iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

I have exactly the same problem. I have recently upgraded to Mac OS Crash-alina and my macboook pro keeps on shutting down every so often. 4 times in the lapse of 10 minutes. It's getting really annoying. It seems that every time it goes to sleep something happens, then there's this message saying "you shut down your computer because of a problem". Even more annoying! I did not shut down the computer and what on earth "because of a problem" actually means?! So ambiguous!

Any help would be most appreciated it. Gee! Had I known! Actually, I should have learnt from previous upgrades!

sinhue, if your crash report looks something like this:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f8a39cad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 140 seconds

Try disabling the screen saver, disabling all sleep functions, and, if you use Parallels, enable the Parallels Tools "Do Not Sleep" function. I was crashing every time the Mac was unused and have not crashed since forcing it to stay awake.

My iMac seemed to install Catalina ok, faster than my laptop which is newer, but now I can’t do ANYTHING on it and it’s connected to my printer which sucks. It’s an older Mac, 2013 or 14 and my daughters, so I’m in huge trouble for upgrading. Keeps restarting and sending reports. Kill me now.

I seem to have nailed down crashes on my machine to the spawning of cron processes.

_Something_ is creating many, and after a while, everything starts to die. Just as i'm typing this i can see (via `ps aux | grep cron | wc -l`) that there are 16 more processes than when I started....

I could see this as i was getting ` fork failed: resource temporarily unavailable` issues in iterm when trying to do... anything.

No answer, but maybe someone else sees something similar?

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!

What worked for me was to restart the computer in safe mode, remove all devices connected that isn't a monitor mouse and keyboard. Restart the computer back to normal mode, work with the computer without anything connected, if everything works, then connect one device at the time, see work with the computer with only that device connected and see if it crashes, if not you connect the next. That worked for me and hasn't crashed or froze at all today.

Credit to Apple support via twitter, apparently starting in safe mode will clear cache and fix some problems, which it did for me.

Same here with the Supplemental Update. I was hoping it would increase stability, but it's actually made it more unstable. It crashing DURING the update and I thought the iMac was about to be bricked. It was able to recover, but lockups and reboots still occur. No where near production ready.

System Version: macOS 10.15 (19A602)

Kernel Version: Darwin 19.0.0

Model Identifier: iMac19,1

Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Core i5

My 6 month old Mac book Pro is now crashing several time per day. Calling apple care is like calling some one randomly to look fixes on the internet while you wait. Terrible update; Catalina is obviously not ready.

Yes! Catalina is NOT ready. I never update the first time Apple release an update. They can’t seem to listen to us? As a stumbling example of Software issues, look at the IOS today, another update was released for IPhone and IPads. That’s about 6 already. Seems those who knew how to write systems software have retired?

Usually I have not been auto updating; but there have been so many updates recently and I just clicked auto update. I am so tired of Apple prematurely sending theses updates out. I lost a lot of work today. I am just a few rounds from tapping out. This can't continue like this. Seriously.

I installed today's update and did a test to see if it fixed the problem of the Mac crashing based on the screen saver or sleep settings inducted kernel panics. It does not. I am back to disabling the screen saver and sleep settings to keep the Mac functional.

My MacBook air 2018 8GB 128GB hasn't crashed even once in last 1 and 1/2 years. After Catalina upgrade it started crashing and each time I sent the log. Now even the system doesn't even come up. At night if it crash it boots up only in the morning. I tried all hardboot options available. This is the first time experience for me, but killing me...

macOS Catalina upgrade still crashing during startup after installing 19 October 2019 update patch. We have the same problem on two 2012 iMacs, a 2015 MacBook Pro and a 2017 Mac Mini. What was Apple thinking?!

I'm on the supplementary version and it crashes randomly even when I've disabled the screensaver / system sleep and everything else related to idle timeouts. Very, very annoying! I'm usually in the middle of writing code and it reboots, disrupting my momentum and flow as well as any unsaved changes. Aaaaarrrgghh.

The supplemental update has not fixed the problem. I have MacBook Pro 2019 (highest configuration). I am extremely disappointed. I had to take a day off from work to make up for my PhD project work that I lost because of the system crash.

The new system is driving our graphic designer at work CRAZY.

Shall I return my MacBook and get a windows machine to get my school work done this semester? Customers need a time frame for solving this issue.

Apple... PLEASE HELP!