iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

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

Same issue here. 2018 MacBook Pro Core i9, 32GB of RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 20, 1TB SSD. Same exact issue when I upgraded to Catalina. I have called Apple twice yesterday and went through several fixes and still produced the same results. I called this morning and the Apple rep refuses to communicate with me. Just hung up. I think they have had a bad night. One rep told me that this is a repeated issue they are facing.

Update from me: I do have 2 27" 4k monitors plugged in and the issue only occurs with the monitors. Radeon Pro Vega driver makes sense. I do have the automatic graphics card switch still turned on so I'll test out the issue with just the Radeon Pro Vega card running without the Intel card.

I have spent the last 2 hours on the phone with Apple support. The new support member confirmed that they are getting new reports of this same issue. Some people reported fixes. They are assuming that my issue is fixed but they are about to get another phone call from me confirming that it's not. Next phone call they promised me that they will pass this onto the engineers if the issue still occurs.

Apple has already released a public notice that there are other bugs that has plagued Catalina but no confirmation of our issue. If you haven't called Apple on this issue yet, may I suggest that you do so. The more complaints the faster this can get resolved.

Ive struggled with issues on my iMac and MacBook too.

MacBook crashes in wake etc.

iMac slow or not keeping settings.

Best result so far for my above issues has been to do deep permissions fix, twice, and wait 2 days for that to soak through the millions of files on each device, both system files and my personal files (design, webdev hence the numbers:-O)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

this part...

My macs are a lot more stable and usable now.

I don’t use external monitors, but I do have external drives.

I don’t mean to be off topic for those that do, but it was such a good result for me I wonder if driver permissions are accessing and overflowing memory it request if they are locked somehow after installing Catalina?

I just wanted to sound off one more time on this. The two settings I made(Which will eventually kill my mac) are to disable the hard disk from ever going to sleep and stop the monitors from ever going to sleep Since doing that I went to multiple crashes per hour to no crashes for over a week.

Obviously having your hard disk never sleep will drastically shorten the life of your drive unless you shut down your computer often.

Yes this is a flaw with the Catilina update, yes Apple may or may not fix the issue. Depends on how much attention is brought to the issue. Yes It sucks, thats how business works. Post the issue on social media everywhere if you want a reaction. Do it responsible like a grown adult.

Here is what I would recommend.

"I upgraded my Mac to the latest operating system, and it has been plagued with crashes ever since. Research on the web has shown this is a pretty wide spread. See this apple thread for some examples https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250717203. I hope Apple who has been responsible in the past addresses this issue soon. I would stay away from Apple products for now, and if you own an apple product, don't do any updates until Apple addresses this issue"

Settings That Allowed my mac to stop crashing - your hard drive will not last as long, so Time Machine is your friend.

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

ALSO IMPORTANT:

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine if software is contributing to the problem.

Download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

ALSO IMPORTANT:

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the root of the problem.

If you're having crashes you would be best served to created your own topic (instead of tacking on to the back of a 65 page topic) so you will get more attention for your particular situation.

Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail in the new topic: Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community

On the chance it's software related and now hardware download and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Add Text button to include the report in your reply. How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report

IMPORTANT:

Before running Etrecheck assign Full Disk Access to Etrecheck so that it can get additional information from the Console and log files for the report:

ALSO IMPORTANT:

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the root of the problem.

Perhaps it's not the Radeon Pro Vega graphics card, maybe it's just a graphics card issue? The reason I'm drawing this conclusion is another feed I joined but no other responses on there.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250714596

I'll see if I can get that user to join in with us here.

Hi,

I too have been having this issue with regards to kernel panic after installing Catalina. It usually occurs when I’m working using Adobe Creative Cloud apps... however it has started to happen when I am simply browsing.

Any help would be appreciated.

I've been following this tread as I just received a new iMac 27 inch i9 Vega card etc, and I'm experiencing the same issues. For me changing the sleep settings has fixed it some what, but not totally. I just did a SMC reset (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295) as someone pointed out in another thread this could solve what's happing.

Any one had any luck trying this?

I have seemed to have stumbled upon a solution that so far is working for me. I'm not saying this will work for all, yet might be worth a try.

After doing a SMC reset (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295), I started to get different crash reports mainly about memory. This seemed to be when I was encoding and the screen shut off, or having nothing on the screen at all and after 10 min the computer would reboot. So I downloaded 'Rember' (https://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/). This showed an error within the memory even though the Apple Hardware Test (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257) showed everything was ok.

I have a 2019 iMac i9 With the Vega 48 GPU. I added 2 x 16GB OWC compatible memory chips to the already installed 2 x 4GB that came with the iMac for a total of 40gb. Apple memory in slots 1,3 and OWC in 2,4 as recommended.

I took out the OWC memory, and the computer booted faster and the memory test came back good. So I decided to take the apple memory out and test just the OWC memory, in slots 1,3. Again the computer booted faster and the memory test came back good. I started to do benchmark tests, Geekbench all of a sudden shows my i9 chip was faster, weird. Novabench CPU score jumped almost a 100 points.

So far with the screen setting back to shutting off after 10mins, during encoding and while doing nothing my iMac seem stable with just the 32GB of OWC memory.

Anyways... again this is not a solution to everyone's issues.