partition, or is it something that could be causing problems?

Message was edited by: margaret.miz

Thanks David, that solved my problem. Just in case anyone's wondering, Britannica 13 looks like it causes the same symptoms under 10.8.5.

Thanks Margaret.miz -- I didn't quite get it all but I got this:

In my case it was the BritannicaBookmark.mdimporter... But it was not in \library\spotlight but inBritannica 12.0/Ultimate Reference Suite.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight.

I got rid of that. mdworker is no longer 99% of CPU usage...in fact it's not even on the list for Process Names.

Note: I also put my new Time Capsule into Privacy on Spotlight.

RAM no longer seems to be so quickly deplete...so far so good.

Thank you! That really helped me. I didn't know that Britannica was a PowerPC application.

I don't know how to up vote you but thanks!