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Extreme slowing down of MacBook Pro due to pkd process

B

beta2k

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 9, 2020
27
4
I am debugging this issue for several days now and slowly but surely I am going crazy :) My issue is that after startup, the MacBook is extremely slow. No icons/files are shown on the desktop. Finder cannot be opened. I can barely open the Activity Monitor. I also cannot type anything in the Terminal. The spinning ball is also appearing. It seems that something is blocking everything.

When looking at the Activity Monitor I realized that a certain pkd process is responsible for extremely slowing down my MacBook Pro. When I kill this process, everything works fine and suddenly the icons appear on the desktop and Finder can be opened. While the process is running, I cannot work with the MacBook. The issue is, that pkd seems to be some sort of daemon for "plugin kit". It frequently restarts itself. So killing it after booting is no option, because it will reappear and again slow down the system.

I created another Admin account on the MacBook. After logging in, everything works fine. So the problem seems to appear only with the other user. However, I would like to avoid to switch to a new user and install everything from scratch. I would like to identify the root cause, because maybe a specific software is responsible and then I would end up with the same problem with the new user.

This image shows the files the pkd process is connected to:

7RcEn.jpg


Does anyone know where this is coming from? Why does it block the laptop entirely? How can I solve this issue?

The laptop is a MacBook Pro Mid-2012 (serial number is C1MK9X6ZDTY3; it is a MacBook Pro 13-Inch "Core i5" 2.5 Mid-2012). The operating system was recently updated to Catalina 10.15.4. I also applied this script here to be able to use an old Java Version with Catalina. Could this be causing my issue? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/java-6-runtime-legacy-version-for-macos-catalina.2195954/

Thanks for your help!
 
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Short update: I just deleted all files in /private/var/folders/*
I also checked the user-specific autostart folders and emptied the contents based on this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/356114/154731
nothing changed.

Interestingly, I created another admin user and this one works just fine. So I assume it *must* be something specific to the other user. But what could that be? I checked autostart, I cleared cached files in /private/var/folders/*, I also rebuilt the Launch Services database. Now I am out of ideas.
 
beta2k said:
Short update: I just deleted all files in /private/var/folders/*
I also checked the user-specific autostart folders and emptied the contents based on this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/356114/154731
nothing changed.

Interestingly, I created another admin user and this one works just fine. So I assume it *must* be something specific to the other user. But what could that be? I checked autostart, I cleared cached files in /private/var/folders/*, I also rebuilt the Launch Services database. Now I am out of ideas.
Click to expand...

I had this issue earlier today. Surprisingly, updating to the 10.15.4 supplemental update appears to have fixed it - maybe try that?
 
FNH15 said:
I had this issue earlier today. Surprisingly, updating to the 10.15.4 supplemental update appears to have fixed it - maybe try that?
Click to expand...

thanks for your reply. i am quite new to mac (but learned a lot the last days), but I have to ask: where can I get the 10.15.4 supplemental update? And while we are at it: How can I check if I already have it?

The reason why I am asking on how to check if I already have it is, because yesterday some updates were installed and I was wondering which ones they were. Strangely, it took long to install the updates and then it got stuck at "less than 1 minute remaining". It stayed there for ~30 minutes and then I did a hard reset. Not ideal, I guess, but then the MBP booted normally (with the issues described above remaining, obviously).

EDIT: just googled the update to get some info. seems like the supplemental update is exactly the one that was installed yesterday. will check again later. as I said it got stuck at "less than 1 minute remaining", but after a hard reset it seemed fine. still the issue descriped in the OP remained.
 
Did you ever resolve this? Started happening to me over the weekend. I can use App Tamer to limit/stop the process, but like you, I'd like to figure out what is going on.
 
nope, never figured it out. for me, even app tamer couldn't resolve the issue. I had to work around the issue by creating a new user account. with the new user, the issue did not appear.

most people told me that the reason has to be software that you recently installed. so you could try to remove recently installed software one-by-one and see if the issue persists ...
 
beta2k said:
nope, never figured it out. for me, even app tamer couldn't resolve the issue. I had to work around the issue by creating a new user account. with the new user, the issue did not appear.

most people told me that the reason has to be software that you recently installed. so you could try to remove recently installed software one-by-one and see if the issue persists ...
Click to expand...

Try running EtreCheck from the user account that has the issue and see if it points to anything.
 
Last edited:
matthewddaniels said:
I have same problem. I think it might be a plugin for FCP. Its driving me nuts
Click to expand...

