iMac keeps crashing after Catalina upgrade

Read the posts again.

Also there will not be one single cause. There are at least two different crash reports in the thread.

Memory, disk sleep, unsuitable peripherals and apps and a number of other possibilities need to be considered on an individual basis.

If you have stock memory then in *your* case it is probably an unlikely cause.

Upgraded to Catalina a while ago. All has been fine till I upgraded to 10.15.3 today, and now this is happening. Error log tells me it is a power on fail. 15" MBP 14.3, 2017, Core i7, 16GB RAM. Pretty annoying.

I've worked in the memory business as an Engineer for 30 years. Sourcing RAM from Crucial makes sense because you are in effect buying directly from Micron - one of the big 3 DRAM manufacturers (Samsung 1st, Hynix 2nd and Micron 3rd in volume terms). That said, it's all JEDEC standard, but obviously testing in the Apple application may help. I'm struggling to think that the main reason for Catalina instability is due to this however. Apple source from all 3 main DRAM manufacturers and I've also seen Nanya on some machines. The machine that caused me to join this thread has Samsung - supplied by Apple. It was rock solid before Catalina and now crashes daily ....

peter_watt wrote:

When you were accepted onto the Beta program you agreed not to discuss results on a public platform.

That's a good point, but the $3000 Mac that I use for iOS development has been kernel panicing due to Catalina 5-6 times a day, sometimes multiple times during calls. As far as I'm concerned, Apple has forfeited all rights to "secrecy". If they're not going to fix this issue, perhaps sunlight will.

"....As far as I'm concerned, Apple has forfeited all rights to "secrecy"....."

NO - you agreed an NDA and you broke your word. Do not discuss beta results on this forum.

Your results were reported and are now removed.

Peter,,

@Monstermac77 should not have broken the NDA - I think most people on this forum accept that's a bad thing to do for any type of IT h/w or software. I personally take these very seriously and won't sign an NDA I'm not comfortable with.

Myself I don't know what is worse. The fact that this guy/gal broke the NDA or the fact that Apple is lurking on this forum, which is actually an Apple user forum on Apple.com, seeing all these people have massive problems affecting their businesses, their work and making us all extremely miserable with what has been a completely disastrous rollout and not acknowledging anyone that there is a problem with our very very expensive Apple equipment.

People are having problems with brand spanking new 16" MBP, with last years models and basically every model possible so although I believe that someone should keep their word with NDA's, it's not good public relations from Apple to completely ignore all these issues and let people speculate about various items and let them go to the expense of switching out logic boards, RAM etc, when we are all aware everything worked well until Catalina was released. If it was not ready, it should not have been released.

I am trusting Apple to resolve these issues but at the moment my many years of being an Apple customer not just of Mac's, but the whole kitandkaboolde of devices and ecosystem is being sorely tested.

What makes is worse is Apple completely ignoring what are valid concerns and issues.

We would like an acknowledgement from Apple "there is an issue for some folks, we're working on it, we will fix it".

Yours sincerely

Steve Graham

Australia

Apple is not "lurking" on this forum. The only remove posts when they are reported to them by other users to bring them to their attention.

Also Apple isn't ignoring us. They never reply to the feedback as policy. That doesn't mean they are not working on the problem. So many of the problems we've found here are a result of bad software installed by the user or unique to a Mac's configuration. So many variables, so much to consider. Apple has to confirm that before they will make a change to their system which is a major undertaking.

That may be true in some cases but I'm not sure it's the whole truth, henrus. We've had on this board plenty of people with MBPs that are not connected to any display but just as messed up by Catalina. We have even heard from some who have downgraded from Catalina only to find out that, though eg Mojave was perfectly fine on their MBPs before upgrading to Catalina, the issues that were triggered by Catalina now follow them in their downgrade to Mojave. Interestingly we've also had people who have downgraded and seen the Catalina issues vanish.

Suffice to say the problems caused by Catalina present in a myriad of ways. That is why some of the solutions that people have shared work on some machines but definitely not on all. But good luck if, for your particular machine, you've managed to isolate the issue.

My MBP (late 2013) crashed and died with a pair of external monitors. One was connected to the HDMI port, while the other was connected through an adapter to one of the Thunderbolt ports, but the particular adapter varied depending on my location (crashes occurred at both places). The other Thunderbolt port was connected to ethernet via another adaptor.

