Diagnosing faulty MacBook Pro (late 2011) - super slow (permanently 90% System CPU usage), won't wake from sleep

[TheBloke]

Hi all

I just bought a used MBP late 2011 for my mother, because her existing laptop is dying and I thought macOS might be a good system for her to use instead of Windows.   Neither she nor I can afford a good MBP, even used, so I bought a faulty one in the hope of getting it working.   I bought it because I knew it did turn on and runs the OS, so I hoped the problem might be possible to fix or avoid.  (If not, I can sell it for parts for the same price I bought it for.)

Here are the symptoms:

• The power button only works if I hold it down for ~7-10 seconds. If I press it once, the white light flashes but nothing else happens.  I have to hold it hard until I hear the startup chime.  This means it is not possible to wake from sleep.  If it does go to sleep then all I can do is reset it with a 10-second hold on Power.
• macOS works, but it is horribly slow.  Activity Monitor shows a constant 90+% System usage, with kernel_task using nearly all CPU. (Photo of Activity Monitor.) It is so slow that the mouse pointer is jerky and it sometimes takes 1-2 seconds for typed characters to appear.  To give you an idea how slow it is, it took 6-10 hours to upgrade from 10.8 to 10.13.3 - I don't know how long exactly, I went to bed after 6 hours when it was only at about 60%!

However, some good news: if I boot it into Linux, it seems to run absolutely fine.  Even booting off a Live Install Ubuntu stick it seems reasonably fast, and I just played a 1080p YouTube video no problems.  Only thing that failed was waking it from sleep (see below.)

Also maybe maybe good: once, for about 30 minutes, the problem went away in macOS.  I had just installed 10.13.3 supplemental (which took ~4 hours), then when I came back to the MBP it was suddenly running fine - 0% System usage, everything working.  It even worked to resume it from sleep - the power button worked as normal.

That lasted about 30 minutes then suddenly it shut down, and after that the problem was back.  So the problem is there 99% of the time, but not 100%.

I have tried:

• Resetting SMC (I think - I held Shift/Option/Command and held Power for 10 seconds then released. I could not tell if it did anything.)
• macOS 10.7.5 (which it came with),  macOS 10.8.5, macOS 10.13.3 (currently installed)
• Wiping the HDD and doing fresh install
• Putting in an SSD instead of HDD - I didn't install onto it, but even booting from macOS Installer on USB stick I could tell the system was still super slow (mouse pointer is jerky, typing slow, etc)
• Swaping out the 2x4GB DDR3-1600 for a different 1x 4GB DDR3-1600.
• Using iStat Menus to check temperatures/fan speed: CPU temperature was about 50C, fan speed was normal.  No signs of overheating.
• Running Apple Hardware Test:  it reported a "4SNS" error, meaning a sensor problem, probably tempearture.  The full code was: 4SNS/1/40000000: ID0R-7.616 (photo)
  • I cannot find any help on this ID0R on Google - I see a couple of other people reporting it, but no mention of what it means.

It seems like a hardware problem, however given it seems to run fine in Linux, I hope the situation might be fixable. 

Maybe some piece of non-essential hardware is damaged and causing the CPU to go to 90% permanently?  A piece of hardware not used by Linux?

I did think maybe I should try running it with Clover, so I could try disabling kexts and other such modifications.  I have never used Clover on a real Mac before so I will need to investigate that.

I'm currently trying to use DTrace to work out what the kernel is doing exactly, to maybe better narrow down the problem.

If anyone has any advice for other things to try / diagnostics to run, I would be really grateful for any help.  Thanks very much.

Edited March 24, 2018 by TheBloke

[Cyberdevs]

Hi TheBloke,

You can also reset the PRAM by pressing the Command+Option+P+R and then power on the Mac by pressing the power button, keep the buttons until your MacBook reboots two or three times and then release the keys and let it boot normally . but the symptom you described and as you mentioned might be due to a hardware failure.

 

You can cleanup the fans and change the thermal paste as well but I doubt they fix the problem.

I suggest you stick to older versions of macOS like El Capitan for best performance. High Sierra isn't suitable for older Macs.

[Guest ricoc90]

14 minutes ago, Cyberdevs said:

I suggest you stick to older versions of macOS like El Capitan for best performance. High Sierra isn't suitable for older Macs.

High Sierra is running (surprisingly) well on my late 2009 Core2Duo MacBook with 4GB RAM so it *should* run fine on a late 2011 MBP

[TheBloke]

Thanks Cyberdevs.  I tried the PRAM reset and it seemed to work, in the sense that it changed something - screen brightness and volume reset to default - but no help on the issue.

