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Mini-Freezes and CGXDisableUpdate: Resolved

Overview:

Problem Description:

Intermittent 1-3 second freezes. Overall, a general sluggish feel to the machine, in my case, building slowly through the years. A console error of:

WindowServer: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by the application "X" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.

Solution Description:

I remove several unneeded and unused daemons, agents and kernal extensions. Nothing quick, but this worked for me and I have a responsive machine again! Wonderful feeling.

Solution Difficulty:

Medium (requires command line experience and some investigative ability)


Etiology:

There have been a number of threads reporting this problem but no solutions have been found to date over a period of years. Personally, I have seen my laptop become slower and become less responsive over time. Things like opening a shell in the Terminal application took several seconds. Recently, mini-freezes occurred regulary. In the past, I have used the two optimizations at the bottom of this post which helped but never fully resolved the issue.

Assessment:

Reviewing the many posts about this problem, I saw none that seemed to resolve the issue. Two things stood out to me though. One, people thought it might be a failing hard drive issue. Two, people said the machine was doing too much. I knew my laptop, being a few years old, should not be overloaded by just a few apps running. I run monitoring software (Menu Meters and 'top') and my processor and hard drive never seemed to be overloaded or thrashing. I also ran hard drive read/write tests and the IO seemed good enough. I replaced my hard drive anyway. Didn't work. I then thought about how my machine has used Apple's Migration assistant for several laptops and hard drives over the years. Going into an Apple store, I'm amazed at how 'snappy' those laptops are compared to mine. So, maybe it has something to do, not with overloading the machine, but too much old clutter slowing down and interrupting the kernel. That would explain why the machine freezes and never appeares overloaded. So, I went looking for old kernel extensions and LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons that would just get copied over through the years. I found several, removed them. Rebooted. Machine is snappy and does not do the mini freezes. This was a CLEAR improvement for me.


Solution:

Remove old kernel extensions, login items, launch agents and launch daemons that slow down your machine by, probably, causing delays and hiccups in your kernel. This is not an 'easy' fix, as you have to review and pick apart your system, but it worked for me.


Process:

  1. Download two free apps: EtreCheck and Lingon.
  2. Find out what is running. Run EtreCheck. It creates a pretty picture of your system's most likely culprits and only takes about 20 seconds to run.
  3. Review each and every Kernel Extension, Launch Daemon, Launch Agent, User Launch Agent, User Login Item. (NOTE: Now is a good time to look at those Internet Plugins and bad fonts as well! While I did not change these to resolve my issues, plugins and bad fonts can also cause performance issues.)
  4. Backup your Agents and Daemons (puts these into a folder on your desktop). This is in case you screw up.
    1. Open Terminal.app and type the following:
    2. Header 1
      mkdir ~/Desktop/oldplists
      mkdir ~/Desktop/oldplists/LaunchAgents
      mkdir ~/Desktop/oldplists/LaunchDaemons
      mkdir ~/Desktop/oldplists/MyLaunchAgents
      cp /Library/LaunchAgents/* ~/Desktop/oldplists/LaunchAgents/.
      cp /Library/LaunchDaemons/* ~/Desktop/oldplists/LaunchDaemons/.
      cp ~/Library/LaunchAgents/* ~/Desktop/oldplists/MyLaunchAgents/.
  5. Run Lingon to review these agents, daemons and extensions as it gives a nice graphical interface for reviewing what each plist file is doing. Only look at "My Agents", "User Agents" and "User Daemons". Everything else it Apple's.
    1. NOTE: These are launched by plist files in your Library directories. For power users, these are all plist files in /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchDaemons and ~/Library/LaunchAgents.
    2. NOTE: agents start on login, daemons on bootup
    3. NOTE: kernal extensions can be started with plist files in these directories so cleaning out these directories also cleans out extensions
  6. For each plist entry in these three directories, Google it's "label" (Lingon shows it as 'label' but this is actually the plist file's name) to fine out more about it. If you don't like it, select it in Lingon and press delete. Or, better yet, find an uninstaller for that application and uninstall it as other things might still be on your system.
    1. NOTE: People generally have something to say about these different plist files online and whether it is legit or not. It should be easy to find what application is responsible for this plist file.
    2. NOTE: For me, many of these were old programs. Many I no longer wanted. Some were link to thinks that no longer existed. Some were things I had no idea were on my system. If you want to keep the software, make sure you have an up to date version at least. I deleted several Java updaters (these are done in Software Update now), Google's software updater (they had a page on how to uninstall it), Logitech's Control Center software (it too had an uninstaller), com.sharpcast.xfsmond (sugar sync), divx, etc.
  7. Reboot. This in ESSENTIAL as these files you just removed ONLY START applications that run in the background so rebooting starts the system in a clean state. Let me be clear. Removing the plist files most likely will have no effect on a running system. It has to be rebooted.


If This Didn't Help,

...two other optimizations that helped me are below. good luck to you finding whatever is ailing your machine.

* Reset the System Management Controller (SMC)

* Delete the asl log files ("Open Terminal: "sudo rm -Rf /var/log/asl/*". This asks for your password.)


Cheers,

-chad

MBP, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Oct 18, 2013 6:01 PM

Reply
7 replies

Dec 11, 2013 5:53 PM in response to Chadwick Wingrave1

Glad to hear it Spence.


Update: Another option that sped up my machine was related to Google's Chrome browser. I drug it to the trash and did a complete reinstall. I did this as the autoupdater was not working. Oddly, my system immediately saw a performance boost. Can't say what it was but the autoupdater uses a LaunchDaemon so it might have been related?

Dec 16, 2013 4:34 PM in response to Chadwick Wingrave1

Yes, Google Chome Helper has a jillion entries in my log file -- I wish it would stabilize Ihas a million "process unable to create.." and sandbox violations. It also has issues with CFAllocater whatever that is.


It never ends. I believe it is all "cruft" from old systems (mine started with OSX Beta before 10.0) and I have done the clean installs, but have probably imported the extra junk when I would bring over stuff restoring the time machine backups of user folders.


It has rendered my mac pretty much useless as the mini freezes kills my productivity.


In this way, sadly, windows seems to be much more snappy.


Thanks again --


Spence

Nov 1, 2014 1:33 PM in response to Chadwick Wingrave1

For me the problem seemed to be DropBox. Quit Dropbox, relaunch Finder, and the problem has vanished.


Details:

Running 10.7.5. My CGXDisableUpdate errors were always just with Finder. Other people I see have this error with multiple applications, but I was only having it related to Finder. The error messages would come in threes:

Nov 01 16:09:20 [88] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.

Nov 01 16:09:34 [88] disable_update_likely_unbalanced: UI updates still disabled by application "Finder" after 15.00 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds). Likely an unbalanced disableUpdate call.

Nov 01 16:09:40 [88] reenable_update_for_connection: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Finder" after 20.44 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds)


Three because it would always take more than 15 seconds, but less than 30 to reenable the updates.


To fix, I went to the DropBox icon in the titlebar. I pulled down the menu and then went to the gear submenu where you find "Quit Dropbox". I quit it.

Then go to the Apple Menu and select Force Quit. Select Finder, the button changes from Force Quit to Relauch. Press Relaunch.


Voila, problem gone. Now to make it permanent, go to Preferences, Accounts, select your account, select the Login Items tab, select the Login Item for Dropbox, and press the minus button to remove it from login items. If you want to sync, just run dropbox manually, and then quit.

Mini-Freezes and CGXDisableUpdate: Resolved

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