2015 MBP Still Running Slow After All Steps

[IPadNParadise]

I have a 2015 MBP, fully maxed out for that year. 16 gb ram and 1tb storage with 940 gb left. Admittedly overkill for my needs, but that’s beside the point. It has the latest OS update. Got it in Dec 2015, no issues before. Recently has gotten very slow. I don’t have any extra App loaded except Affinity Photo. I have 1 small Numbers spreadsheet and 3.75 gb Photos. I have tried all the recommendations to help a slow Mac and nothing improves. Most of my time spent on the MBP is in Safari so is it just super slow nowadays compared to a couple of years ago? Or are there any other suggestions for helping my slow MBP?

ETA: I rarely see the spinning beach ball. Mostly, the screen just sits there doing nothing and then slowly responds. Occasionally there is no response and I have to restart. I wish there was at least the spinning cog wheel, like on my iPad, to show something is going on.

 

[lambertjohn]

How about reinstalling the operating system back to the condition the computer was in the day you purchased it? Obviously, something is going on in the background. Instead of poking around for days and days and days and tearing your hair out trying to figure it out, I would just reinstall the operating system. Start from scratch, so to speak. Betcha that will fix the problem.

 

[IPadNParadise]

How about reinstalling the operating system back to the condition the computer was in the day you purchased it? Obviously, something is going on in the background. Instead of poking around for days and days and days and tearing your hair out trying to figure it out, I would just reinstall the operating system. Start from scratch, so to speak. Betcha that will fix the problem.

I am not real ‘techie’. So, you mean reinstall El Capitan? And then, I assume upgrade it to High Sierra? BTW, thank you for your reply.

 

[Frigotz]

Is your display resolution on scaled? And what does your Memory/CPU says in activity monitor? I had the same because I ran a scaled resolution and since the High Sierra update it got slower and slower.

This is what I could find on the internet and it helped to put my resolution to normal. Waiting on an update now Source: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/windowserver-memory-leak-on-high-sierra.233510/ And some more information: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/7592kx/high_memory_usage_by_kernel_task_with_high_sierra/ and https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8087967?start=15&tstart=0

 

[IPadNParadise]

I looked at my App Store Purchased tab and it showed a download available for El Capitan even tho I swear it came with that preloaded when I purchased the MBP in December 2015. Maybe I’m wrong and I upgraded to that when I received it. Anyway, I am now watching it load El Capitan onto my MBP. Plan on upgrading to HS tho (for security updates ) so I don’t know if I will solve anything or not. Hope I don’t run into any issue while this installation of El Capitan. I’m a good Mac user but not a good fixer!
ETA: No big deal, but I’m thinking the reason that El Capitan shows in my Purchased Tab in my MBP App Store (internet info says it shouldn’t) is because I upgraded to it on my previous 2012 MBP, same AppleID. Cause I also see Mavericks and Yosemite available for download on this 2015 MBP that had been upgraded to Sierra (not showing download for this OS) last year before upgrading to High Sierra this year.