MacBook 2011 i7 CPU at 95% overload

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Level 1

11 points

MacBook 2011 i7 CPU at 95% overload

MacBook Pro early 2011 Quadcore i7 2GHz with 8Gb RAM

All was fine with this computer for years and I planned to give it to my dad. It had OS10.8 and I had the Apple store do a fresh install of OS 10.11.6 just before Christmas. Suddenly, it stared running extremely slow, even to open a window or load iWork and iLife. It says 4 hours to load the iWork disc. I took it into the genius bar again and they did hardware test which all show passing other than a new aftermarket battery I installed a month ago. The Monitor program show the CPU is at 95% operation all the time and the fans start to increase. The mouse drags just moving it across the screen. Opening up "system profiler" to see what model this computer was, took 20 seconds to open. I then put an SSD drive and new RAM into the laptop with no change. This new SSD also got a formatted and freshly loaded at the genius bar at my 3rd visit. They have no answers to why the processor is at 95% operation all the time. I then reset the System Management firmware with no change. I put the old drive back in with OS10.8 and still dragging at 95% CPU drain all the time. I pulled the hard drive entirely, then loaded OS 10.11.6 on an SD card and booted up on that. Still the CPU is running at 95% or even higher operation. Some times the computer will start up and work for 3 or 5 minutes normally, then suddenly the processor starts working over 90% function no matter if the laptop boots on an external drive with OS10.8 the internal drive with OS10.11 or an SD card with OS10.11. I tried booting in "Safe" mode from the SD card and all seems okay again temporarily. I then booted back in regular mode and all worked fine for few minutes again before returning to high CPU processing and major slow-down. There are NO applications on this computer! It's formatted and fully scratch loaded from the genius bar. What is going on? Is the mother board or CPU failing?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), i7 Quad

Posted on Jan 2, 2018 12:12 PM

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Answer 1

AscendMe.com Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 13, 2018 10:57 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT

In the middle of my post, I mentioned the System Management getting reset. The Genius Bar also reset that when I brought the laptop in to be checked for the overloading. No change with SMC reset.

So maybe the battery is the problem? It's the only thing that was recently changed before all this happened. I have another battery I can try, but it's also aftermarket. The Genius Bar doubts the battery has anything to do with an overworking CPU in a freshly loaded machine. If another battery does not help, I'll have to concluded that the system board has something failing.

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Answer 2

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jan 3, 2018 8:42 AM in response to AscendMe.com

For futher analysis you may post an Etrecheck report. The link is http://www.etrecheck.com

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Answer 3

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jan 10, 2018 9:50 AM in response to AscendMe.com

Poor may be indication your system is taking a long time to do things that should not take that long.

A runtime of 10:00+ minutes could indicate your internal HD is having issues and may need to be replaced, a hard drives livespan can generally be measured in single digits as to the years you can expect before it breaks down.

Your other bottleneck is 4GB RAM. The 2011 MacBook Pro is expandable to 16GB RAM and can be upgraded with an SSD as well. Both these upgrades would be highly beneficial. If only one of these would be feasible the SSD should increase the response of that machine dramatically by itself, 8 or 16 GB would be "the icing on the cake"

Both these upgrades would make your Mac faster than it was when you first bought it.

outside of that the report does not show too much out of line. I suggest you

Shut down

Disconnect all external devices

Reset the System Management Controller (SMC)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

repeat 2/3 times

Reset the nonvolatile random-access memory (NVRAM)

(OPTION+COMMAND+p+r at Startup)

How to reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

repeat 2/3 times

Then use safeboot (SHIFT at Startup)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Then reboot normally with devices disconnected.

and see if the CPU is not spiking after doing so but I think with 4GB RAM on an OS that post-dates 10.6 you are going to take a hit regardless of Apple's "2GB is all you need for OS X.x" - the findings on this forum is even 4GB you will not get much bang for your buck.

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Answer 4

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jan 10, 2018 1:13 PM in response to AscendMe.com

I read your post, you said you safebooted but you never stated you did an SMC reset or stated the Apple techs did one. CPU sluggishness, fan mismanagement by the system and some intermittent/unexplained issues can be solved by repeating an SMC reset several times repeatedly, this is especially true when no 3rd party devices or software are present but the symptoms are. Did you reset the SMC?

If you have a discrepancy between two identical stock systems with no 3rd party devices or software where you are interchanging hardware and ruled out the SSD and RAM is a fault and one system is under performing in comparison to the other you have an issue with the logic board, the CPU, the ventilation, an IC or problem with an aftermarket battery (you installed or purchased?) and didn't clearly state you tried in the better performing mac then despite Apples HW test which is possibly faulty it's one or more of the possible faults above.

