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PaulTG

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2019
2
0
Hi everyone,

I was hoping for a bit of advice. I have a MacBook Air 2018 that I bought new in March this year. It had been running a bit slow on and off and taking a while to start up but no real issues apart from a slightly sticky keyboard.
Then last week my password stopped working. I tried to reset using my Apple ID and it took me through the verification process and then when trying to retrieve the recovery key it said my Apple ID could not unlock this volume.
In recovery mode, I could not even get into Terminal as it asked for an administrator password (and would not take my password).
In Disk utility, Macintosh HD was greyed out.
(And yes, stupidly, I had not backed anything up so it had my work stuff, business admin and tax files, personal admin and a children’s book I’d written and half illustrated for my son for Christmas.)
In a panic I took it in to my nearest Apple store and after waiting for a few hours was told ‘there are no appointment until next Thursday’, a full week later! So I went home and spent hours on the online support where I was escalated to a senior adviser.
They were all great (I spent the next few days pretty much on the online support with them trying to sort it out). Spent £90 on thunderbolt adapters and cables to try to copy the disk across to an external hard drive with the help of a friends Mac etc. Ultimately, none of the advisers could help me get in and frustratingly, even though I had a written copy of my filevault recovery key, there was no way to get to the place where you would type it in. One of them felt that the permissions had been messed with and another said that someone/something had been messing around with the library files.
I managed to transfer something across on to an external drive. But I would have thought it would be just as encrypted as it was before.
But anyway I erased the disk (after carrying it around with me for a few days hoping it might just work again, gutted) and reinstalled the OS (Mojave) and that worked fine.
But a day later it’s still running slow, takes ages to boot up and there seems to be a huge amount going on in activity monitor (why is it that Apple makes even the most benign of processes sound sinister and suspicions.)

So I was really hoping for some advice on how I can check for any other issues, what I should be looking out for and how I can check for malware (one of the advisers suggested he had a similar issue and it was down to malware but I had Malware Bytes installed and besides, I don’t just click on random links).
Would really appreciate any thoughts or help and sorry for the long post!

Paul

PS
Also, there’s very little on it to be causing a slowdown. Microsoft Office. Roon (no real music library though, just stream from Qobuz and Tidal using Roon). No photos now and hardly any files.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,209
13,277
The FIRST THING I'd do is TURN OFF Filevault.
(I've never used it, I don't want or trust encryption on my main drive - too great a potential of getting "locked out" yourself!)

Could your inability to enter a password have anything to do with failing keys on the keyboard?
You could try plugging in an EXTERNAL USB keyboard and entering the password that way.

If you use any "online services", I would try turning them OFF for a short while. Could they be the source of all the background activity that is slowing down the MacBook?

Finally, it's time to learn something about "backing up", young whippersnapper.
I'd suggest either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Both have free trials for 30 days.
 
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PaulTG

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 10, 2019
2
0
What does Activity monitor Show, %cpu, memory, disk read/write? Physical memory, memory used?



What startup programs, Launchdaemons, Launchagentsk, extensions (from user programs, not OS) do you have?

Thanks so much for getting back to me. Activity monitor seems to have quietened down at the moment, annoyingly, compared to what it has been doing (and what it was doing before I wiped the disk) with very little CPU time being taken up. I've attached a few screengrabs of what it's doing now.

I've also attached screengrabs of the launchdaemons, launch agents and extensions.

Sorry that's probably not much help. It seems to be running OK now except for the slow startup, so hopefully erasing and reinstalling did the trick. I don't think I reinstalled from internet recovery though, should I do it again just to make sure?

Thanks again for getting back to me, Paul
[automerge]1573497892[/automerge]
The FIRST THING I'd do is TURN OFF Filevault.
(I've never used it, I don't want or trust encryption on my main drive - too great a potential of getting "locked out" yourself!)

Could your inability to enter a password have anything to do with failing keys on the keyboard?
You could try plugging in an EXTERNAL USB keyboard and entering the password that way.

If you use any "online services", I would try turning them OFF for a short while. Could they be the source of all the background activity that is slowing down the MacBook?

Finally, it's time to learn something about "backing up", young whippersnapper.
I'd suggest either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Both have free trials for 30 days.

Hi there, thanks for replying, really appreciate it!

Haha, yes when I reinstalled I definitely made sure not to turn on filevault, it's not like there was anything on my machine worth anything to anyone else but me anyway.

I double checked with the keys, and sadly it wasn't that.

The only online service I have running is Roon and it does take up a bit of power, but it doesn't open on start up so shouldn't be causing that. There's very little else either installed or running on the machine now since I wiped it. I'm not getting all of the odd requests to grant file permissions to documents I'm trying to open like I did before, and I was also getting a very invasive Adobe Acrobat Reader update pop up in my dock every time I closed a PDF, which I kept force closing as it seemed 'a bit too keen'. But the Malwarebytes hadn't picked anything up.

? Yes, I'm hanging my head in shame about not backing up, absolutely ridiculous thing to do and I'd always backed up my Pro until it was nicked before Christmas. Lesson learned and thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out.

I think I just need to stop looking at activity monitor every time the fan goes on or something seems odd as I have no idea what I'm looking at. Just anxious not to end up in the same position again (without a machine and unable to work) and also a bit peeved given it's 8 months old.

Thanks again! Paul
 

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