iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

After sending countless crash reports to Apple, you'd think they'd do something, but nope, Crashlina continues...

Windows never crashed this frequently even when the blue screen of death was the running joke. Good job Apple.

I've just gone 10 days without a crash and I was hoping that the reason was that I no longer had my external monitors connected.

Unfortunately, I just had it freeze (mouse cursor still moves about though) and restart whilst in the middle of something.

It must be the graphics card (in my case an AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4 GB).

Not sure if this will help pinpoint the issue but I'm attaching my latest report in case someone can help make sense of it and point me in the right direction, or if it just looks the same as everyone else's.

Energy saving options are set with:

Turn display off after 10mins

Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off - ticked

Put hard disks to sleep when possible - not ticked

Wake for network access - ticked

Start up automatically after a power failure - not ticked

Enable power nap - not ticked

Screen saver is set to Never

In a terminal:

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6

Then look at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372 to find out how to create a bootable usb installer.

The softwareupdate command was added to Catalina and is not available if you're running a previous mac OS version.

Yep, have done a few times and nothing conclusive (in a new post/topic too). I've had similar issues for about 2.5 years, only now since since most of the hardware was replaced has it become consistent enough to find other people experiencing the same issue (determined by the WindowServer error).

Attached an EtreCheck report I just ran. Have uninstalled and reinstalled LastPass for Safari but that continues to crash repeatedly, although not at the same time as these crashes (where everything freezes except the mouse cursor) and then restarts.

Also attached a recent kernel panic report.

First I suggest you reboot to clear out caches and temp system and swap files. Do a Safe Mode boott into Safe Mode (Use Safe Mode to isolate issues with your Mac)  

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

I suggest you reboot more frequently to keep the caches and temp swap files cleared out.

I see where LastPass is crashing a lot. Make sure you have the latest update. I believe it is 4.40.1.

I'd also remove all of the user login startup items and replace them one at a time, running for a while to see if the problem ceases.

Same problem here, constantly restarting with error message since Catalina. The installation is fresh, no update from Mojave. But the problem existed already before, when upgrading from Mojave to Catalina. As the system was very slow then, I did a completely fresh install of Catalina. The system has a LG UltraFine 5K Display connected. The restarting mostly happens in sleep mode, I am not sure if also at other times, more observation needed.

As another user suggested! Instead of posting here send feedback directly to Apple as it’s clear they don’t monitor their forums like they used too. Or are just ignoring this. Either way here is the link...

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

You are still running macOS 10.15 (19A583) according to your crash log report. Update to macOS 10.15.3 (19D76) and see if that helps.

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2030?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

peter_watt wrote:

Guide me round this

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/7a355301-c938-412b-90ca-87ba4ddf5c35

It says quite clearly to join the beta program to give feedback on betas. It doesn't say that you can only use the Feedback Assistant to report issues on betas. And the app happily submits feedback on release software.

Do you imagine that Apple aren't interested in hearing about issues in release software?

From https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/

"All versions of macOS include the app in /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications, and it can be launched with Spotlight or the URL scheme applefeedback://. When enrolling a macOS system in beta builds with the Beta Access Utility, the app is added to the Dock and aliased in /Utilities."

Restore from the Time Machine backup that you were advised to make before upgrading.

Or use Recovery and install the OS it came with.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

A truly brand new Mac from Apple will come with Catalina pre-installed

Just came across an article at MacPaw with a variety of suggestions for those of us having Catalina issues: https://macpaw.com/how-to/fix-macos-catalina-problems

Here’s one that seems particularly interesting (I know it mentions freezing on reboot, but perhaps the kext issue relates to why many of us can get Catalina to work only on Safe Boot?)

• Solution: Move Library Extensions

As a band-aid solution, you can relocate your /Library/Extensions kexts to a backup folder. As confirmed by many users, this fixes macOS Catalina stuck on reboot problem. 

To perform this, you will need Terminal app:

Click Launchpad > Terminal

Now paste in the following command:

mkdir ~/Extensions-Backup && sudo mv /Library/Extensions/* ~/Extensions-Backup/

This command relocates your Library Extensions to the username/Extensions Backup folder. Later you can put the Extensions back where they belong at: /Library/Extensions.

Until there is a fix, this is the workaround that is stable and working for me.

In Energy Saver System preferences, for both battery and power adapter:

• Set "Turn display off after" to NEVER.
• Tick "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the screen is off"

In Desktop & Screensaver

• Change "Start after" to NEVER.

When I finish work, I manually sleep the mac using the Apple menu and Sleep. Obviously this means your computer is using more power and the battery will drain faster, but you shouldn't have crashes.

Hot corners for "Put display to sleep" are actually working ok for me as is manually sleeping.

If anyone else is having trouble with this Catalina sleep/crash/restart/kernel panic problem, please let me know if this helps you too so that others can know of a workaround.

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!

For me going back to Mojave didn't fix the issue... I don't know how Mac installs work but I suspect they layer on top of each other and retain some previous software? Or possibly they updated the firmware on some components? Either way since the Catalina crashes began the computer has been unreliable and crash prone no matter the OS.

It was so bad I couldn't even install High Sierra (recovery) because it would crash so often. Mojave installed but had the same crashes (if slightly less frequent).

I'm back on Catalina now and I've just decided to stick it out here until a fix is made. I've found some steps that seem to mitigate the issue. Not sure which of these is helping but it might be helpful for others in the same boat:

• NVRAM reset
• Not using USB-C external monitor (which also powered my laptop). instead I'm using the USB-C >> USB & HDMI official mac adaptor. This seems to have had a great effect on reducing crashing. I have to put up with hdmi 30hz refresh rate but that's hardly bad compared to the brutal crashing
• Using firefox instead of Safari. Not sure but I think it would often crash when using safari - it seems more stable since making the switch
• I noticed when I plugged my external HD into laptop it crashed... but if I did it via the mac adapter above it didn't... weird.

There definitely seems to be a connection with the Catalina crashing and external USB-C devices or monitors. It's consistent with the fact my computer was crashing during USB clean installs because obviously it was using an external device for the install. Time Machine restores seems to always fail at the same point as well and I've seen at least one other user online experience this same issue. Again that could be the external device issue being triggered.

I currently have a support call open with Apple but all they seem to do is run me through all the basic resets and re-installs. They seem as in the dark about this as we are. I dread the moment they suggest I replace some hardware as I refuse to believe my hardware failed the INSTANT I completed my first Catalina install. Apple really dropped the ball on this.