Anyone else's MacBook still slow after Thursday's debacle?

[Lavender9]

I'm running Sierra on an old 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro. Everything slowed to a crawl on Thursday, presumably from the same ocsp problem everyone else experienced. My laptop eventually shut down after freezing totally, and upon reboot, it presented me with the prohibitory symbol (?). I figured it was a problem with my hard drive, but couldn't find anything wrong -- reset the PRAM/SMC, ran Disk Utility's First Aid function, etc. Still couldn't boot up.

So I left it alone, and the next day, it suddenly booted up fine. Still slow, lots of spinning beach balls, but not as bad as before. Each time I've tried shutting it down, it gives me the prohibitory symbol, then if I let it sit for a day, it boots up fine, but runs slowly. It "works," but it's horribly slow -- I can't use the machine for anything too stressful, or it starts locking up. It does seem to run without issue if I turn off the Wifi, which makes me think it's a lingering symptom of the ocsp issue.

This came out of nowhere. Anyone else having similar problems? Any ideas what the cause could be?

 

[chown33]

Try a simple diagnostic test: turn off all networking. Go completely offline. That means wifi and ethernet and anything else that connects your computer to any network. Then reboot. Don't turn the network back on until after you do some purely local testing.

Try launching apps, editing local docs, whatever you'd normally do that doesn't involve the internet. If things are still slow, then it's unlikely that the problem is related to the Thursday Debacle. I don't think the OS will try to go online if it sees it doesn't have a network. That is, it won't try using OCSP (where the O stands for Online) if it's not online.

If the computer is still slow even when it's completely offline, then my first guess is that the disk (which I presume is a spinning HD) is going bad. A common early symptom of spinning-disk failure is failed reads, where the default recovery strategy is to try re-reading the block. Do a dozen re-reads for everything from the disk, and things will become a dozen times slower.

If things are snappy when it's offline, and then degrade when online, then something might have been damaged during the Debacle. That could be as simple as a network or app setting, or something more complex like something about an AppleID account, or even more complex, like a damaged library.

The simplest one to start with is your Network settings. Record all the information in it, then delete it and make it anew. Do the same for your AppleID account, if needed. Worst case, you might reinstall the OS, but exhaust other options first, and do a full backup before the reinstall.

 

[Lavender9]

Try a simple diagnostic test: turn off all networking. Go completely offline. That means wifi and ethernet and anything else that connects your computer to any network. Then reboot. Don't turn the network back on until after you do some purely local testing.

Try launching apps, editing local docs, whatever you'd normally do that doesn't involve the internet. If things are still slow, then it's unlikely that the problem is related to the Thursday Debacle. I don't think the OS will try to go online if it sees it doesn't have a network. That is, it won't try using OCSP (where the O stands for Online) if it's not online.

If the computer is still slow even when it's completely offline, then my first guess is that the disk (which I presume is a spinning HD) is going bad. A common early symptom of spinning-disk failure is failed reads, where the default recovery strategy is to try re-reading the block. Do a dozen re-reads for everything from the disk, and things will become a dozen times slower.

If things are snappy when it's offline, and then degrade when online, then something might have been damaged during the Debacle. That could be as simple as a network or app setting, or something more complex like something about an AppleID account, or even more complex, like a damaged library.

The simplest one to start with is your Network settings. Record all the information in it, then delete it and make it anew. Do the same for your AppleID account, if needed. Worst case, you might reinstall the OS, but exhaust other options first, and do a full backup before the reinstall.

The problem seems to disappear when the computer is offline. At your suggestion, I tried resetting the network settings and my AppleID.

I'll try rebooting with Wifi off, maybe booting into Safe Mode and then back to normal, but I'm hesitant to restart the computer, since every time I shut it down it gives me the prohibitory symbol and prevents me from tinkering with it further until the next day.

 

[chown33]

Make sure your AppleID and any other online accounts are completely logged out. I'd also temporarily disable Find My Mac, in case it's confused.

I can't think of a reason other than online accounts for why a Mac should prevent you from rebooting and logging in until the next day. Maybe someone else can chime in on that.

Reboot your router, too. Why? DNS caching may be borked, and it's under your control, so best to reset it to eliminate it as a factor.