TechLife Australia – September 2019

[ 085 ]

[MAC]
Damaged file and
high CPU usage
I ran EtreCheck because of performance
issues, and it tells me that mdworker(13) is the
‘top process by CPU’ with 56%. Is this normal,
or should I do something about it?
BOB ASPINALL

Mdworker is a background daemon which is
responsible for compiling the metadata indexes
that are used for Spotlight searches. There are
usually several copies of it running at any time,
and each should typically take less than 5% of
CPU time, although sometimes when working
on large files they can exceed that – but never as
much as 56%. High CPU usage by mdworker
normally occurs when it’s choking on a file,
causing it to crash repeatedly and be restarted
automatically. This is normally recorded in the
log, and should be easy to spot in Console (in /
Applications/Utilities). Log entries normally
record the full path and name of the file which is
causing the problem.
One common cause for this is that the file it’s
trying to index has become damaged – for
example, one of its extended attributes has
become corrupt. You can try First Aid in Disk
Utility, although that often doesn’t find
a problem.
Ultimately, you may need to delete that file,
or restore it from your Time Machine backup if
it’s important. Sometimes, after a restart or two,
you’ ll find that everything settles down
spontaneously.
HOWARDOAKLEY

[WINDOWS]

Safe Mode won’t

open

I hope you can help – I can’t get into Safe mode

on my Windows 10 PC.

JEMMA MCKENNA

The normal route for Safe mode is to go via

Settings > Update & Security > Recovery and

click ‘Restart now’ under ‘Advanced start-up’.

Choose ‘Troubleshoot’ > ‘Advanced options’ >

‘Start-up Settings’ to select Safe mode (we

recommend the ‘Safe Mode with Networking’

option to retain internet access). If this throws up

an error, it sounds like the Safe mode Registry

keys have been corrupted or removed – possibly

by an infection. After verifying your system is

[ WWW.TECHLIFE.NET]

HELP

STATI

ON

Q AND A

clean using your anti-virus tool, download and

run Windows Repair (www.tweaking.com). Go

to the Repairs – Main tab and click Open

Repairs. Select ‘I understand the risks’, then tick

‘fix 11’ before clicking Start Repairs. After this has

been implemented, Safe mode will hopefully

function again.

MAYANKSHARMA

[BROWSER]

Refresh Firefox

How can I get some order back into

Firefox? Every time I open it, it seems to be

scrambled.

JIM DUNCAN

Jim couldn’t explain the nature of his

particular problem to us – but we surmised that

To identify mdworker problems, set

Console’s Find box to look for the text

‘mdworker’ in Any, or as the Process.

Can’t get into Safe

Mode? Windows

Repair has the answer.