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User profile for user: Aro2220x
Aro2220x Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

kernel_task going crazy on late 2011 macbook pro 13.3" base model

I bought this 2011 Macbook pro and have loved it, until now. This kernel_task problem has been very difficult for me to find the cause of since I am not super familiar with MacOSX.

The Problem

The computer runs fine, sometimes. Typically, after I've been using it for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, both while using battery and while plugged in, the computer starts going slow. I mean REALLY slow. Like, I type into a text box and it can't keep up with more than 5-10wpm.

Symptoms

The only symptom I have been able to find is in activity monitor, while this problem is happening, the kernel_task entry is running anywhere between 200-600% CPU. I'm not sure I understand how something can be using more than 100% of my cpu but anyway...

I read a bunch of articles from people with similar problems and have found the following:


  • My fan does not turn on high when this is happening.
  • My laptop is cool to the touch.
  • If I reboot, it keeps going slow, once this problem has started.
  • It sometimes goes away if I close the lid and come back in an hour or two.
  • It happens even on a fresh boot.
  • I am running Maverick OSX and this problem first started during Mountain Lion, but rarely. Now it is quite common.
  • I reformatted the system, wiping everything, and it happened again.
  • I held D while booting and ran the hardware diagnostic. It said everything was fine.
  • Looking under /Library/Logs I can't find a kernal panic log file.
  • In terminal > kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf"%s %s\n", $6, $7' comes up with no results
  • Nothing else in the activity monitor ever seems to go crazy on cpu.
  • Sometimes I am doing a lot of things. Sometimes I am doing almost nothing. There seems to be no reason this happens.
  • I disabled spotlight once through some terminal command but I guess it started again when I rebooted. In any event, I noticed it was indexing everything but the system was running fine at the time.
  • I followed instructions to reset PRAM and SMC. It seemed to fix things once, but just recently it happened again and I did it again and the system was still going super slow.
  • In disk utility I've ran Verify Disk, repair Disk, Verify Disk Permissions and Repair Disk Permissions multiple times but it doesn't seem to stop the problem while it is happening or stop it from happening in the future.
  • Battery drains a little faster now (>2 years after purchase), but it's something like 6 hours instead of 7-8...which I think is normal.
Things I don't know about
  • When I verify disk permissions / repair disk permissions there almost always seems to be different problems. Sometimes there's a lot of things, other times not so much. Right now there's only two entries when I run it.
    • eg., "Group differs on "Library/Printers/InstalledPrinters.plist"; should be 80; group is 0.
    • eg., "Permissions differ on "Library/Printers/InstalledPrinters.plist"; should be -rw-rw-rw-; they are -rw-r--r--.
  • Some thread said something about being able to find out what is using kernel_task through terminal, somehow. But I couldn't find details on that.
  • I noticced under /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports there are a bunch of diagnostic reports that get generated without me doing anything, but I can't seem to find out how to navigate to /Library/Logs in finder (only terminal)

My problem is that I'm not sure how to investigate this problem further. I don't know any other diagnostics I can be running to troubleshoot this problem. I really want to know what is causing this problem so I can decide if it is fixable / worth fixing.

I was going to buy a new laptop, but now I'm worried if I buy another macbook pro, I'll run into another odd problem like this and be stuck with an expensive laptop that randomly turns into a paper weight. And I'd buy a Windows laptop or a chromebook...but I really do not like their operating systems. So right now I'm kind of screwed...exams are coming up and I can't figure out if this laptop is fixable...I can't even find out what is the problem!

Please help.

MacBook Pro, iOS 7.0.4, 13.3" 2011 base model

Posted on Nov 20, 2013 6:58 PM

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User profile for user: Linc Davis
Linc Davis
User level: Level 10
209,547 points

Posted on Nov 21, 2013 7:26 AM

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The following procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed. Don’t be alarmed by the complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out and won’t change anything on your Mac.


These steps are to be taken while booted in “normal” mode, not in safe mode. If you’re now running in safe mode, reboot as usual before continuing.


Below are instructions to enter some UNIX shell commands. The commands are harmless, but they must be entered exactly as given in order to work. If you have doubts about the safety of the procedure suggested here, search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects.


Some of the commands will line-wrap or scroll in your browser, but each one is really just a single line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, and you can then copy it. The headings “Step 1” and so on are not part of the commands.


Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. The other steps should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.


Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:


☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)


☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.


☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.


When you launch Terminal, a text window will open with a line already in it, ending either in a dollar sign (“$”) or a percent sign (“%”). If you get the percent sign, enter “sh” and press return. You should then get a new line ending in a dollar sign.


Step 1


Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:

kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}' | open -ef


Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Then click anywhere in the Terminal window and paste (command-V). I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting. A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. You can then close the TextEdit window. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that. No typing is involved in this step.

