thanks Joe. what do I look back at disk I/O, what does that mean?
There are several things to look at in Activity Monitor:
- CPU which indicates the percentage of CPU cycle used by each task
- Memory which indicates how much memory is being used by each task (are there any memory hogs) and Memory Pressure which indicates how often data is being compressed in memory and/or rolled out to swap files on the hard drive (Do you need more RAM). If Memory Pressure is Green you are in good shape RAM wise.
- Disk which tells you which tasks are reaading or writing to the drive the most.
There is nothing that is going to jump right out and say "this is where the problem is" but if a task is at or near the top of the list in two or more of these categories it provides information that may make possible to infer what is going on.
--I'm baffled what can get a kernal to 400%!
I am baffled too. The 400% figure means that a task or tasks are maxing out all four cores of what has to be a quad core processor. In other words your laptop is running at maximum effort. That is not easy to do. I would think that when your laptop is maxed out is the fan running at full speed —
ie. is it loud enough to hear if you listen for it?
But you recommend fixing all that launch stuff and to do that I need the paid Etracheck Pro? (really, I don't know where to find that stuff on free version the red launch servies etc..or can I? PS are sure pro is paid?, this is on their FAQ it's kind of confusing.
"EtreCheck is available in two different flavours - EtreCheck, available from Apple’s Mac App Store and EtreCheckPro, available from Etresoft directly. These two products are very similar. Both are free."
The terminology has changed slightly since I paid for Etrecheck Pro. Both the App Store and Etrecheck.com downloads are FREE and fully functional. I started out with the App Store version but switched to the Etrecheck.com version when I encountered some limitations in the App Store version that are necessary for
sandboxing the app. In the Etrecheck.com version there is an
in app upgrade to add the
Power User Package that provides additional reporting and other troubleshooting features. That is what I paid for. I don't know if that is available in the App Store version or not, but I would think that too would be limited by the App Store's
sandboxing requirements.
Malware Bytes, I hardly use it I have it, but what do you gain from paid version? Thanks.
Primarily the ability to automatically run on a user defined schedule and quarantine any infected files found, including checking for upgrades and silently updating before every run rather than having to be executed manually . I have mine set to run every three hours.
