Since installing Catalina yesterday, multiple crashes from userspace watchdog timeout

anonymouse: How are you connecting your external monitors?

One other wrinkle I neglected to mention that may have caused my crash: after switching my two 27" external monitors to directly connect with separate USB-C to Displayport cables, I also added a third external monitor, connected via HDMI but using a USB-C multi-adaptor (USB-A, Ethernet, HDMI, etc.). My suspicion (based on what others have mentioned in this long thread) is that using that adaptor is what triggers the crash. I've now disconnected the HDMI monitor connected via multi-adaptor (by unplugging the HDMI cable from the multi-adaptor but still leaving the multi-adaptor connected via USB-C to provide USB-A ports for mouse, scanner, etc. So we'll see if that helps. After doing that earlier this afternoon, I haven't have any crashes. If I make it through Monday, I will assume that that is the cause, that is, ANY external monitor connected via an adaptor can cause the crash.

I also have unchecked "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off". That's actually what I meant to say in my note from 10:57am. So I am allowing the computer to sleep when the display is off.

I am actually downloading 10.15.6 now, and will report back asap. I have been struggling with 1-3 daily crashes for weeks now, and as a software developer, it always hits when I have 50 things open and in-progress. I have one external monitor directly connected to my MBP (15", 2019) using a DVI->USB-C adapter, and the other external monitor is connected (via HDMI) to a Lenovo USB-C docking station (just for reference).

Catalina, unfortunately, has been nothing but a headache since I installed it. I expect more from a $2K+ laptop (and the company behind it)...

-- Kevin

I couldn't agree more with you Kevin,

Not wanting to disappoint you, but this version that you're downloading will not fix the problem.

For me none of the suggested actions is working, im some cases turnoff my external monitors at night works, but not always.

In my office i have only one monitor attached through USB-C <> Mini DisplayPort adapter and the same problem occurs less often but occurs.

I have a 2019 i9 w/32GB Ram and 1TB Mbp in my home I have 2 Dell P2415q attached to a Belkin thunderbolt 3 express dock.

I thinking seriously to downgrade to Mojave.

Sergio.

Peter Loew

anony m ouse

Just a few hours is sometimes a little early to declare victory. HOWEVER, I really do hope it addressed your issue.

Because watchdog timeout seemed to affect so many users with so many different configurations and setups, as well as generating User mode watchdog timeouts and kernel watchdog timeout, it maybe be that just some of the situations are addressed.

I truly want this to be fixed, as I have been trying to track this issue and find a common solution. But since my day job involves writing Unix kernel level software for Linux, AIX, Solaris platforms, I know that sometimes a change just changing the "Timing Window" and it takes a slightly different, and maybe more difficult to hit Window.

Again, I hope your fixes hold, but if they do not, it would nice to have feedback. Even a week from now, if all is solid, that would be good feedback.

My 16” Macbook Pro has got a new logic board now, they changed it preventively as they couldn’t rep the error. Hard for me to believe they couldn’t.

Thing is, with the new main board and the latest release of Catalina it seems that my problems have gone away.

As I immediately updated to last Catalina, I now cannot say if it was the new logic board or the OS update. For all of you with a Mac in guarantee, I recommend them to bring it in to the technical support. It may be a hardware issue.

Have a nice weekend

I updated MBP15" 2018 to Catalina 15.6 on Friday, then put it back on my 3 external monitor setup on Friday evening.

So far, zero crashes. No caffeinate and all energy saver settings at defaults (unchecked "Prevent computer from sleeping", checked "Put hard drives to sleep", "Wake for Wi-Fi network access", "Enable Power Nap".).

The further key test will be this week with many more apps (especially MS Teams, etc.) running simultaneously.

So far, so good for me also (knock on wood!). 10.15.6 installed, and no spinning wheels of death or midnight shutdowns. The true test (as others have said) will be a full week of work, but this is already a huge improvement. Fingers crossed... best of luck to everyone with this issue!

