iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

Best advice on a thread this length (because there are probably ten reasons for the same result of a "crash" )

is:-

• Start your own thread
• Get Etrecheck from Etresoft.com or from App Store
• Describe your problem with full details.
• Include an Etrecheck report set up with full disk access and attach it to your thread using the Additional text icon. This will inclue the latest crash report as well as other details that will encourage members to analyse. Once it gets past a few pages the thread goes stale and becomes a "me too" thread like this.
• Send crash reports to Apple either by the normal sharing method or as a bug report at Apple feedback
• Apple Suppport cannot and will not help on this forum - only enthusiastic fellow users. And if you **** them off they will not come back.

First off this shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2 thread was very helpful& informative early for me , simply showing that others were seeing the same shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2 I was experiencing .

Also - Have been having issues posting myself . Also the Helpful button has been disabled for weeks .

I think most of us have provided Feedback Utility input .

This thread has value if for no other than highlighting that there is an ongoing shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 to others .

I know this thread saved me a multitude of hours of trouble shooting the shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 .

Most of us either via experience or apple genius this is not a hardware issues , I personally have sorted out there are no hardware issues with my system .

It is obvious to some one with 40+ years of Apple experience , for most of those on this thread this is not our first rodeo .

Some of my shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2 were associated with Kernel Panic but with 10.15.3 I am not seeing the same Kernel Panic in activity logs .

Due to the diversity of systems described here & else where experiencing shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 is not hardware related .

You can not have 2012 miniMacs a decade wide multitude of iMacs , MacBookPros & a brand new 16"MacBook Pro all having the same issue and it be a hardware related shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 .

We have also sorted out this is not a specific peripheral issue Bluetooth , FireWire400/800 , USB 2/3 , USB-C , Thunderbolt 2/3 , with or without displays , with or with out hard drives the shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 persist regardless of the diversity of system setups described.

I have found that only two things stop or prevent shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 on my 2017 MacBook Pro 15"

• Syncing of iPhone , iPod , iPodtouch will stop shutdown after all other applications have been closed
• Using a YouTube screen saver that is some what graphically demanding will more often then not prevent the shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3

As far as I can tell the shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 is a GPU / CPU Firmware related issue .

Once the GPU / CPU dips below a certain point a Firmware bug/glitch closes all applications & shuts down the Mac requiring user name & password at start screen .

I don't know if this has to do with the elimination of Widgets or the addition again again of Stickies but it is not a specific Mac hardware or Peripheral issue .... The shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 is a GPU / CPU Firmware related problem .

What I do know is the Shutdown issue with Catalina 10.15.2/10.15.3 is most persistent pain with an Mac OS upgrade I have had ever had to deal with !

Of course we're all aware there are others who have successfully downgraded. But I just don't get the point of insisting that others have successfully reverted when there are quite clearly others who have not. Esp when:

1. We have no idea what proportion these successful ones constitute or
2. You are unable to say what it is that the unsuccessful ones might be doing wrong.

Precisely. We are in agreement. There is no single fix. Some Macs may be unfixable via software. But some fixes work in some cases and some folk have rock solid Catalina rigs from day 1

again...

to get help from the forum

• Start your own thread
• Get Etrecheck from Etresoft.com or from App Store
• Describe your problem with full details.
• Include an Etrecheck report set up with full disk access and attach it to your thread using the Additional text icon. This will inclue the latest crash report as well as other details that will encourage members to analyse. Once it gets past a few pages the thread goes stale and becomes a "me too" thread like this.
• Send crash reports to Apple either by the normal sharing method or as a bug report at apple.com/feedback

I was trying to highlight the Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3 had an email exchange with Appleinsider staffer

"Kexts are deprecated. Apple is changing everything to sandbox. ... With Windows 10x, Microsoft is sand boxing everything too. We are going to see more of this rather than less until people update drivers and accessories. It really is like the 9-X transition all over again. "

Only non Mac Apps I had been using were Chrome , Firefox & Twitter also don’t have any printer or scanner drivers on my desktop Mac . Haven't had time to sort out App or combo of Chrome , Firefox & Twitter was causing frequent crashes will sort it out with process of elimination .

After this I tried running only Mac Applications (Safari Mail Music Messages Preview Contacts Notes) system stayed up for 8 hours with no Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3 .

Tested again overnight using only Mac Applications open (Safari Mail Music Messages Preview Contacts Notes) system stayed up for 10+ hours with no Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3 .

I got daring & set Sleep to something reasonable like 30 Min & screen saver to 5min again only using Mac Applications after 40 min Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3 reappeared .