I think it's definitely a hardware issue of some sort.  I'm just hoping that given it seemingly mostly works in Linux, I might be able to find a way to avoid the issue in macOS.

Yeah changing the thermal paste is on my list, though it's such a hassle to get to the CPU that I thought I'd leave that for a last resort, given the CPU doesn't seem to be overheating.  But yeah I definitely will try at some point.

1 minute ago, ricoc90 said:

High Sierra is running (surprisingly) well on my late 2009 Core2Duo MacBook with 4GB RAM so it *should* run fine on a late 2011 MBP

Yeah, in the 30 minutes of joy I had when my problem suddenly disappeared, it seemed to be running pretty well.   My Mum's usage requirements are incredibly small - she basically only uses Chrome at the moment.  Her current laptop runs Ubuntu and I have Chrome set to auto start, and that is the only program she even knows exists     I hope that if I can get her using macOS I might be able to get her to branch out into running a couple of others, like Photos. 

But as long as Chrome runs smooth, she will be fine.  And it did seem fairly smooth and usable when my HW issue disappeared briefly.

[Cyberdevs]

2 minutes ago, ricoc90 said:

High Sierra is running (surprisingly) well on my late 2009 Core2Duo MacBook with 4GB RAM so it *should* run fine on a late 2011 MBP

I tested High Sierra on several MacBooks but I didn't like the performance  it was before 10.13.3 though I used 10.13.1 and 10.13.2 so I'm not sure if the performance has improved with the latest update or not. 

If you like you can run ASD 3S148 (If you haven't already) and just to narrow down the cause test the hardware one by one (ASD will stop when it finds a failure in the process so you can't test all parts) or just uncheck the sensors and run the test again.

[TheBloke]

20 minutes ago, Cyberdevs said:

If you like you can run ASD 3S148 (If you haven't already) and just to narrow down the cause test the hardware one by one (ASD will stop when it finds a failure in the process so you can't test all parts) or just uncheck the sensors and run the test again.

No, I'd never heard of that, only AHT.  Thanks, I am downloading it now.  I guess this is the real deal diagnostics, that Apple give to its engineers/authorised service agents?

[Cyberdevs]

Just now, TheBloke said:

No, I'd never heard of that, only AHT.  Thanks, I am downloading it now.  I guess this is the real deal diagnostics, that Apple give to its engineers/authorised service agents?

Yes that's the real deal. I use ASD for all the hardware diagnostics on all the Macs with hardware issues.

[TheBloke]

49 minutes ago, Cyberdevs said:

Yes that's the real deal. I use ASD for all the hardware diagnostics on all the Macs with hardware issues.

Awesome. I've just downloaded a big pack that includes 3S152, 3S155 and 3S156 - but not 148.   Hopefully this will be fine, as long as it doesn't require a specific version for specific hardware? 

The folder I downloaded was labelled as "Apple Service Diagnostics (2005-2013)" so that does cover the age range of this laptop.  It  has a whole bunch of files with a lot of names I don't understand (like ASD_ssps_004-0217), as well as multiple DMGs for each of ASD_3S152, ASD_3S155, ASD_3S156.

Should one of those be fine, or should I continue to search for 3S148 specifically?  Thanks.

[Cyberdevs]

20 minutes ago, TheBloke said:

Awesome. I've just downloaded a big pack that includes 3S152, 3S155 and 3S156 - but not 148.   Hopefully this will be fine, as long as it doesn't require a specific version for specific hardware? 

The folder I downloaded was labelled as "Apple Service Diagnostics (2005-2013)" so that does cover the age range of this laptop.  It  has a whole bunch of files with a lot of names I don't understand (like ASD_ssps_004-0217), as well as multiple DMGs for each of ASD_3S152, ASD_3S155, ASD_3S156.

Should one of those be fine, or should I continue to search for 3S148 specifically?  Thanks.

Actually each version is just for some specific models of Apple products, you got to find the ASD 3S148 or you just might get the error upon boot.

Once you open the DMG file it will mount the disk image on your desktop and you can use disk utility to transfer that image to a usb disk and then boot the system with the USB disk to load the diagnostics software.

[TheBloke]

Ahh it's OK, I did have it after all - the file was named weirdly (ASD_ssps_004-0470-A) but I found out which was 3S148 with some more Googling.

