Slow Mac

[Fred Claus]

I have a client who has a 2016 Macbook Pro. She has 16gb of RAM and a 500gb hard drive. Her system is as she puts it "Extremely Slow". She has 195 gb of hard drive space free of the 500 total. Her CPU is running at between 7 and 35% and her RAM has 4gb free of the 16 total. Here's what I've done so far.

Checked her Storage Optimization
Cleared her Cache
turned off any running programs
Rebooted her computer with all her apps stopped

She has Clean My Mac and she said she's run that to clean it as well. I've advised her to look for unused programs and remove them, and that's when we found the attached image. I can't find anyplace online where it talks about this program, and she can't find any way to get rid of it. We need help.

1. What is this and how do we get rid of it?
2. Is there anything else we should look at as to a cause for the slow machine?

 

[Kitten Kong]

All I can think of is the usual hard drive condition?

 

[Fred Claus]

195gb of free space isn't enough on a Mac? Is that what you mean by "unusual hard drive condition"? Forgive the stupid question. I don't work on Macs personally but shes a friend so I'm trying.

 

[overburnz]

I have a client who has a 2016 Macbook Pro. She has 16gb of RAM and a 500gb hard drive. Her system is as she puts it "Extremely Slow". She has 195 gb of hard drive space free of the 500 total. Her CPU is running at between 7 and 35% and her RAM has 4gb free of the 16 total. Here's what I've done so far.

Checked her Storage Optimization
Cleared her Cache
turned off any running programs
Rebooted her computer with all her apps stopped

She has Clean My Mac and she said she's run that to clean it as well. I've advised her to look for unused programs and remove them, and that's when we found the attached image. I can't find anyplace online where it talks about this program, and she can't find any way to get rid of it. We need help.

1. What is this and how do we get rid of it?
2. Is there anything else we should look at as to a cause for the slow machine?

remove clean my Mac and that app, sometimes they are open and visible on the upper tab by the date and battery , to delete the app just go applications (on the finder menu) and select the app and press cmd + backspace to delete it

 

[fincoder]

Is that what you mean by "unusual hard drive condition"?

I assume @Kraken means bad sectors on the HDD. That is a very common cause of computers being slow. You need to replace the HDD with an SSD. Clone the old HDD so you can try and recover the OS/apps/data from it without risk of losing data, or simply take that risk and recover from it directly.

 

[overburnz]

I assume @Kraken means bad sectors on the HDD. That is a very common cause of computers being slow. You need to replace the HDD with an SSD. Clone the old HDD so you can try and recover the OS/apps/data from it without risk of losing data, or simply take that risk and recover from it directly.

every model since retina 2012 has a proprietary SSD

 

[Fred Claus]

remove clean my Mac and that app, sometimes they are open and visible on the upper tab by the date and battery , to delete the app just go applications (on the finder menu) and select the app and press cmd + backspace to delete it

This didn't work The CommandLine is not in Applications, only on the launchpad and it's not clickable.

 

[overburnz]

This didn't work The CommandLine is not in Applications, only on the launchpad and it's not clickable.

It’s “terminal” and use finder

 

[Fred Claus]

It’s “terminal” and use finder

Found it. It was in a folder called Maxon Cinema 4D

 

[Markverhyden]

Mac's generally don't need third party tools like clean my mac.

 

[Fred Claus]

Mac's generally don't need third party tools like clean my mac.

Is it because they have the tools to do it built in? I know a lot of people who use Onyx personally but I've heard nothing good about CleanMyMac.

 

[timeshifter]

I've never seen Clean My Mac on someone's Mac where the client knew how it got there.

First thing I'd do is run Malwarebytes for Mac on that machine.

 

[sapphirescales]

Jesus, a lot of misinformation here. First off, a 2015 definitely has a 500GB SSD, NOT a hard drive. Second, IS it actually slow? How long does it take to start up and access files? My guess is her internet is slow and she's blaming it on the computer.

If it does indeed take a long time to start up, open programs, etc, then check out the health of the SSD via a program like gSmartControl. Try multiple programs. As a technician, you SHOULD have a startup USB/external SSD with a Windows and/or *nix environment packed with tons of diagnostic and repair utilities. Run a program like HDTune in a bootable Windows environment to test the actual read speed of the SSD. If it's significantly slower than Apple's specifications, then it's time for a replacement, regardless what SMART says.

Me personally? I'd just extract the SSD, put it into an external enclosure, and test the speed using another Mac. Yes, that requires specialized equipment, but as a technician you should have this equipment. What if her Mac wouldn't turn on and she had important files she needed off the drive? She'd just be f*cked and you'd tell her to go to Apple? Unprofessional. I don't care if you only work on Macs occasionally. The external enclosures I'm talking about cost less than $200 and the software is cheap too - it just takes time to set up. There's no reason why every technician shouldn't have them. If you want the job then you have to have the tools and knowledge to do the job.

 

[Markverhyden]

Is it because they have the tools to do it built in? I know a lot of people who use Onyx personally but I've heard nothing good about CleanMyMac.

I was being exceeding nice when I called CleanMyMac a third party tool. It's in the class of software utilities that Apple and M$ do not blacklist because they pay the "tax" to have them approved. It's part of the scare ware class of software. Produces lots of RED in the screen to scare people into paying for a license. Of course after they pay the license the machine miraculously runs better.

As @timeshifter said it gets bundled into all kind of other scare/scam ware

*nix's don't need any tools these days, including OS X/macOS. They all have tools which run in the background and at boot to maintain file system integrity. This includes legit tools like Onyx.

 

[Fred Claus]

Well thanks for the information everyone. We were finally able to remove the strange program as well as the CleanMyMac program. Computer is running much faster now.

 

[InHomeComputerHelp.com]

I've removed Clean My Mac before. I have used Ccleaner for Macs and like it. I assume you've removed a garbage that was loading on startup?

Rick