iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

I can CONFIRM that 10.15.1 is EXTREMELY UNSTABLE on Dual monitor. Macbook Pro 15".

On 10.15 I used to get a 10 sec. hang (beachball) now I get immediate crash.

One of the steps to repeat the crash:

1. Connect multiple monitors to Macbook Pro.
2. Open Word for Mac (16.31 - latest)
3. Type some text
4. Highlight the text
5. Immediate crash!!!

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 came here because I've had 3 crashes in a row in one evening. I still think Catalina shouldn't have been brought out to the public. It feels like it's still in beta. No idea how to fix it yet, but if Apple continues the trend of releasing software updates that aren't finished, I might as well switch OS. My work depends on my laptop, and for a "pro" product, I sure wasn't expecting this unfinished piece of software.

• a 2019 15" MacBook Pro user

Make sure your

settings >> Power Saver >>

1. "Put Hard Disks to sleep when possible" is NOT checked
2. Turn display off after: set to "Never"
3. Enable Power Nap: checked

With those settings on all my macs crash way less (since chokalina of course)

I imagine after the 1 millionth reported issue of the same thing apple will privately address this bug in catilina with a hidden patch

We finished our call, he used the "Capture_Data.dmg" to pull the exact same logs I showed him that he said no one used.

Seriously, senior advisor not educated on the crash logs nor the console...but it gets better. I showed him this thread as well so I expect my post will be deleted so I'll take a screen shot.

"I'll call you tomorrow, no wait..uh...I'm out till Wednesday, what time can I call you then."

"Can you pass the case? No sorry 'dude', we can't pass cases, you'd have open a new one. No or wait, uh maybe tell them you have a case."

I get it, I understand, my Mac is business, not a toy, software is wicked hard to build and maintain. The youthful joy of this new $4K....alas the Sounds of the Playground are fading....

Anyways, to throw something helpful in the mix, here is all what I tried:

• All screensavers, timeouts, backgrounds and power saving functions off - crash still appeared.
• Turned off Bluetooth wake up - crash still appeared.
• Killed all background process - crash still appeared.
• Tested both Finder only and 50 apps open - crash still appeared.
• PRAM, SMC, Safemode - crash still appeared.
• Reinstall - crash still appeared.

Sent 75+ crash logs, all the same cause. WATCHDOG timeout.

Process: WindowServer [229]

Path: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SkyLight.framework/Versions/A/Resources/WindowServer

Identifier: WindowServer

Version: 600.00 (440.14)

Code Type: X86-64 (Native)

Parent Process: launchd [1]

Responsible: WindowServer [229]

User ID: 88

Date/Time: 2019-11-06 09:08:40.254 -0500

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.15.1 (19B88)

Report Version: 12

Anonymous UUID: 0E594B72-4579-EE80-1BFC-30ADEC256111

Sleep/Wake UUID: 9C72F78E-0173-40D0-88C1-445E7D14FE30

Time Awake Since Boot: 52000 seconds

Time Since Wake: 6200 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 2 com.apple.coreanimation.render-server

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGKILL)

Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Reason: WATCHDOG, [0x1] monitoring timed out for service

Termination Details: WATCHDOG, checkin with service: com.apple.WindowServer returned not alive with context:

unresponsive work processor(s): WindowServer main thread

40 seconds since last successful checkin, 818 total successsful checkins since load (0 induced crashes)

Application Specific Information:

StartTime:2019-11-06 14:35:29

GPU:AMD

MetalDevice for accelerator(0x3407): 0x7fd795c0c1b8 (MTLDevice: 0x7fd768020000)

IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/PEG0@1/IOPP/EGP0@0/IOPP/EGP1@0/IOPP/GFX0@0/ATY,Ucayali@0/AMDFramebufferVega10

IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/PEG0@1/IOPP/EGP0@0/IOPP/EGP1@0/IOPP/GFX0@0/ATY,Ucayali@4/AMDFramebufferVega10

IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/PEG0@1/IOPP/EGP0@0/IOPP/EGP1@0/IOPP/GFX0@0/ATY,Ucayali@2/AMDFramebufferVega10

Just let me say I have been in the computer / telecoms business for over 40 years and Mac/Apple user for over 20 years.

This is the worst upgrade I have seen in my time in the industry since Vista.!

I finally got a clean load of Catalina on my MacBook 2019 and after a lot of reboots it now stays up I have no clue what has changed. But I still have lots of mysterious lock ups of Apps including News, Disk Utility and even Finder only cleared by a reboot and then it keeps losing my display settings.

The clincher was I discovered that the monitoring program for my CCTV on my house will not run, probably 32 bit and its unlikely they will rewrite it, so its back to Mojave for me.

So my questions to Apple:

Why on earth did you change so much in a dot release? Shouldn't this be a full release, like 11.0.0

Who and what were your Beta samplers? Young kids with brand new hardware and Apps, certainly no professionals with legacy systems and applications to support.

