i have a 2012 Mac Mini that has developed a serious problem. It is the I-7 version with 16 gigs of ram an a 500 gig ssd. It has started doing the beachball thing constantly, no matter what I’m doing on it. I checked the activity monitor and it is showing the kernal task as using over 400% of the cpu. I’m wondering what could be causing this? It has made this computer unusable. Thanks for any advice.
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Kernal task issues
- Thread starter vandrv
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A lot of things could be causing it. Hardware plugged in could be misbehaving, a kernel extension could be misbehaving (any VM software installed?), even an app can be misbehaving causing the kernel to do more work. Or the OS itself is having problems.
You will have to go through troubleshooting to figure out what’s going on. Without a lot of information about your setup, we are even more blind than you as to what could be going on.
The simplest way to go is if you have an external drive you can boot from, install macOS onto that. Then boot into it and “start clean”. As you add things back in, if you hit the problem again, you will have narrowed down what is going on.
You will have to go through troubleshooting to figure out what’s going on. Without a lot of information about your setup, we are even more blind than you as to what could be going on.
The simplest way to go is if you have an external drive you can boot from, install macOS onto that. Then boot into it and “start clean”. As you add things back in, if you hit the problem again, you will have narrowed down what is going on.
High kernel_task usage is generally an indication the computer is running too hot. I'd open up the bottom and make sure the fan is running, and clean out any dust.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207359
[doublepost=1566085990][/doublepost]Thanks for the replies. I have two SSDs installed on this computer. I wiped one drive and reinstalled Mojave. When I boot to this drive I still get the beachball but for significantly less time. I will pull the bottom off and see if the fan is running.
I don't know if it is coincidence or not, but the problem seemed to start when ai downloaded DaVinci Resolve and tried editing some 4k footage. I've uninstalled DaVinci but the problem remains.