Step 2


Repeat with this line:

{ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix\.cron)|org\.(amav|apac|cups|isc|ntp|postf|x)/{print $3}'; echo; sudo launchctl getenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES; echo; sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook; echo; sudo crontab -l; } 2> /dev/null | open -ef


This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which you do have to type. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. Type it carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. Heed that warning, but don't post it. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.


Note: If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before taking this step. If that’s not possible, skip to the next step.


Step 3

{ launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}'; echo; launchctl getenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES; echo; crontab -l 2> /dev/null; } | open -ef


Step 4

ls -A /e*/{cr,la,mach}* {,/}Lib*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts .la* 2> /dev/null | open -ef

Important: If you formerly synchronized with a MobileMe account, your me.com email address may appear in the output of the above command. If so, anonymize it before posting.


Step 5

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of login items' | open -ef


Remember, steps 1-5 are all copy-and-paste — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output.


You can then quit Terminal.

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18 replies
User profile for user: nullpointr
nullpointr
User level: Level 1
0 points

Apr 18, 2015 12:51 PM in response to Aro2220x

I have the same problems. My MacBookPro 9_2 (Mid 2012, Yosemite) is going crazy. The kernel_task is constantly between 200-400%, the fan is very loud and everything runs extremely slow. I reset SCM and NVRAM and PRAM without improvement. I run the several commands suggested above. Here are the results, in the hope someone can help me with this issue ;/


kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}' | open -ef

File is empty. No results.


{ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix\.cron)|org\.(amav|apac|cups|isc|ntp|postf|x)/{pri nt $3}'; echo; sudo launchctl getenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES; echo; sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook; echo; sudo crontab -l; } 2> /dev/null | open -ef


com.delantis.tcpblocknke_load_kext

com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper

com.delantis.TCPBlock

com.google.keystone.daemon

com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool

com.adobe.fpsaud

org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx


{ launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}'; echo; launchctl getenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES; echo; crontab -l 2> /dev/null; } | open -ef

org.keepassx.keepassx.19060

com.google.keystone.system.agent

org.macosforge.xquartz.startx

com.oracle.java.Java-Updater

com.google.Chrome.18492


ls -A /e*/{cr,la,mach}* {,/}Lib*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts .la* 2> /dev/null | open -ef

/Library/Components:



/Library/Extensions:

ACS6x.kext

ATTOCelerityFC8.kext

ATTOExpressSASHBA2.kext

ATTOExpressSASRAID2.kext

ArcMSR.kext

CalDigitHDProDrv.kext

HighPointIOP.kext

HighPointRR.kext

PromiseSTEX.kext

SoftRAID.kext

hp_io_enabler_compound.kext



/Library/Frameworks:

AEProfiling.framework

AERegistration.framework

AudioMixEngine.framework

NyxAudioAnalysis.framework

OSXFUSE.framework

PluginManager.framework

iTunesLibrary.framework



/Library/Input Methods:



/Library/Internet Plug-Ins:

Default Browser.plugin

Flash Player.plugin

JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

Quartz Composer.webplugin

QuickTime Plugin.plugin

flashplayer.xpt

nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt



/Library/Keyboard Layouts:



/Library/LaunchAgents:

com.google.keystone.agent.plist

com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist

org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist



/Library/LaunchDaemons:

com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

com.delantis.TCPBlock.plist

com.delantis.tcbblocknke_load_kext.plist

com.google.keystone.daemon.plist

com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist

com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper.plist

org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist



/Library/PreferencePanes:

Flash Player.prefPane

JavaControlPanel.prefPane

OSXFUSE.prefPane



/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools:

com.delantis.TCPBlock

com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper



/Library/QuickLook:

iBooksAuthor.qlgenerator

iWork.qlgenerator



/Library/QuickTime:

AppleIntermediateCodec.component

AppleMPEG2Codec.component



/Library/ScriptingAdditions:



/Library/Spotlight:

Microsoft Office.mdimporter

iBooksAuthor.mdimporter

iWork.mdimporter



/Library/StartupItems:



/etc/mach_init.d:



/etc/mach_init_per_login_session.d:



/etc/mach_init_per_user.d:



Library/Fonts:



Library/Input Methods:

.localized



Library/Internet Plug-Ins:



Library/Keyboard Layouts:



Library/LanguageModeling:

de-dynamic.lm

en-dynamic.lm

es-dynamic.lm

fr-dynamic.lm

it-dynamic.lm

nl-dynamic.lm

pt-dynamic.lm

sv-dynamic.lm



Library/LaunchAgents:

XSManager



Library/PreferencePanes:



Library/Services:

.localized


osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of login items' | open -ef

File is empty.

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kernel_task going crazy on late 2011 macbook pro 13.3" base model

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