Mac book pro falls in agony

Question

Mac book pro falls in agony

Mac Book Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, 45 GB free diskspace

I still suffer under the same problem, even after complete fresh installation of Mountain Lion (and migration of user and settings from Backup afterwards):

After working a while with good performance of the computer (it happens after booting 1, 2, 5 hours, etc big variety) the Mac falls into a kind of agony. Everthing becomes suddenly extremly slow, a pull down menu e.g. shows up may be 45 secs after the click. in the "Terminate immediately" window (or how its called in English) many programms are alternatively displayed in read (not responding). The display of the seconds of the menu bar clock often stops for 1 sec up to 30 or more. The Disco wheel spins most of the time. When pressing the Main Button the pop up window which asks you if you want to shut down the Mac displays may be after one minute only. When accepting the shut down process it often interrupts, because many apps do not terminate in time. The last issue when the nervs are on edge is a hard reset.

If I have the chance to switch to the activity monitor, there is in most of the cases no heavy CPU load displayed, the fan is not launched. Its like driving on the motorway with 80 mph and from one second to the other you are on snail speed. (And this comparison concerning the proportions is not exaggerated)

I can be in any program when this happens, there is no rule visible.

Any help is appreciated.may be not yet the solution but hints how to investigate for the reason are welcome as well

Thanks

Urs

MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 10:35 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,023 points

Oct 25, 2013 10:41 AM in response to Urs Gruetzner

Create a new user account with admin status. Log out of your account and log into the new one (Fast User Switching should be disabled.)

Operate in this new account normally and see if the problem recurs. As for Activity Monitor be sure you follow this:

Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

It also would be useful to boot into Safe Mode then reboot normally.

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Answer 2

Oct 27, 2013 8:00 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks for your hints

I am going to try with another account.

May be the follwowing remark: I did already use Activity Monitor. When the Mac falls into agony there is no task visible which would use 70% or more CPU. There are 1 to 3 programms visible which do not respond. The selection changes randomly. Some programms go in normal state, others arise with the no response message. The total use of CPU power remains in a normal, even moderate level. To speak in pictures: it looks like if the power of the CPU itself is suddenly dropping by 90%

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,023 points

Oct 27, 2013 9:21 AM in response to Urs Gruetzner

It may be. You may be having some sort of hardware failure. But try what I suggested so we can make a better determination.

You should leave Activity Monitor open and visible. I would also look at the Console (in the Utilities folder) to see what it shows at the time the problem arises.

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Answer 4

Oct 27, 2013 11:59 PM in response to Kappy

I don't think neither that its a hardware problem, it was just a picture how the experience feels, when the agony comes.

I am actually working with a new administrator account and things look good so far.

Yesterday I saw in the old account something which was weird (during agony state) a task with the name like AddressSyncAgent (don't remember the exact nam now) which did comsume the most amount of CPU (ca 25%) which is not so much, but a huge amount of RAM: 1.3 GByte! When I restart again and am in still a good running state of the computer, this task is not running. I will continue observing this.

Thanks again for your very appreciated help.

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Answer 5

Oct 28, 2013 12:47 AM in response to Urs Gruetzner

I am mentally already prepared to backup my old account, delete it and create a new one.

May be there are some hints, what is the recommended minimum of the system data of my account that I would need to restore (in adddition of my personal data of course) , in order not to begin at Zero, but also not to reimport data, which are causing the same problems again.

BTW I have another very annoying problem, that Mail and Mac OSX are frequently asking me for my password (during work), which does not happen in the test account I am using now. I hope to get rid of that as well.

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

362,023 points

Oct 28, 2013 9:37 AM in response to Urs Gruetzner

Stay in that new account and gradually start transferring just your data to the new account:

Transferring files from one User Account to another

When done delete your old account. Sounds like this is an easier solution.

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Answer 7

Oct 29, 2013 10:30 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks a lot for these hints. It looks like that I have the solution now. The new account operates rock solid so far and I am very optimistic, that it stays OK. I am copying only a minimum of data from the old Library

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