Since installing Catalina yesterday, multiple crashes from userspace watchdog timeout

I have found if I leave Terminal open it prevents the crash as the OS asks you first if can close Terminal (or iTerm) before shutting itself off. I tried just turning off sleep mode, but it would still shut itself down every day or so. Once I kept Terminal running this was my bi-pass to crashing.

I was crashing non stop, and tried leaving terminal open and for now... somehow... I have not crashed. For now I will leave it set to launch at start up and hopefully this will tide me over until they update this bug.

Still happens on MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with latest Catalina update as of today - 10.15.2 - I am using Dell Universal Dock D6000 with two external Dell monitors connected. I guess I have to pay for the new MacBook Pro 16" to NOT get those crashes ?!?

Just to add a "Me To" .. also seeing this WindowsServer hang since Catalina upgrade on my Mac Pro (iBin);

OSX 10.15.2. / Mac Pro Late 2013 / 3.7 Quad-Core / 12GB / AMD FirePro D300 - two screens DisplayPort 4K / HDMI 1080 - two USB Drives attached with one as target for TimeMachine.

Typically seeing this;

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f9623fad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 120 seconds

It's making the machine unusable. Sometimes getting a couple of hours working, sometimes it's hanging within minutes of the watchdog restarting it.

Did you guys find any solution to this?? I just upgraded my iMac Pro (with external monitors) from Mojave to Catalina and am having the same random crashes. Everything worked fine in Mojave. Super frustrating!

A few weeks back I was getting a couple crashes a day. But now I haven't crashed in well over a week. I'm not sure what could be different. I do consciously put my computer to sleep instead of letting it go into sleep mode on it's own.

I did attempt an upgrade of my hard disk. I had to send back the new internal hard disk due to it being unreliable, so I should have the same setup that I had before, but in the process I updated all of the firmware and ran lots of tests when I was trying to get the new hard disk to work. Maybe in all of that something fixed the issue, I don't know.

I know that isn't helpful, but I haven't crashed since then.

In terms of my system setup, I had my current hard disk in a USB enclosure and booted from it several times, then migrated it back to internal when I gave up on the process. I worked my way through a big list of tests, but they were all applied to the new faulty hard disk. With all the noise, I'm not sure I can offer advice.

Seeing the same issue on my new 16" MacBook. After resetting NVRAM, I was able to connect both monitors and close the lid, but only temporarily, same crash came back and resetting NVRAM again didn't fix.

Brand new 16" MBP on 10.15.2.

Laptop in clamshell mode w/three monitors plugged in (two usb-c -> mini-displayport, one HDMI via USB-C "multi-av adapter".

Unplug usb-c->mini dp adapters, unplug multi-AV adapter, move laptop to living room, attempt to open screen and have MBP wake from sleep and....it's doing a fresh boot instead because it crashed with this error.

Don't have much open at all other than Teams, a terminal session, Vmware w/Win10 VM, Github, Microsoft RDP client, Messages app.

Hoping this doesn't become a frequent thing :(

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?

SAME PROBLEM! SINCE I UPDATE, HOW CAN I DOWNGRADE MY IMAC TO MOJAVE?

panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff7f8cdb6aae): watchdog timeout: no checkins from watchdogd in 183 seconds (414 totalcheckins since monitoring last enabled), shutdown in progress

Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address

I did not run any kind of restore of my new Macbook Pro 16" - set it up as brand new and manually copied over files, installed apps, etc. Did not want to migrate over all the clutter from 7 years of heavy usage of my old Macbook.

Still happening :( Same as previous reports, and others reports.

panic(cpu 6 caller 0xffffff7f9179dad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 120 seconds
service: com.apple.logd, total successful checkins since wake (145161 seconds ago): 14517, last successful checkin: 0 seconds ago
service: com.apple.WindowServer, total successful checkins since wake (145161 seconds ago): 14505, last successful checkin: 120 seconds ago

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.

My 16" MBP is about 3 or 4 weeks old at this point - my first watchdog lockup happened right after upgrading to 10.15.2. I had a 15.4" MBP running Mojave and used the wireless migration to move my data.

I've had 1 - 12 lockups a day, doesn't seem to matter what is plugged in. Last week it locked with just the power cord plugged in. Sometimes the lockups occur when I've walked away, so can't blame anything I'm doing while in front of the computer.

This week I tried to go back to Mojave, only to find that you can't install an earlier version of the OS than what was shipped with the computer. So I re-installed Catalina using the internal partition and then allowed it to restore from my Time Machine backup.

It's been a little over 24 hours, but I've had it running with a Windows 10 VM with applications executing constantly, with the Time Machine external drive plugged in, and an external monitor. So far, so good.

Based on other comments here, I'm wondering if the root problem may be the image that the factory laid down. My re-install seems to have worked. If it appears again, I'll post an update. It's been 3 weeks of misery. Normally I would have waited a couple of days to report it, but realistically, given how hard I'm using it now, it would have locked by now and I know a great number of people are having similar issues.

This has been happening since I bought the new MBP 16 with Catalina. Have downloaded OS updates the day the came out and keep updated with public releases.

Crashes happen only when my LG external displays are plugged in, does not crash when they are not.

An interesting finding of mine has been that crashes do not happen when I am in Safe Mode or logged in as another User (I created a Test User account and changed no settings to test) even with the LG external displays plugged in.

Apple Support suggests I just use the other user account and not my main one. Which I do not necessarily appreciate as a solution, particularly since I can easily replicate the crash and is being experienced by many others.

Will try the 'keep a Terminal window open' workaround for now...