MacOS – coreaudiod and launchd are taking up 80% and 40% processor respectively

audiolaunchdmacbook promacos

I've just upgraded from mavericks to yosemite, the download was sluggish but eventually worked so I don't think any of the files were corrupted. There was no hitch with the installation as far as I know either. All I know is that when I woke up after leaving my MacBook Pro (15 inch, mid-2010) its fan was spinning out of control at the login screen.

When I restarted and looked at the activity monitor I saw that core audio and launchd were the culprits. I've tried the following to fix my problem:

  • Clearing the PRAM.
  • Clearing the SMC.
  • Deleting the plist for the audio preference pane.
  • Verifying disk permissions.
  • Repairing disk permissions.

Additional info:
I've run etreCheck a few times and have fixed most of the things it pointed out, all that is left is:

System launch daemons with problems :
[fail] com.apple.systemstatsd.plist

Launch daemons with problems :
[invalid?] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist Aide

I've searched and haven't found any answers that worked yet.
Anything else I can do apart from a reinstall?

Also I've noticed that bluetooth can't be turned off anymore although it doesn't actually seem to be on, any fixes for that would be appreciated too.

Best Answer

Just had the exact same issue after restarting. I had previously unloaded a bunch of services.

The bluetooth issue was due to unloading the bluetooth service, but I had a bluetooth mouse plugged in via USB, I guess there was some override in the IO or something.

Loading the service again fixed the issue.

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist

The core audio issue seems to have been fixed by loading the video assistant again

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.cmio.IIDCVideoAssistant.plist

Hope this helps someone as there shouldn't be the need for a full system restore because of one or two service issues.