This is a learning from a just solved situation and not a request for help or problem solution request. Hopefully it might save someone else from the dope-slap I gave myself.
This morning I was reminded old troubleshooting techniques never die they are just forgotten.
- THE SITUATION:
- The battery would not charge and was rapidly drained to < 7%
- All I/O slowed to pre-global warming glacial speed
- Launching an app could take minutes to complete
- Printers appearing and disappearing
- Quit an app and it might leave individual tasks still running
- Etc'
- TROUBLESHOOTING:
- Reboots, diagnostic tools, logs, nothing helped.
- Then the battery ran down so the mandatory first order of business was to get the power working again which plugging in the Apple Poser supply in addition to the power supposedly coming from the Thunderbolt 3 Dock solved that at least temporarily.
- SOLUTION:
- To make a short story even longer, I contacted OWC Technical Support and at their suggestion pulled every connection out of the Thunderbolt 3 Dock, let it sit for a minute or so then plugged everything back in, reconnected the TB3 to the MacBook Pro and disconnected the Apple Power supply. Every problem disappeared.
- CONCLUSION
- A long time ago I learned
- anything that effects I/O has the potential of doing lots of apparently unrelated mischief
- Hubs and Docks are often not the most carefully engineered devices
- A complete power down reset may be the only way to completely reboot/reset a system or accessory
- Just because I haven't found the necessity of using a trouble shooting technique in a few years, does not mean it is obsolete or won't work
- No matter how many red herrings there are, start with the most serious problem first. (In this case I allowed the on screen issues distract me from the impending shutdown due to the discharged battery.)
