2020 13" MacBook Pro 2Ghz - i5 , Sequoia 15.1.1

[Edrod13]

Newbie here trying to get some help. About 5 years ago this MacBook was purchased for my daughter. She just finished her first year of college but this semester she was constantly calling me because her MBP started running hot, fans on, and seemed sluggish. I am a PC guy but can manage my way around a mac for the most part. It gets hot sometimes but It appears she randomly gets some spikes in CPU usage but I really can't figure out what's causing it. She is finally home for the summer and I want to get this figured out by either reinstalling the OS or erasing the drive and then reinstalling in hopes it is a software issue. I feel like a reinstall or fresh install would be a great start since its about 5 years old but have some questions since it appears she has the Apple T2 security chip.

1. Because of the T2 chip can I still use the MacOS recovery utility?
2. If so, when using the disc utility should I use APFS for the file system?
3. Will this process install Sequoia 15.1.1 again or the version it was shipped with?
4. Does she need to logout of her apple id or icloud account before erasing and reinstalling?

She has two folders on her desktop with word/excel files that she only wants to keep so I will put those on a flashdrive and copy them back. I would like to reinstall first and see how it works before wiping the drive and doing a fresh install. Any specific directions on how to reinstall the OS would be greatly appreciated. She is concerned with having to download all her apps and software if it isn't necessary. I am hoping to resolve this issue so she can take this back with her next fall. Thanks!!

Eddie

 

[TonyAguila]

Newbie here trying to get some help. About 5 years ago this MacBook was purchased for my daughter. She just finished her first year of college but this semester she was constantly calling me because her MBP started running hot, fans on, and seemed sluggish. I am a PC guy but can manage my way around a mac for the most part. It gets hot sometimes but It appears she randomly gets some spikes in CPU usage but I really can't figure out what's causing it. She is finally home for the summer and I want to get this figured out by either reinstalling the OS or erasing the drive and then reinstalling in hopes it is a software issue. I feel like a reinstall or fresh install would be a great start since its about 5 years old but have some questions since it appears she has the Apple T2 security chip.

1. Because of the T2 chip can I still use the MacOS recovery utility?
2. If so, when using the disc utility should I use APFS for the file system?
3. Will this process install Sequoia 15.1.1 again or the version it was shipped with?
4. Does she need to logout of her apple id or icloud account before erasing and reinstalling?

She has two folders on her desktop with word/excel files that she only wants to keep so I will put those on a flashdrive and copy them back. I would like to reinstall first and see how it works before wiping the drive and doing a fresh install. Any specific directions on how to reinstall the OS would be greatly appreciated. She is concerned with having to download all her apps and software if it isn't necessary. I am hoping to resolve this issue so she can take this back with her next fall. Thanks!!

Eddie

You should be able to log into Recovery. Disk Utility is not necessary unless you want to erase the drive or perform First Aid on it. The last thing you want to do at this point is to erase the drive unless you have a full set of backups to restore from. If you select to reinstall Sequoia, it will offer to install the most current version which at this time is 15.5 (24F74), which is very stable now. I would not hesitate to intall it on top of 15.1.1.

You should not log out of your Apple ID account, much less erase and reinstall unless you have a full, reliable Time Machine backup of all your data. I would simply boot into recovery, launch Disk Utility to perform First Aid on the drive, and then install Sequoia 15.5.