Thanks mate, I will have a go at that when I can.  Right now the MBP is installing XCode, which I found I needed before I could run any DTrace scripts.  I'm taking bets on how long it's going to take to install XCode, given OS updates have been taking 4-12 hours

Edited March 24, 2018 by TheBloke

[PPCnostalgic]

Try this: open a Terminal window and paste this command:    sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

You'll be asked for administrator password. When finished (it can take some minutes) reboot your MBP

Good luck

[TheBloke]

Just now, PPCnostalgic said:

Try this: open a Terminal window and paste this command:    sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

You'll be asked for administrator password. When finished (it can take some minutes) reboot your MBP

Good luck

Thanks, but I have already re-installed the OS from a blank drive, so I don't think this could make any further difference?   A bad OS was my first thought and hope, so I wiped the drive and did a fresh install of 10.7.5 from Internet Recovery, then upgraded that 10.8, then again to 10.13.3, and the issue is the same in all.

The issue is also the same when booting from a macOS installer USB stick or into the Installer pre-boot - hence it taking 6+ hours to upgrade to 10.13.3.  Basically whenever macOS is booted in any way, from any source, the system is dog slow.  Only booting Linux gives me a usable system  (apart from 30 minutes when it suddenly worked OK in macOS until it suddenly shut down.)

There's definitely some kind of hardware/firmware problem, because when the system is powered down the power button doesn't operate properly - it has to be held down for 10 seconds or so, until I hear the boot-up chime, else the system will not start.  That problem existed even in Linux.

So either I need to work out what the HW fault is and hope I can fix it (unlikely), or else my best hope is that I can find out why the fault is causing the kernel to use 95+% CPU in macOS, but not in Linux.  If I can then stop that happening - maybe by disabling a piece of hardware or some feature - I will have a usable MBP except with no sleep.  That might be acceptable for general usage.

Next step is to run the Apple Diagnostics - once XCode install finishes (2 hours and counting.. )

[PPCnostalgic]

Open Terminal window and simply type  top  

You'll see lot of infos about your system and you can easily identify some useful information about cpu usage, memory usage, number of threads.... 

[TheBloke]

1 minute ago, PPCnostalgic said:

Open Terminal window and simply type  top  

You'll see lot of infos about your system and you can easily identify some useful information about cpu usage, memory usage, number of threads.... 

I had a look at top earlier, but it doesn't show the kernel task, just normal processes.  Top shows the same 95+% System usage as Activity Monitor, but AM also shows the kernel specifically:

 

As mentioned I am going to try using DTrace to probe the kernel to see exactly what syscalls it is making, in the hope this will give a clue as to what all that System time is actually doing.  I am guessing I will see it's accessing a piece of hardware, or waiting for that hardware, or something like that.  If I can work out what it's doing then maybe I can try and stop it doing that.

But I'll run ADS first, because maybe that will pinpoint the issue exactly.

[PPCnostalgic]

Ok, have you tried a safe mode boot and, if yes, did you see any change(s)?

[TheBloke]

5 minutes ago, PPCnostalgic said:

Ok, have you tried a safe mode boot and, if yes, did you see any change(s)?

No, I haven't - that's a good idea.  I will try that as soon as XCode install finishes.  Thanks!

[bronxteck]

I repaired a MBP 2010 a few months ago. it had alot of the symptoms you said like freezing during post and what felt like forever installs. it wound up being a bad hard drive and bad ram. I guess because of a bad battery it would die before it got to 0% and barely lasted 1/2 an hour

 I see you replaced the ram but are you still using the same drive?

I also had to download the latest EFI / SMC firmwares from apple site. and  installed a fresh 10.12.x on the machine instead of 10.13.x since its kinda buggy still.

Edited March 24, 2018 by bronxteck

[TheBloke]

32 minutes ago, bronxteck said:

I repaired a MBP 2010 a few months ago. it had alot of the symptoms you said like freezing during post and what felt like forever installs. it wound up being a bad hard drive and bad ram. I guess because of a bad battery it would die before it got to 0% and barely lasted 1/2 an hour

 I see you replaced the ram but are you still using the same drive?

I also had to download the latest EFI / SMC firmwares from apple site. and  installed a fresh 10.12.x on the machine instead of 10.13.x since its kinda buggy still.

Thanks a lot for those details.