Kevin T.

Well, my success was short-lived. I had been working for about 30 minutes today, and got the spinning wheel of death (and had to force reboot). And, interestingly, I am not using ANY external monitors. So that somewhat rules out that connection (at least in my scenario). Something else still must be happening to cause these crashes. I did have Chrome browser open, and a news headline video was playing in a non-active page (not saying that is relevant, but Chrome browser was the ONLY app open at the time of the freeze/crash).

Never thought I would be at the point where I was wishing the company had given me a Windows laptop vs. a MacBook Pro...

I'm still struggling to spot any pattern with this, however it does seem to be much worse when I'm working with video. (although I've also had it hang and reboot whilst it was trying to submit a crash report having just hung and rebooted!)

10.15.6B was a nightmare, but so far 10.15.6 has had two days of lightweight use without incident. (iBin with 4k DisplayPort monitor).

If it's still incident free in 24 hours I'll try connecting the second screen. Which has had to be disconnected since start of the year.

My success was also short-lived. I also had been working for about 30 minutes today, fired up VMWare Fusion and had everything freeze (I don't get the spinning wheel, just a complete freeze-up and finally an automatic reboot after 1 - 2 minutes). I was using my 3 monitor setup. I was not using the Chrome browser (Chrome browser is not even running, not turned on).

So I disconnected my third monitor and turned off Power Nap. Not likely to help but we'll see.

And yes, I'm now using my company-issued Windows laptop for mission critical apps (like MS Teams). The Windows laptop never crashes. Very sad...

Still died after reconnecting dual monitors with two individual DisplayPort to USB-C cables (removing the dual monitor adapter), and also unchecking "Put hard disks to sleep..." AND also keeping caffeinate running in a terminal.

I've now abandoned my dual monitor setup with this MBP 15" 2018 running Catalina 15.6, and gone back to my ultra-stable MBP 15" 2013 running Mojave 14.6. At least I can still vnc to the MBP 15" 2018 running off to the side with no monitors.

Ugh...

10.15.6 has seemingly resolved this issue for me for two days now. Fingers crossed. 16" MBP.

When I was having the issue, though, I learned that you can power on a MacBook Pro in clamshell mode just by connecting it to power. So instead of putting it to sleep overnight, I would shut it down, unplug the power, leave it in clamshell mode, and plug it back in the next to power it up without having to unfold it.

OK, I spoke too soon. While I could reliably reproduce this with the last release in just seconds the latest release 10.15.6 fixed my crashes every time the display went to sleep. That setup was completely unusable. My laptop had been up since the install but has now crashed with the same display watchdog time out. This is a serious deficiency. I would actively discourage anyone from buying a mac book pro until this is fixed. I myself wouldn't buy a mac again until I see this fixed. I lose work when this happens. My Dell laptop from work, sitting right next to my much more expensive brand new decked out MBP16 has had no such problems.

My 16” 2019 MacBook was experiencing constant crashes with 10.15.5 with the error: panic(cpu 6 caller 0xffffff7f8879cad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 140 seconds. This occurred when the Mac went to sleep with an external monitor attached using clamshell mode. I updated to 10.15.6, but decided not to restore from a TimeMachine backup. I did a clean install, then reloaded files and programs. I use Dropbox do it wasn’t too big a deal.

I have now been running for 3 days without incident / crashes. I am back to using clamshell mode again.

For those still having trouble even after trying 10.15.6, you may want to do a TimeMachine backup of your current setup, then do a clean / new install (command-option-R). Don’t restore from backup, and try things out for a day or so. If things look better you can always using Migration Assistant to pick and choose what you want to restore. That may help you diagnose the problem. You can always restore back from the Time Machine backup if the clean install doesn’t help.

I also have experienced no more crashes since the 10.15.6 update, at least so far. (MBP 16" 2019 in clamshell mode with one external display.) I hope for everyone else's benefit that Apple fixes this for all soon! Baby steps are better than none at all, I guess.