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Answer 5

AscendMe.com Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 3, 2018 8:34 AM in response to AscendMe.com

I have closed the lid and the computer goes to sleep. When it wakes, the problem is gone for another 5 or 10 minutes, but then slowly, the processor activity goes from 1% back to 96% just checking email or viewing eBay.

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Answer 6

AscendMe.com Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 10, 2018 8:29 AM in response to AscendMe.com

I'm not sure what this report is saying beyond performance "poor". Does anyone know why my computer is climbing to 96% overload right after start up and temporarily calms down to 3% after closing the lid to sleep?

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Answer 7

Eric Root

Level 10

685,221 points

Jan 10, 2018 9:58 AM in response to AscendMe.com

The 2 places I’ve seen recommended most to buy reliable RAM are below. I have purchased RAM several times and a hard drive from Other World Computing and have always been very satisfied with the product and service. They have on-line instructions on how to replace the RAM. OWC has also tested RAM above what Apple states is the maximum. I had 6GB installed on an early 2008 iMac supposedly limited to 4 GB and noticed an improvement.

Crucial

Other World Computing

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Answer 8

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jan 10, 2018 10:36 AM in response to Eric Root

I tend to favor OWC Macsales.com, they are very good. Additionally to the OP you should only buy RAM that specifically says it will work in that Mac. You may find RAM that appears to be identical in every way for cheaper by some other vendor but in many cases it is flakey when installed.

Verify the vendor says it will work in your model.

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Answer 9

AscendMe.com Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 10, 2018 12:56 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT

No one is reading my post. Please read it fully! I have tried 3 NEW hard drives in the laptop and two of them are SSD. The RAM was at 8Gb and was doing the same problem. The 3 drives and RAM work perfectly in my other laptop which is the same model and year. The 4Gb of RAM is the original Apple RAM. The 8Gb RAM was from "Crucial" memory and so was the SSD. These are very repritable hardware parts suppliers. The laptop overloads no matter what RAM, OS or hard drive is used.

Anyone have an answer? This is not a RAM or Drive problem. It's not the OS. I have tried 3 different versions of OS including 10.6, 10.8 and 10.11 and all overload the CPU after 5 minutes of startup with no applications running, even with a clean install.

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Answer 10

AscendMe.com Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 8, 2018 10:58 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

EtreCheck version: 3.4.6 (460)

Report generated 2018-01-08 10:48:49

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 10:03

Performance: Poor

Click the [Lookup] links for more information from Apple Support Communities.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.

Problem: Computer is too slow

Hardware Information:ⓘ

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,2

1 2 GHz Intel Core i7 (i7-2635QM) CPU: 4-core

4 GB RAM Upgradeable - [Instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok

Handoff/Airdrop2: not supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 5

Video Information:ⓘ

Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 384 MB

Color LCD 1680 x 1050

AMD Radeon HD 6490M - VRAM: 256 MB

Disk Information:ⓘ

WDC WD5000BTKT-40MD3T0 disk0: (500.11 GB) (Rotational)

[Show SMART report]

(disk0s1) <not mounted> [EFI]: 210 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2 - Journaled HFS+) / [Startup]: 499.76 GB (472.22 GB free)

MATSHITADVD-R UJ-898 ()

USB Information:ⓘ

USB20Bus

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

hub_device

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

USB20Bus

hub_device

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Thunderbolt Information:ⓘ

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

System Software:ⓘ

OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G18013) - Time since boot: less than an hour

Gatekeeper:ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers

System Launch Agents:ⓘ

[not loaded] 7 Apple tasks

[loaded] 170 Apple tasks

[running] 61 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[not loaded] 48 Apple tasks

[loaded] 165 Apple tasks

[running] 79 Apple tasks

Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.plist (Microsoft Corporation - installed 2015-08-15) [Lookup]

Internet Plug-ins:ⓘ

Default Browser: 601 (installed 2016-07-08)

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2018-01-03)

iPhotoPhotocast: 7.0 (installed 2018-01-03)

3rd Party Preference Panes:ⓘ

None

Time Machine:ⓘ

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU:ⓘ

9% WindowServer

6% Activity Monitor

2% sysmond

1% kernel_task

0% SystemUIServer

Top Processes by Memory:ⓘ

475 MB kernel_task

97 MB WindowServer

90 MB mds_stores

65 MB softwareupdated

63 MB Safari

Top Processes by Energy Use:ⓘ

10.62 WindowServer

1.88 Activity Monitor

0.76 sysmond

0.02 locationd

Virtual Memory Information:ⓘ

1.98 GB Available RAM

682 MB Free RAM

2.02 GB Used RAM

1.31 GB Cached files

0 B Swap Used

Software installs (last 30 days):ⓘ

Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac: (installed 2018-01-02)

Install information may not be complete.

Diagnostics Events (last 3 days for minor events):ⓘ

2018-01-08 10:16:42 Last shutdown cause: 3 - Hard shutdown

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