iMac Retina 5K, 27", 2020 Intel Core i5 running Tahoe 26.1
My Mac starts going slow and ultimately freezing up. Restarting it gets it going again, then pretty much daily after working for a while, it happens again.
Is there anything I can do? Please explain as if you're talking to a 10 year old in 1978, not a modern 10 year old.
Thank you!
Well the internal SSD is only 256GB and it's 85% full, that is possibly part of the problem. If this machine were mine, I would only use the SSD for Mac OS, my apps and that's about it. All data should be store on external media. That being said, KP's can be caused by either hardware or software. On the software side I don't see any of the normal suspects, so I suspect it might be a peripheral that is attached such as an External Hard Disk, external SSD, printer, scanner, etc... that is causing the problem. The only method to check is to remove each and uninstall them, then add each one after restarting in Safe Mode and test the machine for a couple of days, if the KP's disappear then you know its one of the peripherals. Then ad 1 test for a few days and when the KP's start up again then you have found the problem, the last installed peripheral.
KPs can also be software as mentioned so if ANY of your third party apps are out-of-date, then update them. That could cause KPs too.
You have a lot of "stuff" running. Adobe and google products tend to be resource hogs.
You also have a lot of extensions installed, many of which are obsolete. silverlight jumps out at me right away. That was deprecated by Microsoft years ago.
I would strongly consider backing up your data, and wiping the machine, reinstalling macOS, to start from scratch.
It's possible there is an impending hardware failure, but I'm guessing the issues are software related, possible due to old system modifications and kernel extensions, at least some of which you no longer need and may have been inherited from even older machines if you migrated from an older machine to the one you have now.
I would also suggest starting to plan for replacing this machine in the not too distant future. Though it can run Tahoe, Tahoe will be the end of the line for OS upgrades for an intel based Mac.
Please download etrecheck and post the report it generates here.
It will give us a good idea of what's going on. The error logs are rarely useful in troubleshooting things like this.
Thank you for your insight. This Mac is the descendant of several since the early 2000s, so I'm sure . My mother and I got these at the same time and hers has started shutting off, so we are probably due to upgrade anyway. I don't even know what silverlight is. LOL
[Edited by Moderator]
I did it and here is the report. Thank you!
The only thing I have connected is the backup drive and a pretty old Brother Printer, but it's bluetooth. What sort of external thing do I need? So I just move all my docs/pics/etc there?
Also - when I look at Activity Monitor, background shortcut thing keeps sucking up all my power.
Silverlight was Microsoft's attempt to come up with a competitor to Adobe Flash, which is also dead now. I believe Silverlight was deprecated in 2005.
iMac Retina 5K is slow and freezing daily
