MacMini Upgraded to Mojave and 2 days later can't connect to Modem

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Your Mac's Specs
Mac-Mini (late 2014) 2.6GHz Intel Core 5, 16GB RAM 1600MH DDR3, 1TB (SATA)
After many weeks of being pestered by Apple's notifications, I upgraded my mid 2014 MacMini from High Sierra to Mojave.
(A 2014 model bought new from Apple in 2017 with Sierra installed.)
All seemed OK for 2 days, then it won't connect to FiOS router's LAN and performance is terribly slow.
Router is connected with ethernet cable (I've tried several cables with no difference).
I've powered down and rebooted the router and MacMini several times.
There are 6 other Apple devices, 3 smart TVs, a TiVO, and VOIP telephones on the same LAN and they all work OK.
The fan shaped Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar is grey with a "?" inside. Clicking it produces "Wi-Fi: No Hardware Installed".
The router's indicator light for the MacMini's ethernet cable is lighted, showing that the the connection is recognized.
The Mojave Network Control Panel shows both WiFi and Ethernet as 'Off' and they won't turn to 'On'. Sometimes trying to turn ethernet on produces "Ethernet connected but Mac has no IP Address."
Simultaneously, performance has tanked. The reboot process produces a message saying "You turned off your Mac because of a problem. (I never did) Do you wish to to reopen the same windows as before? If you do nothing your Mac will restart in 59 seconds." Then the countdown counter takes 15 seconds to countdown each second!
I suspect this is the result of multiple failed attempts to access the network while trying to do anything. Analysis and trials are very frustrating.
Activity monitor's 4 CPU bars continuously show only 1 light in 2 bars with intermittent bursts of 'flat-out max' activity. No activity I recognize shows near the top of '%Use' activity column.

Your thoughts, please.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Mac-Mini (late 2014) 2.6GHz Intel Core 5, 16GB RAM 1600MH DDR3, 1TB (SATA)
Thanks, Farrarr, I remember reading about Safe Mode but didn't remembeer it in this circumstance.
I read Apple's support pages and booted that way. it took about 10 minutes from power-on to login screen.
The menu bar Wi-Fi icon still had the "X" and produced the same "No Hardware Installed" message.
All ativities were very s l o w .

I also read Apple's support about Reovery Mode and tried that.
I ran recoveery's Disk-First Aid and on both partitions of the internal drive and no errors were reported and keyboard response was normal.
I tried the "Get Help Online" and noticed that Safari was used to access the help pages(s).
Safari? AhHa! I tried going to other URLs and sucessfully reached Bing, Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, etc.
My networking hardware works OK; the icon's message is 'fake news'.
(In fact, I'm using the reovery utility's invocation of Safari to reach this forum and make this posting.)
My issues must, therefore, be software related and not bad hardware. A corrupted Mojave?

Should I use the recovery utility's "reinstall macOS" option to reinstall another copy of MacOS?
But which one? The latest installed (Mojave), the latest compatable (High Sierra worked well), or the factory installed original (Sierra)?
Any hints would be appreiated.

BTW Bob: I run Time Machine 24/7 to an external disk. The moment these issues arose, I shut down and disonnected the T/M disk so as to avoid a corrupted bakup.
The cable doesn't get reconneted until these issues are all fixed.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MBP 16" 2023 (M3 Pro), iPhone 15 Pro, plus ATVs, AWatch, MacMinis (multiple)
Have you tried an SMC reset? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

EDIT: The slowness could be the Spotlight reindexing, depending on how full the drive may be. If that's it, it should clear in a day or less, if you leave the machine running.
 

IWT


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Your Mac's Specs
M2 Max Studio Extra, 32GB memory, 4TB, Sonoma 14.4 Apple 5K Retina Studio Monitor
You show that you have a 1 TB Hard Drive. How much free (unused) space do you have?

That could be a factor in the slowness you describe.

Ian
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Mac-Mini (late 2014) 2.6GHz Intel Core 5, 16GB RAM 1600MH DDR3, 1TB (SATA)
Thanks, MacInWin/Jake for suggesting restarting in Safe Mode.
I read Apple's help on this and tried it.
I could detect no differences in any system behavior.

I doubt the slowness is caused by spotlight indexing.
I let my MacMini run 24/7, sleeping between Midnight and when I first use it the next day. I reboot as needed to install updates, etc.

IWT/Ian: I doubt disk space is an influence. Recovery mode's Disk First-Aid says the internal AFPS drive has:
179.36 GB used, 811.28GB free. (or about 20% full).

I'm going to take a change on reloading MacOS via the Recovery mode.
I hope it works, I've never done such a thing before.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MBP 16" 2023 (M3 Pro), iPhone 15 Pro, plus ATVs, AWatch, MacMinis (multiple)
Make a good backup, preferably a clone backup, and test it before you do the recovery install. It should work, but anything can happen.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
M1 Mac Studio, 11" iPad Pro 3rdGen, iPhone 13 ProMax, Watch S7, 2018 15" MBP, AirPods Pro
I think you will want (have?) to change the disk format, back to Mac OS Extended Journaled (HFS+), prior to using the older macOS versions.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
That model came with three options for a 1TB drive. A slow old 5400rpm laptop style drive, an SSD and a Fusion drive. If your Mini has the first that explains all.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
2011 27" iMac, 1TB(partitioned) SSD, 20GB, OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan
That model came with three options for a 1TB drive. A slow old 5400rpm laptop style drive, an SSD and a Fusion drive. If your Mini has the first that explains all.



Really??? Even if it did, there was no mention of any such problems previously to the "update".
After many weeks of being pestered by Apple's notifications, I upgraded my mid 2014 MacMini from High Sierra to Mojave.
(A 2014 model bought new from Apple in 2017 with Sierra installed.)

Personally I don't see how the speed of a 5400 RPM HDD could cause all their problems even if they did have one installed.





- Patrick
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