Cannot kill CleanMyMac X

[Martyimac]

I agree with you that it’s possible something else is going on. But my OS is a new install. I bought this machine recently from someone who obtains ex-office Macs in bulk. Each one has the disk wiped clean and a new install of the latest OS for the machine, in this case hi Sierra. I got it like this and added a few programs, mostly music production stuff like sequencers and DAWs. Soon after I replaced the HDD with an SSD. It ran fine like that then for some reason I installed CleanMyMac X. Soon after that the spinning pizza of slowness started appearing for the slightest of tasks like opening the App Store (hardly intensive). I get about 16Mbps download, so not too slow. Like I say it’s possible that the SSD ( a no name EBay purchase) may have been the issue. But I have never seen an app so thoroughly destroyed, to come back after every reboot like nothing had happened. It was, frankly, astonishing, like blowing up a Russian tank and turning around to see it like new from the factory, many times, over the course of 2 days. Or like the car Christine, in the movie of the same name. After a while you start to hate it with a passion. It’s possible that my SSD wasn’t deleting, renaming, moving, cleaning the files as I asked them to do. It’s even possible that using the inbuilt unistall button of the app itself failed because of the SSD, TWICE. But after every process I undertook, it looked like it worked, UNTIL I was forced to reboot because the machine was performing like crap or not at all. Ordinarily I rarely reboot a Mac (I’ve been using Macs since 2000, the power PC days. Since I put the HDD back in (with all the software I added) it’s been running great. I’ll probably never know what happened, but, in the future any SSDs will be name brand to eliminate uncertainty.

One more thing. It IS possible that I had a virus/malware, etc. BUT.. I had CleanMyMac X and I used it. I only deleted it because a. Nothing was getting better, and b. It popped up eon every reboot trying to get me to buy the full version, which I found very intrusive and pushy. When it turned out (for me) that removing it was impossible, I started smelling a rat. A program that purports to clean your Mac on a Mac that is getting slower by the minutes, that constantly nags for a paid upgrade for it do do a complete job, that refuses to uninstall, and defies every effort at doing so. But, las stated, maybe something else was creating all of this and CMM X wasn’t the villain.

Thanks for the nice reply. My question would be at this point, why only High Sierra? Is your machine that old? High Sierra was a fixit OS that cleaned up a lot of bugs.....but that was 5 years ago. Also, did you notice the comment that deleting files in launchpad does not clean up all the leftover support files? Lastly CMM, for me, has been flawless but I guess there was bound to be older machines/OS's that complicated your journey. All I can tell you is good luck.

 

[webbga]

He does do some good videos. But, even apple support says that not ALL of the support files from an app get removed using the launchpad method and he even says that in his video. And I can tell you that Macs can, and do, get viruses. The head of our Mac user group locally recommends using anti-virus and/or malware removal tools even if you don't pay for full time scanning capability.
I will also say that more and more mac evangelists are coming around and agreeing that while macs aren't the primary targets, as time marches on more and more viruses and malware are being targeted at macs. I really suspect that @Smoother3 has some malware or a virus that has become imbedded in his old out of date security wise mac.

Your point is well taken. I do have a free copy of Malware Bytes that I run at the end of each day. Takes les than a minute and is just a precaution. I have been a Mac user since 1986 and have never had virus to the best of my knowledge, but hat certainly doesn't mean I won't get one.

 

[russell_314]

Oh these antivirus and cleaning programs… They remind me of RAM Doubler 🤦‍♂️🙃