Q: "Keychain Circle Notification" not responding.

Hi Dove - and any others reading this:

Distnoted is definitely the one hogging all the CPU and killing it fixes the problem immediately. There are usually several instances of it in Activity Monitor, so force quit the one that says it has been running for hours (if you have one). From some of the reading I have done around the place this is not necessarily a problem with distnoted, it appears some other apps can cause it to go manic. Finding which ones is the problem.

At the time mine started to grind to a halt - I recognise the symptoms now and get into console and AM straight away - my CalNCService was going nuts and recording a time out error every 5 seconds.

I googled this service and found this tip:

http://www.dgkapps.com/blog/osx-tips/osx-tips-turn-off-disable-calendaragent-fro m-the-command-line/

And also this thread on Apple Support:

Recentsd and Calncservice processes Yosemite

I will be trying the first option as I use Outlook and don't need my notifications duplicated. Will report back if it fails.

There is a mention of killing any or all of your notifications in system preferences.

There was something else but my mind has suddenly gone blank - like my console does then this happens!

By the way, killing the distnoted service also fixed the keychaincircle and escrowsecurityalert that were not responding. I am not sure if they are linked as there is nothing when I google that.

EDIT - remembered what I forgot! I have an MBP running exact same OS and apps and have none of this issue on that....

Until I found this thread I thought I was the only one with this problem.  Three hard resets today.  I have stopped the disnoted process and that cleared it up for a short while.  I then deleted a Brother printer driver and had no problems for 3 days. Today I stopped the WebGL as suggested in OSX Daily and rebuilt the spotlight index which seemed to help others.  Neither did anything to fix the problem. I tried using App Tamer but that too does not seem to fix the problem.  I tried changing browsers from Safari and that did not work. Even waited 10 minutes for the system to come back to life but that never happened.

Apple seems to have become Microsoft, more interested in new features than in a stable and functional OS.

This is all happening on a 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display - early 2015

Bugger, sorry to hear that. There are a few people who have had an issue with something called emacs. Also mdworker (spotlight). I usually have 6 or more instances of that in AM but ti doesn't slow everything down. Unfortunately, the links above are all I could find on this in hours of trawling google. I have also posted on the developer/beta forums and have not had a response from anyone in a month.

I have the same problem on MBAir OS X 10.11.5 and it generally starts with MS Outlook 365 and rolls off from there.  I was up to 3 or 4 times-a-day "hard reset".

Resting the NVRAM seems to help, though.  It is very easy (<Cmd>+<Option>+P+R reboot) and i have had to do this in the past on other MBAir's and it helped.

It is worth trying as many post and people are having problems.

BTW -- WAKE UP APPLE ... Steve Jobs is no longer running your QA department ....  AND IT SHOWS!!!!!!

This is a "me, too" with a bit more info. Always running the latest update to OS X.

Ever since the Sunrise sunset announcement from Microsoft, I've been trying to learn to love the Apple Calendar app. And since then, I get the hangs and must do the hard resets described in this thread. So maybe there is a link.

I've also seen some correlation when using Office 365 products. I was hopeful their latest update would fix the problems, but it did not.

In this morning's hang, I was trying to use the Reminder app. I noticed the following hung before I eventually had to do a hard reset:

• escrowsecurityalert
• keychain circle notification
• location <something>

That's when I found this thread.

I'm tempted to clear out my keychain since there may also be a correlation with my last password change. I always have keychain issues whenever my company forces me to change my password. But there is mental anguish involved there as I try to remember 50 passwords. Don't want to do it.

Since my last post I had no problems - until the next El Capitan update. This stuffed up my wifi again and started causing the odd slowdown. To pre-empt any issues I decided to delete all the relevant wifi prefs http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/16/fix-wi-fi-problems-mac-os-x-el-capitan/ and voila! So far, so good. I think escrowsec... and keychain circle... have issues when this is happening.

Plus i have not had an issue with distnoted since my last posts either.    

Just remembered one more thing.

The process distnoted that causes the issue sometimes, has several instances in Activity Monitor.

These would have the following users:

Spotlight

User

Distnote

IF you have one called mbsetupuser, you need to reboot your computer.

