My Macbook Air keeps freezing, what should I do?

You are using 3.82 GB of 4GB of your memory. Something is taking all of this memory, causing your computer to slow down and eventually freeze. To see what is using the most memory, open Activity Monitor by searching for it in the Spotlight. Select the Memory tab, then click memory to sort it by the highest user to lowest. Whatever is at the top shouldn't be more than about 600 unless you are using some insane video editing/rendering programs. You can "Quit" a process from this window if it is taking up a lot of memory. If you quit something, you will lose whatever you were doing in said process (ex. Word, Safari, etc...) Google Chrome is one of the biggest memory suckers out there. I don't know if you use Chrome or not, but I'm just giving you a heads up.

If you are seeing multiple instances of Adware, remove them.

By default, there isn't anything in the System Launch Agents/Launch Daemons folders, so you can remove these items without damaging the computer. If you have an application that requires files to be placed in one of these folders, it will add it back to the folder. If you decide to remove the items in these folders, which I would do myself, you will have to restart the computer in order to empty the trash.

As for Login Items, these launch when your user is signed in. This means that it starts running as soon as you log into your user account. Things like Spotify can use a lot of memory, even if you aren't using it. If you don't want Spotify to open when you turn your computer on and log in, open System Preferences > Users and Groups > Login Items > Select the ones you don't want and click the ➖. This does not delete it from your computer, just prevents it from launching on start up.

Lastly, there are user Launch Agents that you probably shouldn't have, specifically those related to Mac Cleaners and torrents. Again, you can remove everything from this folder safely. I would suggest removing Clean My Mac if it is in your Applications folder. Macs do not need antivirus software and most "free" antivirus software will tell you there are viruses even when there aren't any. They want you to think you are infected so you will buy their product to "clean" what was never there.

Best of luck

(PS. The Etrecheck shows your performance as excellent, so your hardware is probably good.)

If you aren't sure which processes are safe to delete, or want a second pair of eyes, take a screenshot of Activity Monitor and post it. Note that processes constantly change, but you will know if one or two processes are using a lot of memory.

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

Please launch the Console application in any one 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.

Step 1

For this step, 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.

In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes.)

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Select the BOOT_TIME log message that corresponds to the last boot time when you had the problem. Now clear the search box to reveal all messages. Select the ones logged before the boot, during the time something abnormal was happening. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

For example, if the system was unresponsive or was failing to shut down for three minutes before you forced a restart, post the messages timestamped within three minutes before the boot time, not after. Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the end of the log extract—not at the beginning.

If there are long runs of repeated messages, please post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

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

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.

Step 2

In the Console window, select

DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION ▹ System Diagnostic Reports

(not Diagnostic and Usage Messages) from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

There is a disclosure triangle to the left of the list item. If the triangle is pointing to the right, click it so that it points down. You'll see a list of reports. A crash report has a name that begins with the name of the crashed process and ends in ".crash". A panic report has a name that begins with "Kernel" and ends in ".panic". A shutdown stall report has a name that ends in ".shutdownstall". Select the most recent of each, if any. The contents of the report will appear on the right. Use copy and paste to post the entire contents—the text, not a screenshot. It's possible that none of these reports exists.

I know the report is long, maybe several hundred lines. Please post all of it anyway.

If you don't see any reports listed, but you know there was a crash or panic, you may have chosen Diagnostic and Usage Messages from the log list. Choose DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION instead.

In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)

Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report—they're very long and rarely helpful.

When you post the log extract or the crash report, 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.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

Adware was installed on your Mac.

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.applicationstats.AppStats.plist

~/Library/Safari/Extensions/Searchme.safariextz

You can download the free malware / adware removal utility here > https://www.malwarebytes.org/

Or, if you would rather not download MalwareBytes, follow the instructions removing malware manually here > Remove unwanted adware that displays pop-up ads and graphics on your Mac

That should also remove the Spigot malware from your Mac.

You also need to remove the CleanMyMac app. It will slow your Mac to a crawl. The OS X system runs maintenance in the background for you. Better to not use third party utilities.

http://macpaw.com/support/cleanmymac2/knowledgebase/how-to-uninstall-cleanmymac- 2

Also, uninstall the BitTorrent. That can cause your Mac to freeze as well.

Let's summarize the results of your posting of "etrecheck" output on this site.

You've been told that your computer is freezing because most memory is in use. That's completely false. It's normal for all or almost all memory to be in use. The computer on which I'm writing this has almost all memory in use. It isn't frozen.

You've also been told that adware is causing the freezes. That's also false. I don't know whether you have any adware, because I don't read or believe the output of that app, but I do know that adware never causes a Mac to freeze. Never.

You've been told that there is normally nothing in the System LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons folders. That's—guess what—completely false. The contents of those folders are necessary components of OS X. Fortunately, since your MBA is new, you're running "El Capitan," and you can't modify those folders even if you try to. So you're protected from acting on bogus advice and wrecking your installation. If you were running an older version of OS X, you wouldn't be so lucky.

You've been told that a bittorrent client is causing the freezes. False.

The closest that any of the advice you've been given comes to being correct is that you should remove "CleanMyMac," if it's installed (and again, I don't know whether it is or not.) I doubt, however, that removing it would solve the problem.

<Edited by Host>

Hello romanhippie,

I think Pmintz25 just made a typo and was not referring to the "System" launch agents and launch daemon folders. That being said, you should never just delete files from these hidden directories. Always use a vendor-provided uninstaller or uninstallation instructions. In the case of adware, there probably won't be any such uninstaller or instructions. In that case, you can use EtreCheck's "Remove" feature to safely delete the adware.

I agree that "clean up" apps are unnecessary and could cause all sorts of problems.

However, the most significant issue from your EtreCheck report is your battery. If you already have a cycle count of 229 on a machine that is only two months old, something is seriously wrong. My machine is over a year old, I run it on the battery extensively, and my cycle count is only 196. I suggest you take it to an Apple Store or Authorized Apple Service Centre for diagnostics. Tell them about the freezing problem and the battery cycle count. Modern Macs should get 1000 cycles from the battery. At your rate, you won't even make it a year before that happens.