Tried again set sleep to never , screen saver to never , again only using Mac Applications after 40 min system still up .

So at least on my desk top set up MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) Intel Core i7 2.8 GHz Memory: 16 GB Radeon Pro 560 1TB SSD only 50% full - Apple Bluetooth Keyboard & Trackpad using Apple Thunderbolt Display via Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt 3 dongle - connected via Apple Thunderbolt Display to OWC miniStack Firewire 800 backup SSD , Firewire 400 Card flash reader with myriad other USB connections wired keyboard /mouse , DVD , lightning , iPod 30 pin ....... via the USB 2.0 Apple Thunderbolt Display .

I was able to isolate two issues that contributed to the Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3 for me .

• Non Mac Applications Chrome Version 79.0.3945.130 (64-bit) , Firefox 72.0.2 & Twitter / TweetDeck 3.16.1 one of these or combination cause the Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3

• There is still an issue in Catalina10.15.3 with system sleep triggering the Crash / Shutdown / Restart Issues with Catalina 10.15.3

I hope this helps some one ....

Same problem here. I waited 4 months before upgrading to Catalina, figuring Apple would have time to work out the bugs. No dice.

Maxed out BTO iMac Pro 2017 with two external Dell monitors. Catalina turns it into a $12,000 paperweight.

• Two monitors and Catalina: panic during display sleep with "no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer" after a few hours
• Unplug monitors: no panic
• Plug monitors in again: panic
• Wipe disk, fresh Catalina install with two monitors: panic
• Fresh Catalina install with monitors unplugged: no panic
• Downgrade to Mojave with two monitors: no panic

Apple support points at Dell. Dell points at Apple.

Have any of you tried different brands of monitors or different video cables? It's a reach, but I'm willing to try about anything at this point.

Hello,

Three causes of crash here :

1. panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff7f87a4bf3f): @/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IOUSBHostFamily_Drivers/IOUSBHostFamily-800.80.1/AppleUSBXHCI/AppleUSBXHCITransferRing.cpp:220
2. /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PhotoAnalysis.framework/Versions/A/Support/photoanalysisd
3. /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuickLookUI.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/QuickLookUIService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/QuickLookUIService

So I'm glad I'm not alone here. I have never been more frustrated with Apple than ever since I got for the first time a IMac. I own various systems and don't have the issues everyone and myself have with those devices except the iMac. Apple since Steve has been gone has diminished in quality and service so I guess we are stuck.

My question to all in this forum is; Does everyone have a fusion drive? So don't forget that Apple didn't support fusion upon release of APFS and something tells me that the file system is still struggling with fusion drives.

I ended up resetting the fusion drive and the system started to work well again for about a week or so and now today it crashed on shutdown again as it had been. Im just curious ifs fusion drives are a variable across everyone with the issue. If you do a First Aid on the physical drive you will see a slew of MT errors. I have already reported this to Apple but like everyone else 'Crickets'

Here are my Specs as well just incase a miracle does happen:

IMac (Retina 4k, 2.5-inch, 2019

Processor: 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7

Memory 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Graphics: Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB

OS: Catalina 10.15.4

Issues experienced:

• System crashes during shutdown often
• When entering a game such as WOW, the system slows down and it takes forever to load the graphics. My OLD Mac mini handles it at the same settings just fine with a intel card LOL (not really funny but its so pathetic)
• There seems to be a lot of crashes with Symantec
• MT errors when doing a first aid not he drive (Fusion drive). My Mac mini is also a fusion but doe into seem to have these problems.
• Finder will get into a state where it keeps crashing and makes the system unresponsive.
• Worse of all and I advice everyone to backup or make a copy of all the content in iCloud Drive. I have a ticket with apple right now because this situation caused me to loose a lot of data and now my iCloud Drive is stuck saying that its "Uploading" when there is nothing to upload (folder is empty). If I add my left over data again 178g worth it will upload;oad to the cloud then go between uploading and downloading when all data is already Synced. I can't delete certain folders from iCloud Drive using the browser. Just a heads up to everyone.

What I have done:

• Reset the fusion drive
• Deleted all partitions and reinstalled vanilla OS
• Taken it to Apple store to be turned away by incompetent staff and have had to reschedule
• Had my appointment nixed with no followup etc.. (Yeah Yeah corona-19)
• Ran the system with no other software just vanilla install and still had the issues
• Ran EtreCheck - comes back good
• Ran Cinebench - not the best performer but not bad but when gaming that is far from the truth
• Sent every crash to Apple
• Disconnect the second monitor and any other external devices (Just the iMac as it came in the box with the keyboard and mouse)
• Held the peice of worthless aluminum over the balcony pondering whether I should let go or not. Christmas 2k gift from son has saved it from plunging to goodness.

