My MacBook is frying my lap, and the CPU monitor is going crazy: over 200% CPU being used by a process named installd.
What is it? Can I kill it?
MacOS – the `installd` process, and why is it eating the CPU
activity-monitormacos
Related Solutions
The % CPU is relative to 1 core, so 726% is using almost 8 cores. Core is loosely defined, so 1 Hyper-Threaded, "virtual" core looks like 2 cores to Activity Monitor.
What type of system do you have? If it is just 2 cores (which is seems to be) then nik's answer sounds correct.
A late model 8-core system can look like 16 cores to Activity Monitor:
I had similar on my late 2008 MBP 15" after upgrading to Mountain Lion.
I found a post about resetting the SMC controller (system management controller) to solve this and it worked a treat for me. I have a removable battery on my MBP so the process was a little different to unibody mbp's where you can't easily get at the battery. It was basically:
- remove power cable and battery,
- hold the power button for 5 seconds.
- Power up normally and see if it worked.
For portables without a user-serviceable battery (like your Macbook Air):
- plug in the power cable to mac and a power source,
- press the (left side) ⇧ ⌃ ⌥ keys and the power button at the same time,
- release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
- Power up normally.
Give it a try - there are plenty of posts on the web on how to reset it. Mine is quiet as a mouse now
Best Answer
This is a daemon which is part of PackageKit framework and it's usually running as a background process for the "Software Update" GUI application. For example, if you open the Software Update application and check for updates, take a look at the Activity Monitor--you'll see the "installd" process doing a bunch of work.
The reason it pegs your CPU is because it must compile the current list of software installed on your computer, and compare with the current version list received from Apple's servers.
You can set the frequency of Software Update checks in System Preferences and Software Update.
The default settings are both to "Check for updates" and "Download updates automatically". You may adjust either setting, but I would not recommend turning it off altogether.
There's nothing wicked about this process - it's just set to download updates.
You can solve your CPU problem by lowering the priority of the process or by just killing the process in Activity Monitor.
Technical information:
The location in Lion OSX is in:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PackageKit.framework/Resources/installd(if you have
locateconfigured correctly, run:locate installdto find the right location).