Not FCP, because I have pkd but not FCP. But you are close. The manual page for pkd says "pkd -- management and supervision daemon for plug-in services". This leads me to believe one of your plug-ins is misbehaving.
 
HenryAZ said:
Not FCP, because I have pkd but not FCP. But you are close. The manual page for pkd says "pkd -- management and supervision daemon for plug-in services". This leads me to believe one of your plug-ins is misbehaving.
Click to expand...

Do you use Chrome? (/Does this happen when there are no internet browsers running? Stopping Chrome seems to have solved the problem for me; wonder if it's an extension gone mad.)
 
Hi guys,

I have noticed a similar issue.
It's happened to me especially when I ask for the menu using right-click.
The app stuck (mail, safari, finder, ...) and the pkd process overload.
 
Chrome yes (or rather Brave, which is based on Chrome engine). Ever since I started using it, pkd launches periodically, killing odd things like the Finder and Preview.
 
After a few test, I may find some information.
I uninstalled Luminar and it looks like the pkd process slows down.
Another point when the pkd process starts to go crazy, I killed it in the activity monitor and after pkd become more stable.
 
doyouspeakwingdings said:
Someone elsewhere thinks they traced the problem back to their Gmail account and Apple Mail. Do you use Apple Mail + Gmail?
Click to expand...

you mean the connection between these two? Definitely gmail is used. I need to check if Apple Mail is used too.
 
It seems I managed to resolve this on my machine. Do you use iStat Menus? Try stopping it, or at minimum try reducing its update frequency. I had also tried turning on "Reduce Transparency" in Accessibility, but I think that was a coincidence. For the first time in months I have had no issues for a couple of days since stopping iStat Menus, though for the sake of thoroughness I should also add that I ran Onyx's maintenance scripts a couple of days ago as well. The only reason I discount that is that I had tried it a couple of times previously without effect. I'll try reintroducing iStat Menus at some point and see what happens.
 
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When I removed iStat, things also seemed to get better, but I notice pkd still shoots up to around 100% on one of the cores on my iMac 2020 every once in a while. I think this could be due to the fact that Bjango has to update their software for all of the Mac hardware and unfortunately they have started updating painfully slowly. But this wouldn't explain why it is causing problems on older computers too. Anyway, I'm happy that my system is now usable without force quitting pkd every 10 minutes.
 
khongaeng said:
When I removed iStat, things also seemed to get better, but I notice pkd still shoots up to around 100% on one of the cores on my iMac 2020 every once in a while. I think this could be due to the fact that Bjango has to update their software for all of the Mac hardware and unfortunately they have started updating painfully slowly. But this wouldn't explain why it is causing problems on older computers too. Anyway, I'm happy that my system is now usable without force quitting pkd every 10 minutes.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear the issue is largely resolved. I’m going to try and get Bjango’s attention to this thread.
 
Hi! The pkd process is a plugin management daemon. We don’t use plugins, and we don’t interact with the process at all, so we’re not sure why removing iStat Menus would have any effect.

If you’d like to test our new beta, which includes lots of improvements for macOS Big Sur, please download it here: https://download.bjango.com/istatmenusbigsur/

khongaeng said:
I think this could be due to the fact that Bjango has to update their software for all of the Mac hardware and unfortunately they have started updating painfully slowly.
Click to expand...

We usually have support working for new Macs pretty quickly, and often provide betas for people who get in contact. That support gets rolled into the next update. The main thing we add is support for the model specific sensors, which means typically the only difference for a brand new Mac model we don’t yet have support for is that the sensor info won’t show.

iStat Menus 6.5 is very close to release, and it’s a pretty significant update we’ve spent months on. Please let me know what you think!
 
Bjango said:
Hi! The pkd process is a plugin management daemon. We don’t use plugins, and we don’t interact with the process at all, so we’re not sure why removing iStat Menus would have any effect.

If you’d like to test our new beta, which includes lots of improvements for macOS Big Sur, please download it here: https://download.bjango.com/istatmenusbigsur/



We usually have support working for new Macs pretty quickly, and often provide betas for people who get in contact. That support gets rolled into the next update. The main thing we add is support for the model specific sensors, which means typically the only difference for a brand new Mac model we don’t yet have support for is that the sensor info won’t show.

iStat Menus 6.5 is very close to release, and it’s a pretty significant update we’ve spent months on. Please let me know what you think!
Click to expand...
Thank you.
 
Threadpeople, if you have FXFactory, it was one of their FCPX plugins. It's been three days so far without a pkd hang, I am going to reintroduce them one by one to identify the culprit. Good luck to y'all.
 
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