iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

If you have the same issue as OP (the machine crashes reliably when you leave it alone for about 10 minutes, you probably have multiple external screens), I've made some progress. If your problem isn't like that (most of the comments here don't seem to be) YMMV, but I wouldn't expect this to help you.

The short version is, that I've made the crashes stop by deleting my Google accounts (and a weird looking null 'Contacts' account that was in the same list) from System Preferences | Internet Accounts. I'm currently re-adding my email addresses one by one to see if the crashing starts again. But there are thousands of mails to download, so it'll take a while before I can say whether that's safe.

I came to this conclusion by installing a fresh version of Catalina next to my main install. I couldn't reproduce the issue in the fresh install; no crashing. Then I gradually added apps and services one by one, leaving the machine alone for a while after each thing. If I came back and the session was still alive, I knew that app or service hadn't caused the problem. The crashing only started when I enabled my email accounts on that Preferences screen. Deleting them stopped the crashing (disabling them wasn't enough).

I hope this helps somebody out.

monsterdiv, my 2019 MBP, with the Radeon Pro 560X, two 30" external monitors and Parallels 15 had been crashing every time it was unattended. The crash report each time started with a variant of the following: panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f8a39cad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 140 seconds

I've not had a crash since disabling the screen saver, disabling all sleep functions, and enabling the Parallels Tools "Do Not Sleep" function.

I was able to solve my issue with my 2019 iMac by unseating the OWC (third party) RAM I had installed and then re-installing MacOS by holding 'D' when I turned the machine back on and followed the prompts to do so. It didn't wipe any of my data and fixed my issue. Sharing in case this helps anyone else! It was 100% related to my third party RAM because when I took it out (keeping it out) and booted it up, I had no crashes. Now I have all 40GB in there and it's working seamlessly.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlp1599/mac (the article recommends a different set of keys, which didn't work for me. by holding 'D', I was able to boot into the special software, exit single user Safari and run 'Reinstall MacOS'. But I'm posting the article so you can read their official article on how to reinstall MacOS.

Just make sure to re-seat the RAM if you have third-party RAM installed.

I hope this helps!

I had the same issue until yesterday - two monitor setup on iMacPro, and same crash report after updating to macOS Catalina some 10 days prior. I read in some thread the following suggestion https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295#t2 .

I performed the following (for details look up the link above):

• I unplugged both monitors
• I shut down the system
• I unplugged the computer from power (this may be harder to do on a laptop with battery, but there is a suggestion for this in the link above)
• I did the 10 second hold on the power button as suggested in the link above
• I re-powered the system
• I plugged back my 2 external monitors

Since then I haven't had an issue with crashes. I must admit this was a very frustrating week with the crashes, and I only hope this can help you all out there with the same issue.

All best,

Nick

I was having a similar problem. My Mac started crashing right after I upgraded to Catalina.

When it crashed, it would crash again every login attempt after that, until I boot in safe mode.

The fact that it works in safe mode made me wonder if it had something to do with some kernel extension.

Then I saw this in the crash report:

      Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
         com.apple.filesystems.apfs(1412.11.7)[B26D7DE6-BE2D-3E44-B334-1346AEC6C3BB]@0xffffff7f9035a000->0xffffff7f9047efff
            dependency: com.apple.kec.corecrypto(1.0)[263BCEB0-E4C5-3540-9E03-CC1F0A4D5BDF]@0xffffff7f8dc32000
            dependency: com.apple.driver.AppleEffaceableStorage(1.0)[D4D0276C-28F7-3878-AC53-86A1134225E0]@0xffffff7f8db8e000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(2.1)[CAC103D2-4533-3A81-8190-D0133B4F8626]@0xffffff7f8d975000
         com.bitdefender.atc(11.19b22)[01A23CBF-3121-3529-9D6F-2698A271F9AA]@0xffffff7f91376000->0xffffff7f91383fff

I removed the Bitdefender kernel extension and it hasn't crashed ever since. Probably some kernel extensions aren't compatible with the new OS.

To whom it may concern:

After more than 4 days without restarts by Kernel Panic, I can say that I was able to solve the problem.

EtreCheckPro detected that the problem was being caused by com.paragon-software.filesystems.ntfs (from a software that lets you read and write to NTFS disks).

No more restarts after uninstallation!