This is something to do with updating your OS. Even though it requires a reboot to install, you need to actually do a further reboot to complete the process.

To see if this was the case I checked after the latest update and there it was again.

Rebooted and it has gone.

Can only add myself to the list of suffering users. Seem to affect most programs used (incl MS Office, Safari, Spotify and more. May even be linked to the Bluetooth connected speaker. Normally one reboot per day. The mroe programs I have running, the quicker the issue arrises.

I've had the same problem, and quitting the CPU-hogging Distnoted has done the trick. Whether the issue keeps coming up remains to be seen for me.

Having the same problem for several weeks (months?) now on an iMac mid 2011, currently running 10.11.5. Just froze again moments ago (didn't look for distnoted process yet, because I just came across this thread). Will further investigate (again). Really annoying problem.

Ok, just happened again. The distnoted process running amok was the User one in my case (no mbsetup).

Seems to have something to do with Mail app also. The following happened:

- Woke up iMac

- Tried to send an email

- Realized iMac is starting to hang

- Located and killed distnoted process in Activity Monitor (which I keep running all the time atm)

- Had to kill Mail app also

- Everything is running fine without reboot

the tip on "disnoted" process worked for me

this process had multiple instances running, and one was locking up the CPU with over 300% usage

force quit that, and other hanging processes and apps unfroze

So does anyone have info for us non-coders on what the "disnoted" process is and what this particular one is related to?

I have an update from my initial post months ago.  Unfortunately, the problem is far from solved.  When I get the slow-down or freeze--and the spinning beachball of death--and the "disnoted" process shows as the CPU hog in my Activity Monitor, I can force quit that process, and things return to normal.  More often than not, however, "kernel task" is the offender, and both "escrow security alert" and "keychain circle notification" show as not responding.  This is the one common denominator to the problem.  You can't force quit kernel task.  So when that happens, all is lost.  The only solution is a hard restart.  I use my computer all day at work, and it happens as many as a half dozen times a day, sometimes in quick succession.  It is immensely annoying.  I've spoken with Apple Support twice.  Went through a lot of processes, as they tried their "usual suspects."  No help.  The second guy seemed more helpful than the first, but even so, when I asked what "keychain circle notification" and "escrow security alert" were, he admitted he had no idea.  So I am at a loss for my next move.  I have not tried resetting the NVRAM, as some have suggested here, so maybe that's a next step.  Others, however, have said it doesn't help.

Same problem, manually killing disnoted has solved it for now.

Activity Monitor showed Keychain was hung and long periods of spinning beachball, disnoted was using disproportionate cpu, Force Quit disnoted from within Activity Monitor appears to have immediately resolved all the other hung / non-responsive processes like Keychain.

10.11.6 on a mid-2011 MacBook Air. Thanks to replies who suggested this!

After years of reliable upgrades I've had many problems with both Yosemite and El Capitan with the system becoming non-responsive to the point where I couldn't even start Activity Monitor (don't normally have this running), when it's slow / non-responsive the regular Apple Force Quit never works, it's aways a system-called process not an application I've launched.

Also had numerous odd system hangs on Shut Down (system wouldn't shut down all the way, spinning gear on dark screen, manual power down needed). All intermittent.

Unfortunate as until Yosemite one of the nice things about OS X was its super high stability in comparison to Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10... every windows there is has troublesome). Ironically, though, in Windows CTRL-ALT-DEL almost always lets me kill a non-responsive Windows process and shut down normally, I rarely have to do a forced power down on Windows! On OS X, since Yosemite and continuing with El Capitan, often have to do this.

I wish Apple would stop the annual major updates of OS X (and soon to be Mac OS) and go back to a two year cycle, focusing more on stability. And introduce a more reliable "interrupt" that like CTRL-ALT-DEL for Task Manager on Windows, *always* bringing up Activity Monitor to force quit any process and pulls Activity Monitor to the front. Even when I can get Activity Monitor up, if my system is sluggish due to a hung process or app, Activity Monitor is slow to respond, and if the spinning beach ball is up, Activity Monitor never responds.