Major Issue warnings

Yes, you have managed to get a lot of adware on your computer. Be careful of what download sites you visit.

To rid your computer of the adware, please use MalwareBytes. It is safe, written by one of our most long-serving contributors here, and excels at adware identification and removal. Get it ONLY from the developers' site to avoid more adware:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/

Adware is probably why the "other process" flag was triggered.

Other than that, your report looks OK except for one thing that concerns me. Your SanDisk SSD performance:

Performance:

System Load: 1.96 (1 min ago) 2.09 (5 min ago) 2.14 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 4.76 MB/s

File system: 31.98 seconds

Write speed: 141 MB/s <<<-----

Read speed: 529 MB/s

I have a similar MacBook Pro with an OWC SSD and it scores in the same test are:

Performance:

    System Load: 1.61 (1 min ago) 1.60 (5 min ago) 2.94 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O speed: 0.15 MB/s

    File system: 28.20 seconds

    Write speed: 487 MB/s <<<-----

    Read speed: 482 MB/s

Your write scores are roughly the same speed as some mechanical hard drives. You may need to check with SanDisk support because I believe something is seriously wrong in that discrepancy between read and write speeds. Most of us use eitehr Crucial or OWC solid state drives for this upgrade,

hirokoumc2608 wrote:

Thank you for your in-depth analysis. I run the EtreCheck again today, and Runaway process came back as a major issue. It also says in a minor issue section that my hardware is vintage!

Is it to do with the solid state hard-drive (SanDisk ? - I need to inquire the shop who replaced it) which was replaced about six month ago. I do hope it last.

The hard disk looks fine. The runaway process is actually something that EtreCheck itself ran. It should have completed, however, and it not show up in your report. So there is some underlying problem on your machine that is causing low-level Apple tools to run more slowly than they should. Sometimes repairing the file system will correct these problems. Try running Disk First Aid in Disk Utility on your startup drive. Here are instructions from Apple: https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/dskutl1040/16.0/mac/10.13

I'm afraid I can't do anything about the machine being vintage. That just means that Apple may not longer repair it. They don't keep spare parts around forever. You should start thinking about purchasing a new machine.

Those sound like EtreCheck warnings. Please post the entire report--that is how its developer intends it to be used. We can't help if we cannot read it for ourselves. Most of the senior helpers here have interpreted thousand of those so posting it is the fastest way to get a resolution to any problems.

The report is too long to do a simple paste. Instead, do this:

Run Etrecheck, then select “Report" from the left-hand pane (scroll down to the bottom of that pane to find):

When its report displays, click the "Share Report" icon from EtreCheck’s toolbar and then "Copy report” from the resulting dropdown.

⚠️ Please DO NOT highlight the text in the report before using Etrecheck’s “Copy report” command—that will garble the formatting and make the report slower and harder to evaluate.

NOTE: Changes in late 2018 to the forum software require you use the “Additional Text" icon (see example below) to embed the report into a post:

Paste the report into the resulting “Additional Text” window:

You definitely have a bit of malware there. I suggest downloading EtreCheckPro to remove the adware. EtreCheck in the Mac App Store has some technical limitations that Apple imposes on all Mac App Store apps. EtreCheckPro is not in the Mac App Store so it can more easily remove malware like this.

Please note that all security and malware removal features in EtreCheckPro are free. You don’t have to pay anything for this.

Also, EtreCheckPro will be able to show you more details about Runaway processes. Sometimes EtreCheck in the Mac App Store can’t see all processes and will just report them as “Other”. Again, EtreCheckPro does not have this limitation. Your last report did not show any Runaway processes so this could have been a temporary problem.

Alas, due to a change in forum rules, I can’t give you a direct download link for EtreCheckPro because I am the developer.

hirokoumc2608 wrote:

Thank you so much for all your helpful advices! MalwareBytes was amazing, and dealt with all the malware in seconds!

I suggest running another EtreCheck report. Malware can be hard to remove. Anti-malware products like MalwareBytes are very good at removing the malware that they find. But they generally only find half of it. So double-check.

Where did you receive these warnings? That is what app did they appear in? Apple Mail? Apple Messages? etc.?

Good info, Etresoft. wasn't aware of that difference, or had forgotten (senior moment)

I can post the link: https://etrecheck.com