Since installing Catalina yesterday, multiple crashes from userspace watchdog timeout

I'm up todate on the beta release and running 10.15.3 Beta (19D62e), still having issues. But disabling power management has stopped the crashes and kept the system up. Currently managed 8 days.

Ohh and keeping terminal open does nothing for me either.

Open a video in Quicktime player and set it to loop. As long as it's running, I've experienced no watchdog timeout: no successful checkin demo com.apple.WindowServer" errors. YMMV

Jim @ ttop wrote:

I had two long phone sessions with Apple Care. They acknowledged the issue and relayed they'd try to have this addressed in the next incremental upgrade. In the meantime, I did find a workaround to stop the crashes (as first mentioned by a previous poster in this thread):

Open a video in Quicktime player and set it to loop. As long as it's running, I've experienced no watchdog timeout: no successful checkin demo com.apple.WindowServer" errors. YMMV

We've had nothing but troubles, a team of various MBP users with external 4k monitors via TB hub.

ABOVE SOLUTION WORKS.

I had similar crashes on a brand new Macbook Pro 13 I received on Tuesday this week with the following error:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f827a0a8d): watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd in 97 seconds (1009 total checkins since monitoring last enabled)

I spoke to Apple Support and they suggest these steps to RESET to laptop:

Shut down the Mac (if not already) but keep it plugged into power.

On your built-in keyboard, press and hold all of the following keys. Your Mac might turn on.

•Control on the left side of your keyboard

•Option (Alt) on the left side of your keyboard

•Shift on the right side of your keyboard

Keep holding all three keys for 7 seconds, then press and hold the power button as well. If your Mac is on, it will turn off as you hold the keys.

Wait a few seconds, then press the power button to turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. You can release the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart.

However, I do not think the above really help. The culprit was actually Google Drive File Stream (Google Enterprise Drive client) - which apparently conflicted with Spotlight indexing and when the drive was being updated.

So I uninstalled Google Drive File Stream, and used Insync Client instead (https://www.insynchq.com/) [I have a lifetime license as I have Linux desktops which need access to my Google drive].

So far - no crashes - even under heavy load of 3 virtual machines, background files being updated and Zoom/GoogleHangouts video calls.

Been rock stable the last 2 days.

Hope this helps for those having the same problems.

Cheers!

I updated to 10.15.5 with no success with the kernel failures. But read on as I seem to have found a solution to give my late 2013 iMac a second life...

I am now convinced the problem, at least in my case, relates to Fusion Drive. Here is why:

I bought a Samsung T5 external USB3 SSD drive and used the Mac OS recovery to install the OS in it - it is now my boot drive. I have had zero issues with kernel panics. For days. As a bonus, the system is now faster than using the ****** Fusion drive. This is a $80 / $160 fix that is much cheaper than trying to open my iMac to replace the (potentially damaged) Fusion drive - and doesn't require that I fight with opening this all-in-one.

I think something related to the new setup of disks for Catalina is, in my admittedly non-expert opinion, more sensitive to disk issues than the previous versions of Mac OS. Mind that when I run disk utility on the internal disk, it accuses no errors - but the fact remains that the disks are extremely slow and the system is unusable when I boot from the internal HD, while it is completely fine when I boot from a fast USB SSD.

I suppose it is also possible that the process of conversion to Catalina has damaged my install to a point that it needs to be reformatted, not just reinstalled. The problem is that I have data in that drive that needs to be copied out first - so I'm in the process of using a second external drive and copying data from the internal drive to it. While this is slow it hasn't presented the kernel panics - probably because the OS is running from a different disk.

After my data is safe, I'll try reformatting the internal Fusion drive and starting from scratch, and I'll update this trail.

a huge issue for me is when I have hardware acceleration enabled on any apps, that causes a lot of bugs for me. Apps like Spotify, Chrome, Zoom all have acceleration as options that I've turned off. Things have been better (not perfect) since then.

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.

Hey guys,

as I mentioned in my previous posts I suspected that in my case the crashs were caused by the Intel Power Gadget app, even though the app is 64 bits.

Since one week I stopped using it and I have had no more crashs, so problem "solved" at the moment on my side...

Hey guys,

in a previous posts I suspected that in my case the crashs were caused by Elgato Dockstation Pro.

I've found an Elgato 32bit app with Etrecheck.

Since one week I deleted it and I have had no more crashs.

I had two long phone sessions with Apple Care. They acknowledged the issue and relayed they'd try to have this addressed in the next incremental upgrade. In the meantime, I did find a workaround to stop the crashes (as first mentioned by a previous poster in this thread):

Open a video in Quicktime player and set it to loop. As long as it's running, I've experienced no watchdog timeout: no successful checkin demo com.apple.WindowServer" errors. YMMV

LordLobby wrote:

Apple, ***!!!

This crash is perfectly reproducable and happens always when the monitors goes to sleep... Anyway, there should be thousands of crash-reports with the same problem. Get the **** thing working!!

You would think ... !

I was discussing with Apple the other day, and it seems strange they do not monitor these forums. It would strike me as a no brainer just to keep an eye out for those threads which go above a certain number of replies, as they would indicate a widespread problem, but no.

Anyway, yes, like yours, mine was always crashing when my monitor went to sleep.

I was also having a problem with my Cable Matters USB-c unpowered ethernet/USB hub, which wasn't recognised. So I tried to book a Genius Bar appointment, something which Apple has made very difficult now (all automated and unless you answer questions a certain way on the app or the website, you won't get an appointment). I couldn't, so I went to the store, where they said I couldn't have an appointment as they were full. So I threw all my toys out of the pram, and finally they got a technician out from round the back. It was either that or they were going to have get some men in white coats to come and take me away.

We tested a Caldigit TS3 (http://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus) as the solution to the ethernet hub problem (and because it might deliver enough power to charge my iPad etc). I was nervous of spending that much, because it only delivers 85W and the new MacBook can take up to 96W.

Anyway, nearly 24 hours later and this Caldigit a) seems to provide enough power for the MacBook, an iPhone, an iPad connected simultaneously, and b) I don't want to tempt fate here, but since I bought it yesterday, and plugged the monitor into the caldigit, rather than directly into the Mac, I have not had another sleep crash.

It may also relate to the fact that I have changed the setting System Preferences > Energy Saving > Power Adapter > 'Turn display off after' to 'Never' (I wonder if this is an error when the MBP tells an external monitor to sleep and gets some sort of unexpected response, but I don't even know if that setting applies to external monitors). I have switched back to Turn display off after one minute and see if it crashes again.