[SOLVED] MacBook Pro lag when idle

[firelighter487]

My Mid-2012 MacBook Pro will experience a lot of lag if I leave it idle for a few minutes. like, I'll turn on the screensaver, go to the bathroom, come back and the screensaver will lag all over the place and it takes a few seconds for the password screen to come up if I press a key.

it also happens without the screensaver running. if I leave it for a while and come back the machine will be unresponsive for a few seconds when I move the mouse again etc.

during normal use the system is still very fast. I experienced slowdowns before due to a bad drive cable, but I ran a disk speed test and the drive speed is fine. I also have Macs Fan Control installed along with istatmenu's and the system goes to a max temp of about 60 degrees with the screen saver running when the lag begins. I have replaced the thermal paste in this Mac so it runs very cool.

I'm curious as to what this could be. I have Windows 10 installed as well via bootcamp and I haven't experienced the lag in Windows. so I don't think anything is wrong with my laptop, rather I believe it is a bug in Catalina. is there any fix for this? I disabled the "put hard disks to sleep when possible" thing in settings but that did nothing.

 

[woutervdg629]

This sounds likely to be one of two things. First, check if you allow your disk to sleep on idle (on Mac it's System Preferences --> Energy Saver --> uncheck "Put hard disks to sleep when possible"). This is the most likely problem and you might want to look into quite a bit before worrying about what I say next.... Malware. It's a bit less likely to be malware, but running something when you're not looking which happens to slow your computer right when you return sounds like malware potential.