My MacBook Air6,2 is freezing and has high CPU spikes

Question

Level 1

0 points

My MacBook Air6,2 is freezing and has high CPU spikes

The fan is on almost constantly, I've tried everything to fix it, I erased everything on my macbook, I reset with SMC and RAM, I rebooted it multiple times, nothing seems to be working. Now that I've erased everything, the kernel_task is a lot lower than it used to be (300%), but it still is freezing my mac! I can't watch netflix without it freezing, I can't check Facebook without it freezing...The fan sounds like an airplane taking off. I feel like giving up on macs because of this. It's been going on for a few weeks now. The fan will go off out of nowhere, the mac isn't even getting hot or anything. Please someone tell me there is still hope for my mac!!

Problem description:

High CPU %, slow computer, freezing, high fan.

EtreCheck version: 2.4.1 (137)

Report generated 8/24/15, 5:12 PM

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Hardware Information:(What does this mean?)

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014) (Technical Specifications)

MacBook Air - model: MacBookAir6,2

1 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Not upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported

Wireless: en0: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 107 - SN = D8642840YXWF90KAX

Video Information:(What does this mean?)

Intel HD Graphics 5000

Color LCD 1440 x 900

System Software:(What does this mean?)

OS X 10.9.5 (13F1112) - Time since boot: about one hour

Disk Information:(What does this mean?)

APPLE SSD SD0256F disk0 : (251 GB) (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

Untitled (disk0s2) / : 250.14 GB (232.63 GB free)

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

USB Information:(What does this mean?)

Apple Internal Memory Card Reader

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Thunderbolt Information:(What does this mean?)

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Gatekeeper:(What does this mean?)

Mac App Store and identified developers

User Login Items:(What does this mean?)

None

Internet Plug-ins:(What does this mean?)

Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

Silverlight: Version: 5.1.40728.0 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]

3rd Party Preference Panes:(What does this mean?)

None

Time Machine:(What does this mean?)

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU:(What does this mean?)

6% WindowServer

1% taskgated

0% imagent

Top Processes by Memory:(What does this mean?)

512 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent(2)

377 MB kernel_task

123 MB Safari

41 MB com.apple.WebKit.Networking

37 MB mds_stores

Virtual Memory Information:(What does this mean?)

1.67 GB Free RAM

2.33 GB Used RAM (1.19 GB Cached)

0 B Swap Used

Diagnostics Information:(What does this mean?)

Aug 24, 2015, 04:04:06 PM Self test - passed

Aug 23, 2015, 09:08:58 PM ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Activity Monitor_2015-08-23-210858_[redacted].crash

Aug 23, 2015, 11:06:12 AM /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Kernel_2015-08-23-110612_[redacted].panic [Click for details]

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Aug 24, 2015 2:28 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Aug 24, 2015 2:45 PM in response to Mrs Schmuck

Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime, affect performance, and increase heat and fan acti…

Mavericks and later

Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the View menu. Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the %CPU column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of %CPU, 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.

There is something not working properly if you see that level of %CPU in Activity Monitor. If it is only the kernel_task that is showing that, then you have something not compatible installed - probably a third-party system extension.

It would be helpful to see the kernel panic log: Mac OS X- How to log a kernel panic. Copy and paste the log here. Please just post the actual text, and not an image which is difficult to work with.

Reply

Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Aug 24, 2015 3:13 PM in response to Mrs Schmuck

When the machine is unresponsive, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

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 and start typing the name.

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.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages 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 it useless for 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.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

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