Wish you all luck and stay safe!

Cross posted from another thread - [MacBook Pro] - Sleep transition timed out after 180 seconds while creating hibernation file or while calling rootDomain's clients about upcoming rootDomain's state changes. - but worth sharing here also I hope:

After months and months of daily restarts I bit the bullet and wiped my MacBook entirely.

I did a clean install from Internet, so straight to 10.15.4

I have spent the last week monitoring day by day, as I connect and disconnect to external monitors, ethernet and drives, close lid, open lid etc etc.

Each day I am adding ONE new piece of software back into the mix:

1. Dashlane
2. NordVPN
3. BBEdit
4. Office 365 (from Microsoft, not the App Store)

So far, so goo - zero crashes and Time Machine is behaving well with a connection to my Synology NAS which has been flaked for months.

A few more pieces of software to go - Adobe CC, MySQL, Tuxera NTFS and Gemini II - and I'll be back to where I started before Catalina came into the equation.

Will feed back if I get to the end, or whether I identify a piece of software that doesn't play well.

Worth a go if you are deperate...

Further update.

Now installed

1. Dashlane
2. NordVPN
3. BBEdit
4. Office 365 (from Microsoft, not the App Store)
   1. three x accounts for Exchange email and Onedrive - all syncing
5. Chrome
6. MS Code
7. Gemini II
8. Adobe CC
   1. Lightroom
   2. Photoshop
   3. Illustrator
   4. Dreamweaver (sue me...)
9. Slack
10. MS Teams
11. Citrix Workspace

Happy to repot NO crashes in two weeks.

I have been regularly plugging and unplugging various drives, monitors, ethernet, opening and closing lid.

Also, Time Machine has been working flawlessly for the first time in ages - had given up on it.

The only things NOT installed are Sophos and SecurEnvoye VPN which are imposed by security policy but since I'm connecting to corporate LAN at the moment they can't install it and I'm in no hurry.

So appears to be working like it should have been all along.

Better late than never - hopefully this provides some comfort for others considering a similar avenue.

Keep safe everyone :)

This is really sad ....

his is not good as I am using a Mackbook Air 13inch 2015 and I recently upgraded it to Catalina latest version.

Even when the laptop is locked it keeps crashing or rebooting.

Plus when I use some tools after sometime it crached continuously.... Sometimes it will work but its worse - I had never seen this in my MAC ever since 2019 and it was smooth.

If this continues then I will have to finally oft out of MAC which i really don't want.

Can you all please relase a patch/fix for this and roll it out soon.

Apps which I was using when this happened.

1. Garage Band.
2. Pro Tools First
3. Google Chrome
4. Safari

Its clear that this is not app specific but completely OS bug ....

Hello,

In your provided crash log, “panic(cpu 8 caller 0xffffff7f8b4ebad5)” that can’t tell anything, only that CPU panics. Apple engineers have a specialized app to read that coded log you’ve sent them.

What kind of Crashed Thread do you see in the Console under Crash Reports?

Example:

Tx

Yes, that's the closing crash thread 0 that usually restarts the Mac due to panic. I have that, too. But, what's the precursor crash thread? It must be right under the newer (closing) process having same date stamp and time (actually, the precursor's report is a split second sooner than the main thread). Is it this?: "Crashed Thread: 2 com.apple.coreanimation.render-server"

Example:

Well, app developers fixed my macOS Catalina. I had a feeling it was Xquartz messing with the video card's GPU. The new OS Catalina has far better securities in place than any other OS to date. So, out with obsoletes, bin folder, files and may others from even 2016, including Xquartz.plist, and now my computer is behaving awesome.

What I did: Share Mac Analytics, Share with App Developers, Share Share iCloud Analytics and let it Sleep but, Awake for Nework. It took less than a week to see today a linked to folder icon only desktop named "relocated Items". When I followed it, it got me to this:

A brief explanation of files that were incompatible macOS security settings - I am, just simply paraphrasing the explanation in file "What Are Relocated Items?.pdf" because is copyrighted. And, that was it... 'been happy camper since yesterday.

Now I've learned new stuff... Take care.

The same happened to me, I bought a new Imac Retina 5K 2019 two months ago and it keeps crashing after the Catalina update. And now Apple wants to charge for the issue, because they say apple warranty does not cover software issues.