macOS 10.14.5 random system freeze

Haha, old habits die hard. But we can't really blame the consumer who is inundated with messages about the ease with which technology can be compromised. Simply stating that antivirus programs do no good is not sufficient (how is a non-technical user supposed to understand that?), and frankly large corps don't do a good job of demonstrating their ability to release secure software (an impossible goal to begin with, which is why we layer). Additionally, much like getting vaccinated, even if the risk of infection of your own machine is low and may not justify the use of such tools, helping prevent the spread to the machines of others benefits everyone. Okay, enough rant...

Avast would have been on my initial suspect list were it not for the fact that all prior versions of 10.14.x worked without issue with it installed. I'll try removing it.

Thanks. I will try safe mode, but given the sporadic nature of the failure, I can't say when I'd have anything new to report. As far as the downgrade, I suppose I could do a complete reinstall of the OS from scratch. However, as far as I know, Apple only posts the most recent version in the App store. Is there a place I can obtain installers for older versions?

I do seem to be noticing an emerging pattern regarding the system freezes. More than half of the occurrences have occurred while running a Java-based application. The freeze has occurred under the openJDK v10 and v12 VMs.

Just to reiterate, this was never an issue under macOS 10.14.4.

Your points are well taken. I agree with them and have been educated on many of them before.

Maybe this is irrelevant to the discussion at this point, but I wanted to repeat from my earlier post that I have the free version of Avast installed with all of the real-time scanning features turned off. From what I've read, Avast may "scam" people by trying to aggressively up-sell them on unnecessary cleaning services after hooking them with the free product, but its core AV engine carries a decent reputation. If that's no longer the case, then I stand corrected. Likewise, I'd also discourage anyone from getting tangled up in a company's paid-support product to "clean up" a PC - a point you've already made in your linked post.

Going back to the technical issue of the thread, it's been my understanding that anti-virus programs tend to cause the most problems when the real-time scanning features are in use. In my case, I use the program to scan incoming files as-needed when I want to exercise a little extra caution (I may trust the sender, but I may not trust their personal computer hygiene). In fact, the program has successfully identified potentially corrupt office documents in the past. Now while my Mac may not have been at risk, I don't see the harm in using a free tool to do a little preventative detection and let the sender know they may have a problem and to reduce the odds of me passing along a bad file to someone else (who may not be a Mac user).

Now, if you are telling me that in order for Mojave to run without problems, I need to basically cut myself off from the use of any sort of security software, then I find that a harder pill to swallow. Surely there must be a middle ground here; fear and uncertainty exist on both sides of any argument and, as they say, the truth is often somewhere in the middle. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that viruses aren't a problem (and to be clear, I don't think you were making that point either). The claim is simply that they don't represent a significant threat to Mac users. However, the world doesn't just run on Macs.

I forgot to add that re: Time Machine, upon checking, I don't have the ability to roll back as expected. I've never used Time Machine. I intentionally turn it off as I have alternative preferred method for backing up my data.

Is it possible to obtain an installer for 10.14.4 if I haven't saved a copy from a previous download?

Thanks. This is what I thought.

Really interesting talk. Thanks for sharing.