To be precise, this is what I've done re HDD/RAM:

• Today, I swapped out the 2 x Crucial 4GB DDR3-1600 chips  (which were an upgrade done by previous owner, not original chips) with 1 x Hynix 4GB DDR3-1600 taken from another laptop.  I booted into macOS for 10 minutes and confirmed it was as slow as usual, and that the Power button failed to work as usual unless held for 10 seconds.  Then I put the 2 x Crucial chips back in.
• The other day, one of first things I did, was to swap out the 500GB HDD with a spare 160GB SSD.  I did not do a full install on that, because I was getting some problems trying to do a fresh 10.13.3 install on it.
  • This may have been related to firmware? As I later got problems trying to do a fresh install to 10.13.3 on the HDD too, which is why I fresh installed 10.7.5 from Recovery, then upgraded to 10.8.5 (via MAS), and then to 10.13.3 (also via MAS).  And then finally 10.13.3 supplemental via MAS
    • (it was after supplemental installed and rebooted that the MBP suddenly worked properly for 30 minutes.  Could this be related to the supplemental install? Maybe, but it didn't happen after any other install, and anyway it only worked for 30 minutes before it hard shut down and then the problem came back.)
  • However while I was in installer it was as slow as usual, with my mouse pointer jerky and everything taking a long time.    So I figured the problem still existed and haven't yet tried going back to that SSD.
  • I could certainly investigate this a bit more, and maybe try swapping SSD and RAM at the same time, for what that's worth.

I just checked on the EFI and SMC firmwares, and I'm not running the latest versons.  I guess they weren't required for upgrading to High Sierra.  But that does at least give me something to try, which is always hopeful!

Once this XCode install finishes (how many hours have I been saying that for??) I will do the upgrades to SMC and ROM.  At the very least I guess this will cause them to be re-written, just in case it's possible for them to get damaged somehow.

Thanks!

Edited March 24, 2018 by TheBloke

[bronxteck]

the one I repaired still had the original smc/firmwares it came with from apple. it did not even have internet recovery option available.

if all else fails just disconnect the mbp battery and use the power brick for power.  see if it works as it should without it and if it works properly then you probably need a battery which you probably already need one since it is 7 years old.

I had an issue with an old dell laptop that the CPU,S power management was locked in its slowest state it would never go higher then 700mhz max frequency was 2.4khz it wound up being the battery.

I personally have a 2011 MacBook Pro that I had apple repair under recall. it had GPU failure. for it to boot I had to let it get super hot then it would post to OS. if it was cold it would get stuck at the apple progress bar. looks like only 2012 and 2013 models are covered now under the recall I got mine fixed under it back in 2016

Edited March 24, 2018 by bronxteck

[TheBloke]

3 minutes ago, bronxteck said:

the one I repaired still had the original smc/firmwares it came with from apple. it did not even have internet recovery option available.

if all else fails just disconnect the mbp battery and use the power brick for power.  see if it works as it should without it and if it works properly then you probably need a battery which you probably already need one since it is 7 years old.

Another good thing to test, thanks a lot.   It didn't occur to me that battery could affect things even with external power connected, but I guess it always goes through the battery even with power plugged in.  I know the battery does hold charge for some time, but yes it could still have problems.

Thanks again.

[TheBloke]

OK I know what's going on.  First some general updates:

• EFI/SMC firmware:
  • The EFI firmware wouldn't install, saying the installer was only for 10.8.5 and 10.9.5.
    • I suppose this means it's definitely not required any more.
  • The SMC firmware did install, but did not help; same symptoms.
• Boot with battery disconnected:  no help, same symptoms.
• Safe mode: No high cpu usage.
  • After boot, Activity Monitor shows 98% Idle, as it should be.
  • Wake from sleep still does not work, no surprise as this is surely HW related.  And of course Safe Mode is not really something that's going to be usable as a real solution.
  • But yes, whatever kext it is that causes the 95+% System usage is not loaded in safe mode, and that might be helpful.  Good call, @PPCnostalgic

So then I ran ASD 3S148, and this tells me exactly what's wrong:

I did some googling on some of these sensors, and found my way to a forum created by popular YouTube technican/iThings Fixer,  Louis Rossman.   He has a long "beginner's guide" to Apple fixing, which includes a couple of slides on sensors.  One slide mentions:

Running slow is often due to a sensor issue.
Not slow as in slow hard drive, I mean slow as in the mouse stutters as it moves across the screen with no activity.
The SMC likes to sense voltage levels, current usage, and temperatures from various different parts of the machine.
If it receives information that is out of whack, it will turn the machine off, or make it run very slow as a means to protect itself from damage.

This exactly describes my issue.

