jos.plompen wrote:
Thank you Steve626, for taking the time and effort to answer my post.
I will look into Etrecheck. I never heard of that road, so that might be very helpful.
It is not that I don't want to explore if the problems are caused by the VPN. It's just that I don't want to discuss "you don't need a VPN, because it doesn't give you the protection you think you get".
I completely uninstalled VPN and that did not make a difference. The problem still occurred.
I much appreciate your respons.
PRP has provided superb advice. Note that the CleanMyMac link PRP provided has ~ 10,000 instances in Discussions for CleanMyMac and these are not users praising that tool, these are users who are having problems with it or trying to remove it. While PRP's suggestion for a "clean erase/install" may seem severe, this software can be quite challenging to remove.
Not to argue about VPNs, you have a right to install and use them; I have noted in the past that using a commercial VPN (which is different than a corporate VPN provided and configured by an employer to access its secure network) is like hiring a security guard to take your postal mail from your personal mailbox by the curb to your front door, all while opening all your mail and reading it while bringing it from the curb-side mailbox to your home. Having the guard might make you feel a little more secure, and yet ... maybe not so much. I think one problem shown in your Etrecheck is that you have 3 or 4 different VPNs all embedded somewhere on your Mac! VPNs can easily cause WIFi dropouts because:
- Simple Firewall settings can make the Mac reject a VPN connection, causing a dropout; and some VPNs cut off the WiFi when the connection to the VPN server is interrupted. Are you using the built in Mac Firewall, or do one or more of those other security tools you have possibly reject a competing VPN? Also, VPNs add additional processing for the network connection, thus reducing the connection speed and sometimes making dropouts occur. My employer's VPN can cause a reduction by as much as 2x in network connection speed, and also once in a while a network transitory interruption that would be otherwise unnoticed causes not only the VPN connection to drop but also all internet connections to "freeze," sometimes a reboot is required. What I am saying is that VPNs increase network fragility and even the really secure ones can have intermittent issues. You have 3+ commercial VPNs and this creates many ways for them to combat with each other as well as with the built in Mac security. Even if you "turn them off" they are still loaded into the system and running in the background unless completely uninstalled.
It looks like you are trying to piecemeal remove potentially offending items that were installed in the past. That may or may not work, some of the components of these tools are "hidden" and might not be accessible except through special steps. I have actually followed PRP's suggestion of complete erase/reinstall one notable time, it was when I "inherited" my college-age daughter's MacBook Air ("Dad, it doesn't work anymore") and had to wipe it to get rid of "stuff" she had installed. It worked and that laptop, a 2010 MacBook Air, is still running smoothly.
One reason that these problems sometimes surface after a significant update or upgrade to the MacOS is that each new version of MacOS makes some changes, especially to security and networking elements of the OS. So something that was in remission or lurking without impacts in the past may now be incompatible and create havoc. WiFi dropping is pretty serious havoc, there is clearly something notable that is wrong, somewhere in your setup.
