Catalina issues - Stuffit identified as malware:

[The_Scribe]

Greetings all,

I have a late 2013, 21.5" iMac that was running just fine with High Sierra. I decided to upgrade to Catalina (not sure why at this point). I did an upgrade, not a clean install.

Everything seemed to work fine for 2 to 3 weeks, and then I started having issues with Firefox. It would simply hang, force quit would close it, but I would have to restart to even try to use it again.

Then I noticed things like emptying the trash would require a relaunch of finder to complete the process.

I had installed two programs just before all this happened, but removing them did not solve the issue. The programs were both recommended by several websites: itsyCal and Carbiner Elements. The first adds a pop-up calendar to the menu bar and the second allowed me to change the behaviour of the Home and End keys.

I tried to repair the OS using Command-R, but the issues would re-appear after a few hours of use.

Yesterday, I tried a reinstall of the OS. It seemed to work. Then, today, I clicked by user name, then Login Window, as I was leaving the computer for a while - and I had Firefox and a couple of other apps open. When I returned, Firefox seemed to hang, I clicked on links they did not work, I clicked on tabs, they did not change. I Quit Firefox, opened it up again and it seems fine.

A few hours later I downloaded a couple of zip files from a legit site...I double-click on the zip file to extract the PDFs and I get a message that says: "Stuffit Expander.app will damage your computer. You should move it to trash."

The dialogue box includes a checkbox: "Report malware to Apple to protect other users."

The two buttons available are "Move to Trash" or "Cancel". I have only cancelled for now.

I searched the message on Google and got 0 results! Obviously it is a new thing.

So, it this Catalina deciding that and old stand-by app is bad; or is Stuffit actually bad; or what?

 

[Just_Me_D]

Which version of Firefox are you running?


https://www.imore.com/latest-mozill...ent-homeland-security-says-you-should-upgrade

 

[The_Scribe]

Firefox 74.0 64 bit, the most current version.

I initially thought it was a Firefox problem, but with the issue with emptying trash and now identifying Stuffit as malware it has to be Catalina.

Although I have no issue with dumping Stuffit if it is malware!

 

[Just_Me_D]

Firefox 74.0 64 bit, the most current version.

I initially thought it was a Firefox problem, but with the issue with emptying trash and now identifying Stuffit as malware it has to be Catalina.

Although I have no issue with dumping Stuffit if it is malware!

If it were me, I’d remove StuffIt from the computer completely, reboot the computer and then see if things run smoothly. If it does, you did the right thing, but if not, something else is the culprit, and since you upgraded from High Sierra, I’m wondering if you have an app or two that may need to be upgraded to work properly with Catalina.

 

[The_Scribe]

Before I did the upgrade I went through all of my apps and got rid of the 32 bit apps that did not have an upgrade to them.

It's possible that there are some that got through, but I think they will deliver an obvious message if I try to run them. But, good point about getting rid of Stuffit and just see what happens. I'll give it a whirl. I was confused why it was flagged as malware when I have been using it for years.

 

[BuckyBadg]

Catalina sucks and so far all the updates haven’t helped.

 

[scruffypig]

Before I did the upgrade I went through all of my apps and got rid of the 32 bit apps that did not have an upgrade to them.

It's possible that there are some that got through, but I think they will deliver an obvious message if I try to run them. But, good point about getting rid of Stuffit and just see what happens. I'll give it a whirl. I was confused why it was flagged as malware when I have been using it for years.

Stuffit Expander is available on the Mac App Store. It works fine for me with Catalina, as does Firefox with no lagging at all. I am using a MacBook Pro 2019, though.

(Addendum: I just ran Malwarebytes and no malware found, not even Stuffit Expander.)

 

[Just_Me_D]

Catalina sucks and so far all the updates haven’t helped.

What particular issues are you having with macOS Catalina and in what is the model year of the Mac you’re having the issues on?

 

[The_Scribe]

Catalina sucks and so far all the updates haven’t helped.

I feel the same way! The issues I was experiencing seemed to disappear for awhile. The last crash report (I started keeping copies) was April 1 until I had another one yesterday, and Firefox just hung again a couple of minutes ago, which based on my history means I will have to restart Catalina and generate another crash report.

I know that Apple must receive millions of crash reports and perhaps mine are a complete anomaly; but when I look at them they all have the same "watchdog" comment to start so it is the same thing happening over and over and over.

I have also found that my iMac has become slow as molasses. I have to make sure that the other two user accounts are LOGGED off in order to have an acceptable experience.

I get the feeling that my iMac should not have been included in the Catalina upgrade. While it has a quad-core i5 CPU it only has 8 GB of RAM and I get the feeling that Catalina is something of a RAM hog compared to previous versions of OSX.

I am seriously thinking of just buying a PC and giving up on Apple at this point. It is so frustrating when things go from "it just works" to "it just sucks" based on an Apple OS upgrade!