Since installing Catalina yesterday, multiple crashes from userspace watchdog timeout

dragontorc wrote:

... as result of a memory leak.

Don't think it's memory leak, as I've had the WindowsServer hang and Watchdog reboot as the machine was starting up following a hang/reboot.

On the up side ... 10.15.6 (19G73) Public Release does seem to have fixed the issue for me. It's been a few days now since hangs, where I was seeing almost one an hour.

( iBin Mac Pro 2013 with D300 )

This is my final solution for a 2019 27" iMac, which is what the original thread was about. I had all the problems the original poster had, including the kernel panics, restarts, etc. Initially, I had upgraded my RAM with two 16gb OWC sticks. I found out the OWC RAM had bad timing and switched it to Crucial. Three weeks now with no issues. Again, this solution is for my iMac, not for any Macbooks or the external monitor issues.

For me, the 10.15.5 complementary update (released yesterday) finally did the trick. Until now, I can restart, shut down, sleep and awake without problems.

Did you installed it?

The so far working solution I found elsewhere is here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250715149?answerId=253145796022#253145796022

Hey Cooter 1234,

Thanks for your suggestion but I have already tried many times everything : fresh reinstall, NVRAM reset, SMC Reset, cmd+R and disk utility ...

It does not change, and giving all the testimonies in this thread seems to be due to some app creating chaotic behavior with Catalina, maybe due to the mandatory 64 bits.

I just identified that in my case the app Intel Power Gadget seems to be a common factor in all my crashes.

I installed 10.15.1 on my

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019)

2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro Vega 20 4 GB

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

Installing the update solved the problem for me. Now I am running with 3 monitors and I left it overnight with the power on and it didn't crash.

Did you do a restore with the new Pro? I was having these crashes and bought a new 16” and decided to try not restoring and used a usb-c data cable and transferred the files I needed and installed apps fresh. So far no crashing at all. So I wonder for those of you that bought a new laptop and have the crashes did you do a restore or start with a fresh os?

Even registered for Beta software and found that 10.15.3 hasn't solved the problem. The only way I can stop the system from crashing is to select "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off". This at least stops regular crashes, I do get the occasional issue following a reboot.

Apple, come on sort this please.

Interesting I have a Mac Mini 2018 with 2x27 inch LG displays. Reinstalled from scratch and setup my account and it still happens. Haven’t tried w second account, but resetting everything up is a pain. I have stopped it by disabling all power management!

Yes. Two LG displays. I never unplug them.

but when I do (for testing this issue) no crashes.

so problem for me seems to be combination of automatic graphic switching + external displays. Automatic graphic switching and no external displays is fine.

Am on 10.15.3, and the following has been the case on 10.15; 10.15.1; 10.15.2. I can stop the crashing in two ways.

1. Set screen saver source to Catalina, it crashes. Enable in energy saver "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" crashes stop
2. Change screen saver source to Landscapes and no crash

I have tried the terminal trick and makes no difference.

It is looking very much like it is a GPU, screen resolution, memory issue.

For reference I am on a Mac mini 2018 with 2 x LG 27" screens connected via Thunderbolt.

This was exactly my problem. I had this very adapter with an external monitor on the HDMI port. Removing this seems to have fixed the issue. I don't really use the monitor much anyway since SideCar works great.

All my Mac issues have disappeared after I downgraded to Mojave from Catalina. No hardware changes, mine is a late 2012 iMac and I had never had any peripherals other than external hard disk. It was crashing so bad I couldn’t get time machine to back up anything. Saved my important files onto the external drive and then followed the instructions on the macworld.uk site to download Mojave and create bootable installable on a flash drive and installed it and zero crashes in the last 24 hrs. It used to crash every 25 mins with Catalina.

[Edited by Moderator]

Same here.

I experienced lots of weird problems with my old macbook 15" with crashes every hour after I updated to 10.15.3 (combination of different things, there was the sleep issue, but also some other kernel panics (always "kernel userspace timeouts" but then different messages, sometimes talking about gpu, sometimes about disk), sometimes, just using Safari without any device plugged, however I did experience that when using extensive use of memory (working on big word documents), hard disk (time machine backups) and external displays (maybe linked to the "memory" issue), the probability of kernel panics was MUCH higher).

It was so terrible that I bought a new macbook pro 16" in February. Everything was fine UNTIL I updated to 10.15.4. From that moment on there was back the sleep panic. I tried different things, and it is 3-days now that I have not experienced new crashes. What I did and so far is working is changing the configuration of Notifications in System Preferences, in particular I TURNED ON "DO NOT DISTURB" in the checkboxes "When the display is sleeping", "When the screen is locked" and "When mirroring to TVs and projectors". Not sure if checking all 3 checkboxes is necessary, may be it will be enough to check the one about "when display is sleeping", but for now I want just a few days of productivity before further testing :)

Please, let me know if this also works in your case.