ReportCrash High CPU & How to Disable reportcrash in Mac OSX
For a while now, all of my MacBooks have run extremely hot and the fans have gone nuts. While troubleshooting the issue, Activity Monitor showed that an app named reportcrash has run very high on the CPU and has killed my battery life. Force quitting the app didn’t help as it would start right back up in a few seconds and climb back to 80-100% usage of the CPU.
What is CrashReporter?
CrashReporter runs in any time an application crashes and it’s designed to saves the application state to aid developers in working out why the app crashed. Basically a process is launching, crashing (and invoking CrashReporter) and then re-launching, repeating this cycle never ending.
How to Identify What’s Crashing
To show which process is triggering this cycle and stop it, CrashReporter is pretty verbose in its logging which makes finding the problem app somewhat easier. Open up the console.app (/Applications/Utilities/Console.app) and look towards the end of your system.log to see what app is crashing.
Unfortunately for me, the problem is a driver by some company called EFI and getting the latest drivers didn’t resolve the issue. The next obvious solution was to disable reportcrash.
How to Disable ReportCrash
Fire up terminal and run the following commands to disable reportcrash:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ReportCrash.plist sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ReportCrash.Root.plist
How to Enable ReportCrash
If you need to reenable crash report, run the following commands in terminal:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ReportCrash.plist sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ReportCrash.Root.plist
TrustedInstaller.EXE CPU Usage
Solution 1: Clear Problem History
The following fix is intended for situations where trustedinstaller.exe causes problems due to the Problem Reports and Solutions history maintained in Windows Vista.
- Go to Start and then select Control Panel.
- Turn on Classic View.
- Select Problem Reports and Solutions.
- Click Clear Solution and Problem History in the left panel.
- Confirm your decision.
- Exit the Problems Reports and Solutions Window and Control Panel.
You can also click Change in the Problems Reports and Solutions Window. And then change the configuration from Check for solutions automatically setting to Ask me to check if a problem occurs.
Solution 2: Change Microsoft Update Startup Settings to Manual
- Go to Start and then select Control Panel.
- Select Administrative Tools and then select Services.
- Scroll down to Microsoft Update, right-click on it and then select Stop.
- Right-click on Microsoft Update again and select Properties.
- On the General tab, set Startup type as Manual.
- Next, display the Recovery tab.
- Choose Take No Action and click OK for First Failure.
- Exit the properties dialog box.
- Bring up your Task Manager by pressing on Ctrl + Alt + Del or Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
- On the Processes tab, look for and select trustedinstaller.exe.
- Click End process to kill trustedinstaller.exe.
Solution 3: Disable Automatic Update
- Go to Start and then select Control Panel.
- Go to System and Maintenance.
- Click Turn automatic update on or off option.
- Next, depending on your preference choose one of the following options:
- Never check for updates (not recommended)
- Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them
- Download updates but let me choose whether to install them
- Click OK to save your changes and exit the dialog box.
Solution 4: Stop the Windows Module Installer That Runs Trustedinstaller.exe
- Click on Start, in the Start Search box, type msconfig and then press Enter.
- Click Continue when User Account Control prompt is displayed.
- In the System Configuration window that is displayed, open the Services tab.
- Locate and clear the Windows Module Installer check box.
- Click OK save your changes and exit the dialog box.
- Next, open Services window again and change the Startup type of Windows Module Installer to Manual.