Advice on rebuilding power hungry MacBook

[filbert42]

I have a 2013 MacBook Pro and the power management seems to have gone to pieces. It will sometimes sit with the lid closed and the fan running full pelt. If it’s not doing that, often, when it’s on standby, the battery will run down overnight. I know the battery isn’t that healthy these days but Mac power management used to be brilliant. I had hoped the upgrade to BigSur would reset something and resolve the problem but no such luck.

The time has come for a complete rebuild, I think. This isn’t something that I have done on a Mac and I’m looking for advice. I don’t want to restore from a TM backup as it might just restore the problems. I do have a lot of software installed and I’m wondering what the easiest way to reinstall is. On a Windows box, I’d use Ninite but I can’t see anything similar for Macs. I do references to Homebrew and I’m wondering if that’s the way forward?

Has anyone any tips? Thanks..

 

[Fishrrman]

I'd create a cloned backup using CarbonCopyCloner.
CCC is free to download and use for 30 days, it will cost you nothing to do this.

Then...
1. Boot to INTERNET recovery
Command-OPTION-R

2. Use disk utility to ERASE the ENTIRE internal drive.
(Be sure to go to the view menu and choose "show all devices", or you will not "see" the entire drive)

3. Re-install the OS.

4. If you DO NOT want "a full restore", you could create a NEW account, and then "move things over manually" a little at a time from the cloned backup. But this requires careful forethought and planning.
Otherwise, I'd let setup assistant handle this.

BUT...
Your post is "but one more of many" I've been seeing about folks who upgraded to Big Sur and then...
... found things suddenly "slowed down" on them.

For a 2013 MBP, I'd run it on Mojave and be happy that way.
But... that's just me.

 

[filbert42]

....
Your post is "but one more of many" I've been seeing about folks who upgraded to Big Sur and then...
... found things suddenly "slowed down" on them.

For a 2013 MBP, I'd run it on Mojave and be happy that way.
But... that's just me.

Thanks, just to clarify, my MacBook has been showing these symptoms for some time, nothing to do with the BigSur update. I was actually hoping that the update would reset some parameters and make it work better

 

[appltech]

Try resetting SMC?
For your model:

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. On your built-in keyboard, press and hold all of these keys:
   • Shift
     
     on the left side of your keyboard
   • Control
     
     on the left side of your keyboard
   • Option (Alt)
     
     on the left side of your keyboard
3. While holding all three keys, press and hold the power button as well.
4. Keep holding all four keys for 10 seconds.
5. Release all keys, then press the power button to turn on your Mac.

 

[Fishrrman]

One other thing to try:

Go to the users & groups preference pane.

Create a NEW account, and be sure to give it administrative privileges.

Give it an easy name/password.

Now, log out of your "regular" account, and log into the new account.

Do things suddenly "seem faster"?
Or... still the same?

If the new account is more "responsive", then the problems you're having are probably "localized" to YOUR account.
If nothing changes between accounts, they are probably "in the OS" someplace.

When you're done with the "test account", just delete it. Using it for testing purposes hurts nothing else.

 

[filbert42]

Thanks for the various suggestions. Nothing has helped so far, I have done a CCC backup and I guess I need to bite the bullet and do a rebuild. Something I'm quite used to doing on Windows systems but I've never needed to do it on a Mac in the time I've had this laptop. I need to set aside a few hours to do it.

What's the best way of listing installed programs? Just use "ls /Applications > prog list.txt" ?

 

[Brian33]

I understand that you don't want to copy anything that might bring the problem with it, but thought I'd point out that after the new install, you could run Migration Assistant and copy (from your backup) only the applications, if you deem that safe. IIRC, there are separate selections in MA for applications, system settings, individual user accounts, and other (or something like that).

 

[filbert42]

Well, I tried to do a rebuild yesterday but none of the options - reinstall original OS, online install of BigSur, etc - would work. For some reason, they can't see my start-up drive. I've found a thread with a likely fix, so will have a go at that, when I get a block of time.