iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

If you're having crashes you would be best served to created your own topic (instead of tacking on to the back of a 65 page topic) so you will get more attention for your particular situation.

Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail in the new topic: Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community

The "upgrade" to Catalina was and remains a DISASTER. My apps are simple and consister (growers, email, WhatsApp etc). My iMac will now rarely close down and just leave a screen with the background picture and ... does nothing If I work on the iMac and then leave it for a few hours, the iMac will have invariably frozen; again forcing me to cut the power!

In addition, SAFARI runs like a drain - SO SLOW ....

All in all, I am becoming very disillusioned with Apple. It USED to be the hall-mark of quality. I remember the days of NexSTep and the earlier days of MacOS when it was SOLID and just went on working. Today it is flaky and reminds me how I used to laugh at people using Windows. Now, the tide has turned and apple have lost their focus. I would wager that Steve Jobs would be very angry. (Not sure if I can even send this note as I keep getting a slipping wheel ....) AWFUL APPLE

I found JohnlStephen's post very interesting. May of us feel the same and this thread is about Catalina crashing. Right now I am about to start looking for a replacement desktop - and it won't be a Mac!

I would hope Apple is reading this Blog. Catalina is the best ever reason IMac users are turning to Windows again. Apple is losing its customer base but I’m beginning to think they don’t care. All that Apple is focusing on is the IPhone 11. We Mac users are being left to fend for ourselves. As a 34 year Mac user, this ness tells me the original creators of Mac software are gone. Now we are dealing with this new crew of kids who have no clue how to write code that mad Mac what it was! It could be Apple has outsourced the Mac Software team to China?

I made a decision to scrap my 2017 iMac and have ordered a Windows machine. I've been using a Mac since OS X was first released. It is very sad but the lack of stability is not acceptable. I know if I take my iMac to an Apple Store they will suggest a logic board replacement which will cost more than the Windows computer and 4K monitor I have just ordered - and it won't solve the problem. I can't sell it - I couldn't inflict that on anyone. What a demise of a proud OS.

Apple is already losing Mac users. Me thinks it’s by Design. Apple is making 95% of thier profits off the IPhone. They have no skin in the game to even help us anymore. They have third rate programmers on Mac Software and the same on their support lines. Microsoft is gaining back customers thanks to this debacle

So you downgraded and it’s still having kernel panics? If so it must be firmware related. I was going to downgrade but not if it won’t fix the issue, same with a clean install. By all the post in this thread it just sounds like no smoke testing was done as is seem that all products that can run 10.15.x are experiencing the same issues.

With 10.15.3 I started having problems booting up. My iMac would get half way through booting up and would crash. No matter whether I was booting Mac OS or Windows. It takes me 6 or 7 attempts to boot. I can’t manage to boot any of my Carbon Copy Cloner backups at all. I noticed when upgrading to 10.15.3 the firmware was clearly being updated. I’m just not prepared to spend any more time on it to be honest.

I really like my iMac but must admit Apple's tech support was worthless. All they did was follow a pre-printed list of things to try when having problems. I've been a tech (my own company for 30+ years) and have always appreciated the difference between troubleshooting a problem vs. the stupid shotgun approach. My suspicion is there probably was a fix to my Catalina problems but nobody home who was willing and able to solve...short of my own decision to downgrade to High Sierra.

Steve

Thank you for the suggestion. Even though the issues started with Catalina I decided that although unlikely it’s possible that I had a hardware failure when I updated OSX. I took it to the Mac store a week or so later and they gave it a clean bill of heath.

They didn’t want to wait for it to crash as sometimes it’s immediate sometimes it’s a few minutes maybe even an hour. As far as the hardware goes it’s all stock what it shipped with from Apple. All the Apple store did was run diagnostics on it and say all the hardware seems to be good so you have a software issue. I was like thanks guys for confirming what I said. I’m will be in the market for a new desktop in the next few months. Was seriously looking at the iMac Pro but if my MacBook Pro is still crashing and this forum is still active then I guess I’ll just build a Windows PC run Cent OS or something on it.

Hi skillquest.

i completely agree with your sentiment- we use macs to avoid dealing with b/s of windows PCs and to have rick solid machine which is why we’ve always paid a premium for that privilege without question.

Unfortunately this debacle with Catalina means we can no longer rely on Apple to even acknowledge there is a serious issue. My next machine (after nearly 30 years) will be a Linux box - might be a while since I just dropped $7k on recent MBP but the doubt has been put in my mind. This also puts future investment into iPhones, iPads, watches etc in doubt since the only thing I really care about (and provides an income ) is my laptop.

im hopefully with 10.15.3 since seems to be hanging in there but no sure yet if the faults are fixed since I’m in the road and didn’t get much more than a couple of hours on hub with monitors after upgrade.

steve

I got this error message after the kernel panic:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff800d0288b7): "AppleAHCIDiskQueueManager::setPowerState(0xffffff804bfe7900 : 0xffffff7f8fab6958, 3 -> 0) timed out after 100873 ms"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/xnu/xnu-6153.81.5/iokit/Kernel/IOServicePM.cpp:5302
Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address
0xffffffa3c313bb40 : 0xffffff800c93bb2b 
0xffffffa3c313bb90 : 0xffffff800ca734d5 
0xffffffa3c313bbd0 : 0xffffff800ca64f4e 
0xffffffa3c313bc20 : 0xffffff800c8e2a40 
0xffffffa3c313bc40 : 0xffffff800c93b217 
0xffffffa3c313bd40 : 0xffffff800c93b5fb 
0xffffffa3c313bd90 : 0xffffff800d0d2aa9 
0xffffffa3c313be00 : 0xffffff800d0288b7 
0xffffffa3c313be50 : 0xffffff800d028479 
0xffffffa3c313be60 : 0xffffff800d03f82e 
0xffffffa3c313bea0 : 0xffffff800d027228 
0xffffffa3c313bec0 : 0xffffff800c97d7e5 
0xffffffa3c313bf40 : 0xffffff800c97d311 
0xffffffa3c313bfa0 : 0xffffff800c8e213e 

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

Mac OS version:
19D76

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 19.3.0: Thu Jan  9 20:58:23 PST 2020; root:xnu-6153.81.5~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: A8DDE75C-CD97-3C37-B35D-1070CC50D2CE
Kernel slide:     0x000000000c600000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff800c800000
__HIB  text base: 0xffffff800c700000
System model name: iMac15,1 (Mac-FA842E06C61E91C5)
System shutdown begun: NO
Panic diags file available: YES (0x0)

System uptime in nanoseconds: 728032523529
last loaded kext at 111975414059: @filesystems.smbfs	3.4.1 (addr 0xffffff7f9121a000, size 446464)
last unloaded kext at 130635004222: >!A!ILpssGspi	3.0.60 (addr 0xffffff7f8fd0c000, size 45056)

After all January struggling with Catalina, trying all the different settings, all the suggestions, reinstalling from scratch, today i decided to downgrade to Mojave, lets see if the problem is software or hardware.

Suggesting that people buy new memory without a single case of its solving these Catalina problems, without any theory given about how a new OS version can trigger a memory problem, with a preponderance of evidence that third party memory is not causing Catalina problems, there's something wrong the the advice. Insulting is also a bit rude; I may not have Old Toad's experience, but I do have 34 years of Mac experience, including eight in Mac system software at Apple.