The MBP also crashed when it was connected to a single projector through the HDMI port, and, separately, to a similar projector through an adapter to VGA in one of the Thunderbolt ports. Of course, none of this was consistent: some days, no problems; other days a long string of consecutive crashes.

Not long before it finally died, the MBP was crashing without any external devices connected, even the power supply.

Sometimes it just shut down, possibly rebooting. Other times it locked up and had to be restarted. Sometimes it crashed during reboot. It often cranked the fans up to take-off speed when it was thinking of having a crash, and may it would crash, and other times it would calm itself down and carry on. It would even rev up the fans soon after waking or an initial boot, when it should have been reasonably cool, especially given the room temperature. Not a lot of rhyme or reason about it.

A couple of grand later (a new, basic MB Air as an interim work machine, recovery of most files from the SSD, and an older iMac for other work the MBA hasn't the disk space to manage), plus serious disruption to work efforts, and I haven't started seriously assessing the MBP for repairs yet, as the nearest Apple Store is 2.5 hours' drive away (and the MBP is just past the age limit to allow Apple to ship it). I have a couple of very different diagnoses (one being just dumb/superficial, IMHO), but I want a better idea before I start dropping more money into the MBP.

And unrelated to the Macs (all my personal machines), my employer's IT department rendered my higher-end PC inoperable (even they couldn't get it working properly), so it's being converted to Linux to get it out of their hands. All the issues at once, and research projects on hold waiting for machines to work properly. And people wonder why I get a bit shirty with the IT department.

After downgrading my Macmini from Catalina to Mojave, after almost a day it also start crashing, fan very high, removed the under cover, adapted a 20cm old fan underneath and now it almost doesn't reach 60ºC and the inside fan doesn't even star but even this it crashes. Peryferals, Mac keyboard, Mac Magic Mouse and Dell FHD 24" via mini display port. I must have a monitor, right??

Understood. And for what it’s worth, not being able to use my HD array doesn’t work for me so this issue is still not resolved. For what it’s worth, using the Thunderbolt 3 dock did not help either. So still suffering like many others.

This is ridiculous. Now am ready to consider a Windows laptop. Am having more crashes in 10.15.3 than I did in 10.15.2. And there's also a difference in their nature: in 10.15.2 the MBP was crashing when left unattended or waking up, all of which I could take measures to mitigate. Now in 10.15.3 it consistently crashes when I'm browsing!

AndreasKUO wrote:

I think that's a real scandal.

Can you post about the issue you were experiencing and the solution you found on this thread? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/constant-kernel-panics-userspace-watchdog-timeout-no-successful-checkins-from-com-apple-windowserver.2222878/

@everyone, I think we should move this discussion over, to the extent possible, to the Macrumors link above. I don't think it makes sense to continue the conversation here when our conversation is being stymied by peter_watt and the like.

I dont have any ability to stymie nor the power to censor. I simply asked you to stick to forum rules regarding beta testing and you felt offended being asked to do so.

Providing a full Etrecheck report including the crash report is a minimum requirement in such cases, preferably on your own thread. Nobody of any experience will now attend a 70 page me-too thread.

You started you own thread on macrumors, but you just spammed this forum on at least three threads with beta results. I really dont know how you expect to get help that way.

You have the reputation necessary that your reports of posts are likely to be given heavy consideration, which on a forum like this, is effectively the power to censor.

Yes, I was offended. I’m offended because I have already led one crusade against Apple, for their defective MacBook Pro keyboards, for the past 3 years. I evangelized the issue in the early stages and my videos were featured in articles in Macrumors, 9to5Mac, and other prominent blogs (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=48C9eAOCaYE) That was hard enough, and took long enough, without resistance by my fellow Apple users.

I’ve waited 3 years to type on a keyboard without worrying about when a key is going to break and I’m going to have to go 7 days without my computer while I wait for a top case replacement. Now, it’s finally here: I bought the 16 inch MacBook Pro the day it was released. But instead, my days are plagued by another worry, this time when my computer will next kernel panic due to this issue.

It’s been 3 years. I just want to get back to work.