MBP15" 2019 Freezes for 2 Min on Startup -- and has become generally fussy!
Hi Smart Mac Community! I need help!
This MPB is less than a year old, has been functioning flawlessly during that time, and suddenly last week (late July 2020) it's gotten cranky about something and I'm at my wit's end.
Without warning, every time I restart or start up, I pass the login screen and as soon as my desktop pops up, the whole machine FREEZES for about 2 minutes, during which time I can move the mouse, but I can't select anything. I can see on Menu Meters that half the processors peg just before the freeze, so I know it's doing something when this happens, and it occurs every time I start up or restart.
Spidey senses tell me there's some software in there that's been told to activate at startup that's not playing nice with everyone else, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what it is. Restarting in SafeBoot is clean with no trouble at all.
Once it passes this little frustrating period, it mostly functions normally, except that on average twice a day during normal operations the machine will suddenly freeze, leaving the mouse operating but nothing selectable, and I have to do a hard restart. Sometimes I have to restart several times as the first restart tries to pick back up the operation that caused it freeze, and it freezes again. This seems to happen most often when I initiate two apps in close proximity or during mundane activity, like if I open Mail and Excel, or try to transfer a file to another drive while also opening a QT video -- but premiere running 4K video does just fine.
This is a work computer, I'm ultra organized and methodical about everything I install, update and use; I've cleaned out my startup queue (I think?) to the essentials, and while this trouble is work-around-able -- I know there is something wrong happening and I need to track it down. Has this happened to anyone else?
2.4ghz i9
32GB 2400Mhz DDR4
Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB
I'm still running 10.14.6 as I keep hearing how unstable Catalina is and I don't want to rock the boat, plus this doesn't seem like an OS issue -- my money is on 3rd party software making trouble somewhere inside. Yes, I've tried unplugging all external devices (I don't have that many), and it does the same thing.
Any suggestions will be rewarded with generous compliments!
ex. "man, cool shirt! where did you get it?"
Thank you!!
Josh