I believe that Paragon was not a 64bits app, as Catalina requires

From EtreCheckPro report:

2020-01-08 09:39:10 Kernel Panic (4 times)
        Details:
            panic(cpu 4 caller 0xffffff800de6520a): Kernel trap at 0xffffff7f8ee30
            473, type 14=page fault, registers:
        3rd party kernel extensions: 
            com.paragon-software.filesystems.ntfs

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff800d0288b7): "AppleAHCIDiskQueueManager::setPowerState(0xffffff804bfe7900 : 0xffffff7f8fab6958, 3 -> 0) timed out after 100873 ms"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/xnu/xnu-6153.81.5/iokit/Kernel/IOServicePM.cpp:5302

This workaround seems to work for this case:

Disable the option “Put hard disks to sleep when possible“ in the energy saver settings.

No panics since I have disabled this option. Finger crossed, that it will last and there won't occur any other panics.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh15216/mac

I am having the same issue (crashes while the Mac is not in active use) on a 2019 Macbook Pro.

Every time the Mac was left to idle, it would shut down. Like you, my crash log always started with: panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f8a39cad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 140 seconds

The cpu identified in the notice varied.

As the crashes only happened when the Mac was idle, I concluded the crashes were linked to sleeping. I've disabled all the sleep related settings in the energy saver options, disabled the screen savers, and also have enabled the Parallels Tools widget that prevents the Mac from sleeping. After doing those things, the Mac has not crashed (versus about 20 crashes in one day before). But, my monitors now are on all the time (at night I turn off the external monitors and turn the brightness all the way down).

Apple support said others were reporting the issue-but provided no solution.

Now, after a couple of experiments, I'm pretty sure it's "Sleep" mode of Cataline caused my iMac to crash randomly. I have checked the option "prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" last night and it didn't crash over the night when I checked this morning. I recommend you to do the same and see if that solves the issue.

It is amazed that Apple still doesn't produce a fix for this yet. Cataline upgrade is the worst I have ever experienced including going back to the old days when I was with Windows machines.

CozmoBailey, I have disabled the screen saver and set the Mac so it will not sleep and I have not had a single crash since doing so. The workaround is not ideal--but it's far better than the Mac crashing every few minutes.

Thanks a lot for the advice, indeed!

I did have a look and realised that the screen saver was in fact activated. I guess that's the default upon upgrading because I absolutely dislike screen savers, so never used them. Have deactivated it now and thus far it has not crashed! Fingers crossed!

Thanks once more!

I posted earlier to this thread. Here’s what worked for me.

I had a backup from before the upgrade, which was fortunate. I suppose this method would work if you can manage to get a backup to complete under Catalina as well.

1. make sure you have a valid backup of your system
2. boot into internet recovery mode
3. Use disk utility to erase the hard drive
4. install Catalina on the empty drive
5. boot into Catalina.
6. create a test user account
7. once you’re at the desktop, open migration assistant
8. select your backup as the source to migrate from
9. Uncheck the last option computer and network settings.
10. wait for the migration of files and apps to complete
11. log in to (one of) the user account(s) that you migrated
12. see if things behave themselves. In my case, this seems to have worked.

I think there was something wrong with my system before I upgraded, and the upgrade made it worse. There were several system extensions that it popped up warnings about (and said would be disabled) when I first logged into my migrated user account.

Good luck, everyone!

I think I stumbled upon a solution! Had the same problem with my new iMac , read about it a lot on the internet with no luck, here's how it suddenly stopped crashing for me:

I was looking for any new ways to move the dock to one of my external monitors without sliding the top menu in display settings, so I found a thread about going into mission control and check the box that says> "Displays have separate spaces"

Since then my iMac with external monitors stopped crashing, Please let me know if it works for you!

in short>

Go to, System Preferences\Mission Control> check "Displays have separate Spaces"

Hope it works!

I had a very similar problem immediatly after installing Catalina that was solved when I disconnected my Time Machine drive.

My late 2014 Retina iMac would freeze and restart only to work again for just a few minutes. I tried everything I could think of including rebooting using an external drive set-up as a Mojave boot drive, and that did not work either. I could not even use Time Machine to revert back to my pre-Catalina set-up. Catalina could see that I had months of Time Machine backups, but would only allow me access to the Catalina backups. For a reason that I cannot explain, I ended up disconnecting the Time Machine drive while the computer was off, and the problem didn't happen again when I rebooted.

My guess is that Catalina cannot use Time Machine, or it just does not like taking over a Time Machine drive that was started from a previous OS (I was using Sierra prior to Catalina...not Mojave). I will eventually format my Time Machine drive using another Mac and see what happens when I set up Time Machine from scratch on my Catalina Mac. I also noticed that the Disk Utility feature in Catalina has some odd issues. I will save that for another post.

Hope this trick helps someone else!