iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251140242?page=1

Same deal. 2019 MBP with Vega20 and 2x LG 4K monitors.

I haven't seen the issue with 1 external screen attached. Only with 2.

Restored my last Time Machine backup before I upgraded to Catalina 👍🏼

EDIT: While I've definitely seen the log you've shared, I've actually seen 2-3 different panics. Reported all of them and sent them in to Apple Support.

POSSIBLE SHORT-TERM SOLUTION:

I have turned off automatic graphics switching while I am plugged in to my two external thunderbolt 3 4K monitors. I have not a had a crash for nearly an hour, where I was getting a crash usually within ten to fifteen minutes of startup.

it seems it doesn't crash anymore after I empty the Pictures folder. Now, I'm going to restore photos library one by one carefully in order to not let that photoanalysisd go crazy.

Whoever has a similar problem, you might wanna empty Pictures folder first after backing up your photos to Time Machine.

I'm having the same issue. I have successfully stopped (read: worked around) the problem and recreated the problem three times.

I have two 4k monitors attached to my 2019 MacBook Pro (2019 MacBook Pro with 8-core i9 processor and Radeon Pro Vega 20 GPU). It seems that whenever the computer under a heavy computational load (like bulk transferring large files) and engages the GPU to assist, the computer freezes and then force-restarts to resolve the situation. (I'm sure that's not technically what's happening under hood, but that's the best way I can describe what seems to be happening.) This happens only when I am connected to my 4k monitors. When I disconnect them, my MacBook is stable and doesn't crash.

So now have two 4k monitors that are sitting unused until Apple gets this fixed, or I revert back to the previous OS version. This is hands down the worst upgrade experience I have had with Apple since I bought my first Mac in 2007. Disappointing, to say the least.

Issue is with Spotlight mds process.

If you have large folders with lots of files exclude them from Spotlight searching under System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy.

This fixed my Catalina crashing issue.

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.

Running MacOS Catalina 10.15 on Macbook Pro 11,5 with 2 monitors attached. All software up-to-date and lots of SSD disk space and RAM.

Initially started as a problem highlight text in word for Mac. When I highlight anything in word, MacOS halts for 10 sec. Then I go back to work until I make a mistake and highlight something. Then after a few halts, one of the monitors normally turns all red or yellow sometimes, then back to normal for a short period of time before it outright crashes. Wash, Rinse, Repeat!

Word for Mac solution: When working with word for Mac on Catalina, disconnect all external monitors and all is well! All solutions found online including installing everything all failed.

Now, the problem is beginning to show on Pathfinder 8.6 as well as VLC (2 crashes today!)

Again, the solution, disconnecting the monitors solves the problem!!!

Looking at at the console logs, the problem seems to be related to AMD Graphics.

Hi,

after a week of running with less and less crashes after my fresh install (and maybe I was being more careful). I decided to reset the NVRAM and SMC. Now I am running a week without any random crashed and in the last two days I am have also reinstalled my full set of apps and I have been using my laptop as intense as before.

It seems the problem went away with a combination of cleaning up my old install and the hardware resets. Next time I should directly follow these steps.

I am sorry to hear that other people still have problems and some solutions similar to mine still do not help.

Cheers

Duc

My system - 2012 27" iMac, 32 gb RAM.

• no external monitors
• 3rd party quality RAM
• HD part of Fusion drive broke, so use remaining internal 128gb SSD with 3TB external Thunderbolt drive

Installed Catalina on about day 2 and constant crashes and restarts about every 5-10 minutes. Installed first update. No improvement. Not offered second update. Tried to install 10.15.1with recovery and internet recovery modes, but crashes before update completes - many, many times. Apple support call up to second level didn't help, although they did now what kind of crash I was getting without me telling them!

I have now done a clean install back to Mojave using a USB boot drive. All works perfectly.

Original Catalina update definitely updated firmware and I assume my fresh Mojave installer has re-updated it.

Does anyone know if latest Catalina install has improved firmware update?

And how/where to download full installer for Catalina...

I have a 2013 imac and a mac book pro 2018 both crashed, but imac crashed more. What I learned it seems to be something to do with sleep mode, monitors going to sleep waking up, and extra monitors plugged in.

As soon as "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically....", The crashes slowed there pace from every-time the imac went to sleep, to almost never. I enabled power nap, and that improved it more. Making the monitor never turn off helped more. Also disabled the hard disks sleeping which helped even more. So not my Mac Book pro runs for almost a week without crashing, and the imac only crashes every few days. It is completely sad that my mac products are in this state, thought those days were well over. but thats what helped me. hope it helps someone else.

It seems like when things related to graphics like detecting display types especially displays that are not the built in apple system display crashed the kernel. Drivers too due to the hard drive turn on turn off and drivers re engaging from either standby mode or simply reloading. Not sure what happens under the hood with sleep on drivers and devices, but has to be something like that. It almost appears that Apple changed slightly how the system interacts with drivers and sleeping. Maybe some attempt to improve battery life especially on mac book pros. The air and the pro(have an air too but gave it to my daughter when she moved out) batter lasted forever. The mac book pro lasts a long time if you either A keep it in standby mode, or B turn every service off and the display to be really dark.

15" MBP Mid-2015 AMD Radeon R9 M370X. (10.15.1) two Thunderbolt monitors.

OK...update. I removed and reinstalled Office back to the release version 16.30 and still crashed. I looked through the entire thread here and have determined, from my crash log, that my issue seems to related to what others have described. The first line in the crash state contains "Radeon Pro Vega".

I removed all monitors, as others have, and for me the crashing stopped. I was able to work for over an hour in Word. When I plugged one Thunderbolt monitor back in the machine crashed in less than 2 min of use. Same as before while copying and pasting in Word about the 4th or 5th time and crash! No idea why this would cause something in the graphics layer to crash the entire machine but it does every time.

I'm on the machine now, without a monitor, and have hooked up my old 15" MBP Mid-2014 running Mojave to my two monitors and will continue working there saving to iCloud.

What is interesting is my other 15" MBP Mid-2015 (10.15.1) with only the Intel Iris Pro works fine with Word on a Thunderbolt monitor with no crashes.

Just have to wait for a fix it sounds like.

I unchecked the option to allow bluetooth devices to wakeup my iMac (bluetooth > open bluetooth preferences > advanced > uncheck the box "allow bluetooth devices to wake this computer"). So far so good still allowing my computer to go to sleep. My configuration: USB3 external drive, no external monitor, iMac 21'' 2017. Lesson learned: wait at least 6 months before upgrading to new OS. Apple became totally unreliable.

I literally wrote this a couple of hours before and Apple deleted it, they are actually charging people to repair the logic boards and stuff, the only problems other your computer if ur reading this is Catalina and u most likely have a Radeon pro vega graphics card, don’t waste money downgrade to high Sierra or Mojave and it fixed it for me, Apple technicians don’t know what they have to do to fix this problem.

Looking through this discussion, I saw several potential solutions:

(a) Downgrade to Mojave or High Sierra;

(b) Get rid of any 32-bit software lurking deep in the system; and

(c) Switch off the sleep capabilities.

Options (a) and (b) were clearly going to take some time, so I went for the 'switching off sleep' option, as a starting point.

So far, no crashes. I have put the MBP to sleep manually and it has woken without any drama. Yes, it's only been about 6 hours, but I would have expected a couple by now, on a normal day. I started without external monitors, than added the two regular ones. It just handled it easily.

Tomorrow morning I will know better. 24 hours will be a better test, and I will have it connected to a different pair of external monitors and then a video projector. I'll let you know if there have been any crashes in that time.