Really really unresponsive Mac Mini running Mavericks

Question

Level 2

180 points

Really really unresponsive Mac Mini running Mavericks

Hello,

I have a Mac Mini which I have been using as a media centre for roughly 18 months. It has been used to serve media to my Apple TV, to store family photos, very occasional browsing and nothing else. I now want to use it to do this but also be used as the computer on which my children do their homework and browse the web. I have set up user accounts for two children plus one each for me and the missus along with the family one for the ATV.

From the get go each user account was really hard to use, very slow to open windows, software, anything really. I deleted and remade accounts, even performed a clean install from the recovery partition but nothing has changed. Right now if I try to open Safari for example from the dock it bounces once and doesn't open. If I click on it again I get the error bonk sound. Clicking on the Apple menu, or anything really, instantly brings on the beach ball of doom for around 30 seconds. Short of flattening the whole thing does anyone have any ideas? Could I have picked up a virus?

Posted on Jul 10, 2014 8:26 AM

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Answer 1

Danktuft Author

Level 2

180 points

Jul 10, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Danktuft

Also when switching between accounts the desktop wallpaper sometimes remains in a square shape and the dock only unhides from within this square, the drives and other desktop icons are to the right of this square of wallpaper on a grey background.

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Answer 2

arthur

Level 5

5,242 points

Jul 10, 2014 8:53 AM in response to Danktuft

Probably not a malware problem.

It would help to give us more information. Etresoft: EtreCheck is a free app developed by one of the contributors to this forum which will generate a system report on your computer. If you can paste the report here we can take a look and see what might be the problem.

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Answer 3

Danktuft Author

Level 2

180 points

Jul 10, 2014 8:57 AM in response to arthur

Arthur,

Thanks, I'll get on it.

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Answer 4

Danktuft Author

Level 2

180 points

Jul 10, 2014 9:08 AM in response to arthur

Here you go.

EtreCheck version: 1.9.12 (48)

Report generated 10 July 2014 16:59:44 BST

Hardware Information:

Mac mini (Late 2012) (Verified)

Mac mini - model: Macmini6,1

1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores

4 GB RAM

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: (null)

M2762D spdisplays_1080p

System Software:

OS X 10.9.4 (13E28) - Uptime: 2 days 2:23:50

Disk Information:

APPLE HDD HTS545050A7E362 disk0 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 499.25 GB (163.42 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

USB Information:

Mitsumi Electric Apple Optical USB Mouse

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple, Inc. IR Receiver

Thunderbolt Information:

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Gatekeeper:

Mac App Store and identified developers

Launch Daemons:

[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist Support

Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support

User Launch Agents:

[running] com.amazon.cloud-player.plist Support

User Login Items:

iTunesHelper

Qmultimedia

iTunes

Dropbox

Google Drive

Internet Plug-ins:

Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20913.0 - SDK 10.6 Support

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9

AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9

AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9

iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9

iTunes Plug-ins:

Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9

3rd Party Preference Panes:

None

Time Machine:

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU:

6% WindowServer

3% Dropbox

0% airportd

0% Google Drive

0% notifyd

Top Processes by Memory:

119 MB Safari

90 MB iTunes

45 MB WindowServer

45 MB mds

37 MB Google Chrome

Virtual Memory Information:

244 MB Free RAM

1.03 GB Active RAM

760 MB Inactive RAM

792 MB Wired RAM

4.20 GB Page-ins

617 MB Page-outs

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jul 10, 2014 10:44 AM in response to Danktuft

Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

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Answer 6

Danktuft Author

Level 2

180 points

Jul 10, 2014 11:57 AM in response to Linc Davis

Linc,

I did this. I logged out of all accounts apart from the master one. Started Console. Logged into one of the kids accounts, tried to start Safari, Console. went back to master account and now have loads of data in the Console window. Searched for Safari, here are the two lines that were returned.

10/07/2014 19:41:28.000 kernel[0]: mcxalr{1032} ** Denying execute for uid=504 path=/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari

10/07/2014 19:42:22.000 kernel[0]: mcxalr{1046} ** Denying execute for uid=504 path=/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari

For Console.

10/07/2014 19:40:40.000 kernel[0]: mcxalr{1023} ** Denying execute for uid=504 path=/Applications/Utilities/Console.app/Contents/MacOS/Console

There are lots of lines like this.

10/07/2014 19:42:17.387 Finder[8727]: 8837325: Attempting to SIGCONT to pid #8827 failed, with errno=#3, or the process failed to actually start

There are about 20 of these lines.

10/07/2014 19:42:21.715 mcxalr_agent[8758]: FCIsAppAllowedToLaunchExt [343] -- *** _FCMIGAppCanLaunch timed out. Returning false.

Few like this.

10/07/2014 19:42:37.830 WindowServer[135]: CGXGetConnectionProperty: Invalid connection 78171

There are lots of others but not sure how much you require. I should add that I am using Parental Controls on this account but Safari is not limited.

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Answer 7

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jul 10, 2014 12:01 PM in response to Danktuft

Completely disable Parental Controls and test.

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Answer 8

Danktuft Author

Level 2

180 points

Jul 10, 2014 12:25 PM in response to Linc Davis

All the problems have gone away! I have to say that it's very remiss of me not to try that myself, sorry for the time wasting and thanks for your help. How to apply parental controls though? Don't need a curious 8 year old rooting around in System Prefs....

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Answer 9

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jul 10, 2014 12:39 PM in response to Danktuft

If all you want to do is prevent the child from making system-wide changes to settings, you don't need Parental Controls. Give him or her a standard user account and don't tell him the administrator password.

If you want to supervise the child's behavior on the Internet, that's a much more complex problem. Ideally it would done in person, not by remote control. Parental Controls may be useful, but it seems not to be working for you.I don't have much experience with it. I would start by wiping out the settings and trying again to enable it.

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Answer 10

Danktuft Author

Level 2

180 points

Jul 10, 2014 12:44 PM in response to Linc Davis

I think I'll try what you say regarding the controls first then if that doesn't work try the standard account. The main concerns we have regarding the web are time spent on the computer and the computer being used early in the morning before we're up. It's placed in the living room in order to make sure that supervision can occur but not be overbearing, we also want to try to give our children as much freedom/trust as is possible to do.

Thanks for spending the time to look at my non-problem though, much appreciated!

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