iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

Won't bet $100 for never re-occur :-) BTW, i noticed one more symptom before NVRAM reset: I use iStat menus, and the system didn't allow me to open the dropdown menu on disks, for the rest (CPU, Mem, Network) it didn't happen.

If it's in the return window, return it for a full refund and await the bug fixes before purchasing a new one. Once contaminated with Catalina in its present incarnation, there is no reversing the contagion.

I can say with conviction that Apple's working hard on fixing this but it isn't that straightforward, believe it or not. It may help if we're able to find the most simple of configurations / installations and share this info with Apple so that it helps them figure this out.

I am crashing and spinning every day since ‘upgrading’ to Catalina on 8 October and it is frustrating as ****. I cannot even open photos and build custom PDFs due to crashing and I am losing time and $$$$

I feel fortunate that {so-far} my crashes happen at shutdown. I've tried to isolate USB connections (iPhone, thumb drive, Time Machine) and applications running (Firefox, Music, Safari, Mail) but none seem to make a difference. I suspect that this problems happen as a result of the enhanced security that Apple added. Certain third party apps (Gimp etc.) fail to run properly without workarounds. I am totally surprised since all of Apple's previous releases since I bought this machine have been flawless (at least for me) until now. This is really broken. Are you sure that this is not an alpha release?

Same issue. External Thunderbolt monitor. I can't send the crash reports because when given the option the computer freezes and I get the beach ball so the report won't send. Insult to injury. Really hoping that there will be an answer soon. Can't imagine the collective hours spent on the phone with Apple (including my 2+ yesterday). They mean well, but no solution found.

Same for me as well - one thing I've discovered is that it only does it if I'm running an external drive - which is 90% of the time -sooooo thats sweet. It would be awesome to get this fixed ASAP -

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) - 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 -Radeon Pro 455 2 GB Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 MB

I've been with Mac for 30 years now and I've NEVER had anything even remotely buggy happen like these failures until now. Catalina completely rendered two new top end 2019 MacBook Pros on Catalina useless and I had no choice but to return these DOA to the Apple Store. Compatibility issues with older machines might be understandable, but brand new? I'm wondering if an experimental version of the OS was accidentally released as the " official" 10.15. That all being said, my Mid 2014 MacBook Pro has not had a single issue after having moved over to Catalina. If I do try for a third attempt at a 2019 MBPro, I will NOT be infecting it with Catalina any time soon. Bugs are one thing; catastrophic failures are an altogether entirely different animal.

latest: my Mid 2014 MacBook Pro with Catalina- I’d previously reported it running fine - is now all of a sudden not allowing me to get past boot up. Out of nowhere. All attempts this afternoon at getting rid of Catalina - even from Time Machine -have been an abysmal failure. THANK GOD I made multiple multi-platform back-ups between Dropbox, iCloud (but who knows if that’s going to eventually transfer over), Time Machine (epic fail - now only works with Catalina and refuses to engage with previous OS X Versions), and one drive of folder by folder manual back-ups —- or I’d be f*#%+d for good.

In an Age when so many of the the institutions we have counted on before are collapsing, the last thing I thought that would fall was Apple. You folks have let so many of us down with this cancerous Catalina OS incarnation. For the love of integrity, honesty, and loyalty to customers such as myself who have been avid Apple purchasers and supporters until now, COMMUNICATE and advise, please!!!!!

I put aside my brand new MacBook Pro 2019 which I got 2 months ago in preparation to receive Catalina, which I didn't get a chance to use more than 2 days! I got back to my old 2012 MacBook which runs High Sierra.

I have been watching the thread everyday since the introduction of Catalina, hoping that Apply will show some respect to its loyal customers and give them a time frame to end this nightmare. This is Disaster recovery 101! I am honestly speechless!

This is a disgrace! the only way to stop going back to your Mac and discover you need to reboot is to prevent the machine to get the disk to sleep! but anyway every day i need to shutdown and reboot! i really hope Apple will sort it put this !!!

I tried everything. The only viable solution I have been able to come up with is as follows:

1) RETURN new machines infected with Catalina and still within the return window immediately. Order a brand new machine. Be sure the new one is still pre-loaded with Mojave (Mid-2019). According to my sources, in about two weeks, the brand new machines boxed up late this Summer and early this Fall are already pre-loaded with Catalina and are due out to retailers any day now! So be vigilant!!! As soon as your Mojave pre-loaded arrives, disable automatic updates thereby postponing dealing with Catalina on your own terms until Apple gets it act together and does what should have been done after proper testing & QC.

2) BACK UP old machines using ALL THREE of these different Methods: a) BACK UP ONLINE via iCloud and another online venue such as Dropbox (which I find super reliable across platforms); b) BACK UP MANUALLY to deliberately preserve gravitas files to a separate, dedicated hard drive; c) BACK UP AUTOMATICALLY, using Time Machine on its own designated hard drive. The pressure on Apple to fix this mess post-hoc is no doubt causing alarm bells to go off all over the place in their HQ. One way or another (and I think it will be another - as in a complete replacement for Catalina before the end of November), there will ultimately emerge a working and productive replacement for Mojave. Once that happens and months have passed for developers to work the bugs out for the rest of us - the usual process - then hopefully we'll all be able to partake of Apple's next steps.

Food for thought: I've always backed up my most important files manually on a separate drive and have been using Time Machine since its inception with 60-70% success. But iCloud and Dropbox have really made moving from one machine to another so much less worrisome. "Migration Assistant" is just not a dependable platform with which to entrust the survivability of your most important files. It has never completely worked on any of my Macs (1989 = my first Mac)! Ever.