So far I have found apart from the crashes:

• There is clearly something wrong in supporting external displays it has a number of attempts at one of my 4K displays before it settles. Mojave finds it instantly.
• removing 32 bit support is a disaster - can no longer run any of my legacy systems like my CCTV and some of music apps
• the new security stops apps working without any explanation i.e. Sonos - I had to search around file permissions to get this to work, I haven even tried some of the sharing other servers.
• Parallels was locking up - however I understand Parallels have now issued a release that works on Catalina
• Logitech mouse and keyboard apps I had to delete and reinstall Options app , now no longer in System Preferences
• Podcasts - I can't find were they are stored! I was saving some of these.
• The iTunes to Music conversion lost lots of artwork
• Music has reduced functionality from iTunes like no Column browser also none of my scripts now work
• Time machine has changed so I can't see old back ups
• Syncing iPhone is possible but not at all obvious. Used to happen automatically when I connected.
• I haven't got a clue what's going on with Photos - it seems to have lost all my people

Apple are you listening???? - everything worked fine on Mojave! Unless you fix this, a lot of us will be heading back to Windows.

Well, another day another shot at it...

I've read some responses about possible hardware issue that can arise due to Cataline. Because my MacBook Pro (2018, bought in February 2019, with a Radeon Pro 555X) is still under warranty, I decided to reinstall Catalina (again) two days ago. Maybe it breaks the hardware (if at all) within my warranty.

Whats our common ground here? What separates us from all the other people using Catalina without any problems?

This is what I've tried/found so far.

So far I've seen a number of reboots already... Not just when idle and sleeping (or attempting to) but also when using it. Once specifically when plugging in my external drive. So I decided to take a closer look at the drive. It is a SSD drive, but it's not recognized as such. It's connected with an USB-C cable and I tried swapping the cable to USB-3 with an adapter. The drive still wasn't recognized as a SSD drive. No luck.

Then there is the other thing. My Photo's library is on my external drive. I've noticed that when I'm trying to eject the drive, it stalls on ejecting the partition with the Photo's library. I moved my Photo's library to my internal drive. Who knows. I'll keep you posted about this.

I'm using a Wacom Intuos Pro (S) from a couply of years ago. It's connected through an USB-C cable. Drivers are up to date, permissions are set correctly. Maybe it's a part of the problem, who knows.

I've also read some people suspect there's a connection to the Time Machine backups. I'm also using Time Machine, but that's through a harddrive on my AirPort Extreme. Besides this, I'm using Chronosync to backup my images (I'm a photographer) to Amazon S3 and to other drives in my network.

Let's see if there is something we all have in common here (focusing on usage, not just on internal hardware):

• • External SSD drive (not recognized as an SSD) connected trough USB-C.
  • Photo's library (the system library) was on the external drive (but I've moved it to the internal drive).
  • I'm using a Wacom Intuos Pro (S) from a couple of years ago. Connected through an USB-C cable.
  • I'm using Time Machine on a drive connected to my AirPort Extreme.
  • I'm using an app called Chronosync (updated for Catalina) to backup my images to Amazon and other drives in my network.

My system crashed before I've moved my Photo's library to the internal drive. Maybe this fixes it. If not, I'll try disconnecting my tablet every time I make my MacBook sleep. If this doesn't fix it, I'll try disconnecting my external drive every time I'm putting the MacBook to sleep.

I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, let's try to figure out what's our common denominator here. I don't believe Apple will respond to anything on this support forum, so I think it's up to us.

After hours with Apple support, removing memory, PRAM, SMC, deleting non Apple extensions, and full reinstall, I can confidently say that as a software engineer, this is somewhere in the core display drivers. When working with a single iMac screen, no crashes, adding my two 4k monitors, no matter what power or bluetooth settings, the machine will still kernel panic.

After talking with Apple, there are two things very clear.

1. They are aware of the issue and they make you go through the same troubleshooting steps as normal issues. There is not yet a solution and they will not admit it is related to multiple monitors.
2. They do not read, care and nor will they reference or acknowledge these forums. 3 separate times the forums were dismissed with disgust and I found the support experience very unprofessional. Certainly not according to the Apple protocol.

---- Again, if you are having these issue, please attempt to disconnect the multiple monitors and leave the machine overnight. Post your results. --

---My kernel panic issue--

panic(cpu 6 caller 0xffffff7f8f868ad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 140 seconds

service: com.apple.logd, total successful checkins since load (3580 seconds ago): 359, last successful checkin: 0 seconds ago

service: com.apple.WindowServer, total successful checkins since load (3550 seconds ago): 332, last successful checkin: 140 seconds ago

I have conducted several little experiments of my own with regards to the Catalina OS. Here are my conclusions:

1. Catalina successfully upgraded from Mojave from my loaded mid 2014 MacBook Pro, though not without it's share of a few crashes and hangs. In the interest of having one stable and working Mac, I reverted that machine to Mojave and it is still the best Apple Product I ever bought!
2. I was completely unsuccessful - following the fully array of online support incl. this community - in upgrading any of my 2019 MacBook Pros to Catalina. In the end, I was forced to reformat all of the drives and reinstall Mojave so they could resume being operational assets. All three attempts resulted in the dreaded black screen with the blinking "?" folder. All three machines have since been returned for full refunds. I pay Apple 5x what the cost of a Dell to release PREVIOUSLY beta-tested software so I don't have to rate my time tinkering under the hood like a science fair geek.
3. Out of an abundance of curiosity (to see if Catalina worked on this latest launch), I picked up a brand-spanking new 16" MB Pro. The only issues with this pre-loaded Catalina machine was a bug in downloading my music from iTunes to Apple Music. Terminal tricks on these discussion boards allowed me to finally download my music ;} Everything else seems to be working like magic!
4. CONCLUSION: Catalina OS seems to have been designed particularly with the Late 2019 16" MacBook Pro in mind, much to the exclusion of every other prior hardware - even the immediate predecessors of the line. After studying these issues for a few weeks now, I'm certain Catalina has been the worst Apple software release ever - it wasn't even ready for the machine it was intentionally designed for!
5. RECOMMENDATIONS: A) If you own any Mac computers prior to Catalina pre-installed machines, do your very best to preserve your data in multiple copies as well as Time Machine or other back-up software BEFORE messing around with Catalina. B) If your pre-Catalina computer keeps on crashing after a Catalina update attempt, use Recovery Mode to re-install Mojave. C) If you are ready for a new computer, go with the 16" MacBook Pro which comes with Catalina pre-installed (though not without a few little annoyances); It's otherwise stable and reliable!

You can go back but it’s going to take a full day or 2 to downgrade to Mojave and a lot of it will be manually installing the apps you had.

heres how I did it:

• First you need to make a time machine back up of your drive (very important!!!). Use an external drive to make one.
• make a bootable Mojave install on a thumb drive. There are YouTube tutorials on how to do this. IT WILL WIPE ALL YOUR DATA AND DO A FRESH INSTALL OF MOJAVE
• next you need to reinstall all of your apps manually.
• You can also copy files and data from inside the time machine image by looking inside it using finder. So copy over user data like pictures, music, documents.
• You can also copy other user data from the time machine image like user settings and app content.
• Finally relax knowing this Bullshit of an OS (Catalina) is behind you.

Im back running Mojave for a week now and haven’t had 1 single crash, plus my Macbook is a lot less cluttered after having had it for a couple of years now, so it actually runs faster :-)

I have exactly the same issue recently.

And here are my observations:

1. When I first upgraded from Mojave to Catalina, I didn't have this issue. It starts happening after I re-install a clean Catalina.
2. I only happen while MBP connecting to an external monitor.

In my case, I was able to downgrade to Mojave without a hitch using Time Machine. I think my method was a bit different than some:

1. Just before upgrading to Catalina, I did a full Time Machine backup.
2. I disconnected my Time Machine external drive just after backup was completed.
3. I then upgraded to Catalina.
4. I left my Time Machine drive disconnected while on Catalina (for about 1 week). Anything I did on Catalina wasn't backed up because I knew I was just in testing mode.
5. Once I decided I had enough, I wiped my SSD and installed a fresh copy of Mojave.
6. After install, I did a full restore with zero problems and everything was back as it was a week earlier just before I upgraded.

This method kept me free and clear as a contingency for the possibility of downgrading.

The issue for kernel panic/reboots faults in Catalina and Vega drivers.

1. I have a new imac 27" 5k 2019 + 2 external 4k display with Catalina (last update) and crashed (i test all, turn off energy saver, not sleep for hdd, turn off monitor when i awake from mac) but nothing, working fine for an hours or a day and then crash again....
2. I return to Mojave on my iMac 27" 5k 2019 + 2 external 4k display....working great for a day and then crash again when editing video..
3. I have imac 27" 5K - 2017 (radeon pro 580) with Catalina + 2 external 4k display and not crashes (i install Catalina on this machine a mont ago)

So, it's clear, the issue is Catalina + Vega card..maybe drivers need to be updated...if you have a newer machina with Vega inside need to wait for update..hope Apple fix this soon since Mac computers are unstable right now.

To help Apple developers, and get their attention please:

1. Every time it crashes, please send crash report to Apple.
2. Add consistent notes to every crash report *before* sending report.

Example Crash Report Note: "#catalinacrashonwake Crash on wake from sleep macOS 10.15.2 constantly reproducible "

My MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) crashes constantly *every* time when attempt to wake after sleep:.

IOAHCIBlockStorageDriver::CommandTimeout!

Disabling Energy Saver is my only work-around.

Buggy APFS drivers?

Hello,

iMac 2019 i9 with 40gigas, external HDs and monitor. Upgrade from Mojave to Catalina 10.15.3. Results : Kernel Panic 10 times a day. Boring.

What I did to resolve this problem:

• Etrecheck to detect and delete unnecessary files,
• Go64 to remove ALL 32-bit processes and applications,
• Remove Adobe CC (lots of 32bits things),
• Onyx to clear caches,
• Restart,
• Reinstall Adobe CC (seems that Adobe remove all 32bits things with Calatina installer),
• In the energy saver settings : Turn display off after : Never“,
• In the energy saver settings : Disable the option “Put hard disks to sleep when possible“.

For now, no KP and crashes.

I tried to activate the function to turn off the screen but this would cause a crash.

Hope this helps.