So where to go from here?  I suppose I will start investigations on whether I can possibly fix those sensors.  There are so many of them that I hope there is one single cause.  But looking at the rest of Louis' guide, most fixes are very technical.  He's talking about checking things under a microscope at 45x, lots of oscilloscope probing, re-routing motherboard traces and all sorts.  This is way above my level of electronis expertise (which is not hard as my level is very low.) 

I do actually have an oscilloscope, so I could give it a go.  But I am not at all hopeful.   What I can do is basic things like re-seating and cleaning connectors - he does mention that occasionally sensor failures can be caused by for example a bad webcam connection (because some sensors use the same data path as the webcam.)

Alternatively/in parallel, I can investigate the path of just ignoring the issue.  Clearly macOS has code to check the sensors and kill the system performance if irregularities are detected.  This does not happen in Linux.  So if I can find the kext that does it (assuming it is just one kext) and disable it, that could work.  It won't fix sleep, but it might give a usable laptop.

I'd love to post on Louis' forum but he charges $29/month to ask questions (since he started his YouTube he has been flooded with enquiries by other professonal fixers who want him to do their job for them.)    $29 isn't so much to fix a MBP and maybe I will sign up.  I just hesitate because there's a good chance they can't help me much without me needing to do complex electronics stuff.

I guess tomorrow I wil take the MBP completely apart and see if I can find any easy fix like cleaning everything and disconnecting the webcam

Thanks everyone for all your ideas and help!

Edited March 25, 2018 by TheBloke

[PPCnostalgic]

Uhm....... things get worse. Consider a logic board replacement, you can find a used working one on eBay for cheap and within a couple of hours you'll be up and running.

[TheBloke]

Sadly not.  A working replacement board can cost twice as much as I already paid for the laptop.  I can't afford that.  I either need to repair it, or else I'll re-sell it for hopefully at least the price I bought it - or hopefully a little more now I've fully diagnosed it and can advertise it better than the original seller.

I re-ran the ASD this morning and this time it was four sensors instead of seven that showed up bad.  So it's definitely variable, which may or may not be a good sign.  At least I can be fairly sure it's unlikely there's anything wrong with the individual sensors, or the components they monitor.  It's probably a data path or component that they all share.

I'll likely spend the $29 to ask questions of the Louis Rossman group.  There's also the iFixIt forums where people ask technical questions - and I'll be using their pictures to work out how to get the board out in the first place.

Edited March 25, 2018 by TheBloke

[PPCnostalgic]

Agree, I was wrong about prices, MOBO for your model is still expensive (too much indeed). You said it runs smoothly with Linux? If you can't fix it to run Mac OS just go for Linux, after 2 or 3 days of use your mum I'm sure she'll like it.

[TheBloke]

1 minute ago, PPCnostalgic said:

Agree, I was wrong about prices, MOBO for your model is still expensive (too much indeed). You said it runs smoothly with Linux? If you can't fix it to run Mac OS just go for Linux, after 2 or 3 days of use your mum I'm sure she'll like it.

Yeah that is an option.  She's actually already using Linux on her existing Asus laptop.  I moved her from Windows a couple of years ago because the laptop only had 4GB RAM and it was pretty slow, and Ubuntu is much faster with limited resources. 

At the moment she literally only uses Chrome, she doesn't know the rest of the OS exists or even understands what it is. 

That was a reason I was hoping to get her on macOS - I think I can maybe finally get her to use a little more than just Chrome, because everything is both easy and smooth/polished on macOS.  I thought I'd have Chrome always in Full Screen, then she can learn to use the three-finger-swipe left/right to go back and forth between Chrome and the Desktop, where maybe she'd at least use the Calendar and Notes and maybe Maps now and then.  She uses her iPad and Android phone relatively well, so she's aware of the concept of apps and moving between them etc.   I personally hate the macOS Dock, but for someone like my Mum it's a nice and friendly way to find and open apps, with very few 'sharp edges' on which she can get lost/confused.

I especially wanted a MacBook for the multi-touch trakpad - I can definitely get her using two fingers to scroll up/down and go back/forward a page, etc, and probably zoom-in/out, rotate etc as well.  Some of that works on Linux as well, but not as nicely, and it's too easy for her to get into a situation she doesn't understand on Linux - on Linux she'd have to stay Chrome-only.

Anyway, worst case yeah I probably would leave her using Linux on the new MBP.  Not having sleep is still a bit of a downer, but she never takes the laptop out of the house so she's never far from a charger, so hopefully I can just have her leave it on permanently and hope that screen sleep is enough to give a reasonable battery life.

Still, I'm definitely going to take the thing apart and see if there's any chance of repairs.  I like a challenge!