To reset the NVRAM (or, on older Macs, PRAM), reboot the Mac and hold down the following keyboard command during startup for at least twenty seconds: Command-Option-P-R.Īfter you reset your NVRAM, you may be required to reconfigure some system settings (like sound and time zones), which are stored in that cache.Īn SMC reset is a bit more complicated, and Apple recommends it only after all other troubleshooting avenues have been exhausted (opens in new tab). If neither app updates nor disk repair are helping, sometimes a good cache flush can get your Mac running just a bit more smoothly.
Your Mac will then run a cursory check on its hard drive to determine if there's anything wrong - and if so - if it can fix it. If you're working on a computer that has slowed down beyond reasonable aging or is otherwise acting beyond the pale, here are my favorite tactics you can take to try and restore it to its former glory. I knew I had a malfunctioning laptop on my hands, so I turned to my age-old troubleshooting checklist. But because they were there, they were constantly crashing aspects of his Mac. It's likely that he accidentally installed one of these "security" programs (or had it installed), which spiraled out of control from there.These hijacks didn't appear to be able to do much beyond slow down his machine with endless failed attempts to run a program - the process didn't have admin permissions, so it couldn't execute a thing from the library. And worst of all, they'd seemingly added a bunch of nonsense files into this computer's Library folder, with random folder names like "prestidigitation" and "beeswax".Now, I want to preface: I'd never seen an attack like this on a Mac before in my life, and finding this kind of full-Mac hijack is very rare. Upon further investigation, I found a couple of self-professed "Mac security programs" that popped up, demanding money to "clean your Mac from junk".Spoiler: These programs were the junk. It was clear to me that his browser had been hijacked.We got rid of the browser hijack pretty quickly - I suggest using Cella's excellent how-to if you ever run into a browser hijack yourself - but the slowdowns were more curious. My father-in-law's MacBook Pro had been running into curious slowdowns for a two-year-old laptop and he kept on seeing weird sites taking over his Safari and Firefox search bars. Serenity Caldwell writing for iMore in 2017: The problem: Mac malware in the Library folder
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