On Apr 7, 2020, at 7:50 PM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer <hejb44@...> wrote:

John. Please send me the link to that video.

On Apr 7, 2020, at 7:32 PM, John Robinson via <profilecovenant@...> wrote:

?
Harry, what a thoughtful & excellent detail lesson. ?I’ve never cleared cache’s on my Mac other than Safari.

Now I will after your story and watching a YouTube video on how to clear a Mac’s Cache’s.

Many thanks

John

On Apr 7, 2020, at 7:10 PM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer <hejb44@...> wrote:

?Hello everyone. I hope you ALL are healthy and staying safe.

I was having problems with mail on my iMac. I don’t shut down my computer at night and if I left mail open it would crash. I called Apple support and was told they couldn’t do any thing about the problem because my OS (El Capitan) was too old. They said I should upgrade the OS. Another problem I was having was Time Machine couldn’t back up to my external ssd drives. And disk utility and disk warrior couldn’t fix the problems. I didn’t even mention this to the support guy.

In the back of my mind I had wanted to do the upgrade but was resisting the urge because I just knew there would be issues I would have to deal with. And when every thing was said and done it was going to cost me money and time. I was correct on both counts

On April 1st I bit the bullet and did the upgrade to. It seemed to go okay but the machine was slow AND I had a bunch of apps that I hadn’t used in ages that wouldn’t work with Catalina and I had several Apple apps that had to be upgraded.

The first thing I did was to go through my list of applications - I wanted to cull out the ones that no longer worked and that I didn’t want anymore. I had an old version of “Clean My Mac which I upgraded (although I had to buy a year license - I’ll cancel before it renews). Using Clean My Mac I deleted a bunch of apps.

Next I went through my apps for ones I had purchased over the years and wanted to upgrade - Disk Warrior 5.0, Toast Titanium 10, Photoshop Elements 12, Neo Office 2015.2, Vue Scan 9.6.06, and Graphic Converter 8.8.3.

I purchased Toast and Photoshop Elements upgrades first. It went okay but took a long time. Next I did Vue Scan and it, too went okay. Then I began having trouble. It would take forever to boot a program (spinning beach ball would last 30 seconds or longer) and the last straw was my desk top icons were gone but their names remained but were scrambled. I booted into recovery mode and was able to reinstall Catalina. Once that was complete everything seemed to be working okay, not great but okay. Apps still took a while to open but not as longs as before the second install.

Once the upgrade was complete Disk Warrior and Disk Utility were able to fix the Time Machine ssd drives (I had three not backing up - my iMac, my wife’s MacBook Pro, and my MacBook air).

Next the App Store app notified me I had three 3rd party apps that needed an update and Pages, Numbers, and Keynote needed newer versions. I went to the update page and said update all. The update started and then the app froze. I closed the app and opened it - nothing. I rebooted the computer - nothing. I called Apple Support and after what seemed like hours but was probably 30 minutes I reached a tech - he didn’t know what to do and passed me on to another tech who didn’t know what to do. She talked with her supervisor and said I needed to reinstall the OS and I balked - I felt sure that wasn’t the answer.

Finally I was connected to Richard an AppleCare senior advisor and self-described tech geezer who has been using Apple computers since the days of the Apple II. We did screen sharing and he went through my system files and had me delete a gazillion cache files and more (when I emptied the trash there were 30,000+ files being deleted.

Then he had me open Malware Bytes and scan the computer - fortunately there were no issues.

Next I opened Safari and he had me empty caches, clear history, and remove all files in the manage website data preference pane. He also suggested I should do these things regularly - he says he does it every night when he is through using the computer.

He also suggested that when surfing the net I should use a “Private Window” unless I am going to a site where I will need to logon. He told me web sites sell “pixels” to companies that use them to collect data etc. I don’t understand it well enough to explain it to you but that’s why he suggested using private window in Safari (File—>New private window)

By the time all the files were deleted the App Store app had downloaded all the updates. Amazing.

I started this Journey on April 1 and today it is complete. As I said in the beginning I knew it would cost time and money and I was correct on both counts. Six days and $400 later my Mac seems to be operating just fine!