Catalina constantly crashing when Sleep

It seems the issue is only on thunderbolt connection (not USB or ethernet based) -and- a spinning external mechanical drive (Not SSD) over thunderbolt connected to Macs. Maybe only OWC brand drive enclosure.

My crash problem stopped when I turned power off of the OWC drives before going to sleep.

Not quite.

I have just the monitor connected to thunderbolt—a weird, often unresponding Eizo Flexscan.

The rest is connected through USB: 2 mechanical drives, 1 DAC (+ sometimes keyboard/trackpad...)

None are OWC.

FWIW — I updated to the latest version of Catalina, downloaded the newest OWC RAID software and installed it, and turned on the "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" checkbox in the Energy Saver preferences. My OWC Thunderdrive is back up and running (and backing up), and my computer is o longer crashing when it sleeps. I don't exactly which of these three actions helped the most, but I'm happy that I'm not crashing every 15 minutes now. I'll probably try unticking that checkbox and see if the problem returns, but for now I'm good.

I have been having this Catalina-crashing-while-sleeping problem consistently on a new 2019 MacBook Pro 16 inch I ordered day-one or two of the new model release. Problem is unchanged by latest upgrade made a few days ago (circa Dec15 or so, 2019) to Catalina Version 10.15.2 (19C57).

It seems as if a good ½ hour of sleep or more is required to trigger the problem. In my case I performed a migration pretty within a few day after receipt. I do not recall noticing the problem during the brief period prior to migration. One or two calls to Apple led me to believe I might need to spend a lot of time troubleshooting, reinstalling OS and stuff, so I am ignoring for the moment, other than routinely submitting those typical automated reports to Apple. If I learn anything helpful I will come back here with a report. ~k

I had a similar issue. Waking the computer up in the morning I would be greeted with a "Slack has crash" dialog. From there things just wouldn't work, couldn't open up other apps ext until I quit something else. Things looked fine but a full restart was needed to get fully working.

Updating to 10.15.2 and updating everything else didn't do anything either.

The last time I decided to check the Activity Monitor before restarting and noticed a bunch of "cron" processes running. I at one point also had terminal say something like "Too many processes running".

I ran down the culprit of a custom cron I setup to check the mouse battery level every so often. The cron never worked but I guess it was still running and with Catalina not liking "cron" processes anymore they will filling up and not clearing properly. Eventually this would not allow other things to open ext.

This might not be the same issue but check the Activity Monitor after waking your computer and if there is a ton of "cron" processes running this could be the issue. Track down whatever is creating these cron jobs and fix or remove it.

I learned this in another thread with this same issue. I was crashing every time the display went to sleep. Once I opened Terminal and left it open in the background it stopped my machine from crashing. It has been on now for at least 5 days with no random shut downs or anything. This hopefully with fix this problem with me until the release a fix for it.

Update on my own continuing Catalina crashing while sleeping problem (2019 MBP 16”): Step one and step two recommendations from Apple Support have each failed during overnight tests. First step was Mac OS reinstallation. That seemed to do the trick for 1~3 hour sleep periods, but there was a crash overnight. Step two was to create a new user and put that user to sleep overnight. This failed also, with the now familiar “your system restarted because of a problem” alert (or words to that effect.).

I am curious about the “run Terminal” temporary solution Bryce mentions above. I will mention that to Apple next time I chat with them as I struggle onward. Perhaps running that utility is preventing entry into whatever Mac sleep state would be analogous to deeper “REM” sleep. I’ll report back any progress.

What I have tried so far with still issues around crashing after sleep.

Tried everything here with no luck, including running the terminal window.

Thought I had it cracked by re-installing Catalina from scratch after erasing the disk. Seemed to work for 5 days without crashing, then this morning crashed again.

One benefit from doing the re-install was that the cleaned up disk looks a lot better, and it was something I had planned for a long time. Quite a few left over files from the upgrade have now disappeared which may be part of the reason for a delay in getting a new crash.

After the update, I immediately linked the macbook to my Synology and that seemed to work fine. Then after five days, I forgot to put the macbook on charge and the lack of charge in then battery while it was asleep shutdown the macbook. I recharge the macbook and when I started it, it crashed.

I will report back if it crashes again after the next sleep.

I thought I'd throw in my two cents as I'm still having this issue with Catalina.

My 2017, 13" MBP running 10.15.2 will, seemingly randomly, crash at three different stages of the sleep/wake cycle - a) mid sleep (usually overnight), b) immediately on wakeup or c) immediately after entering login details. All culminate in the flashing question mark folder and, upon forcing a shutdown and reboot, the 'your system restarted because of a problem' message.

I haven't taken any steps aside from sending reports to Apple. I have noticed that these crashes haven't occurred when all apps are fully closed prior to sleep. I work a lot with Adobe on illustrations/graphics and closing those apps every time I want to sleep my computer is not practical. I keep losing work as a result and it's driving me insane.

Having the same issue, among others, after Catalina was install on my mid 2015 MBP. I brought it into my local authorized Apple place for them to look at. The hardware passed all their diagnostics, so they did a complete fresh install of Catalina.

Other issues involve the system becoming unstable after using apps for a awhile, resulting in having to power cycle it.

If it were just the crash-during-sleep I could work around it, but tweaking settings so it never goes to sleep just results in it some other issue surfacing that causes the system to crash or need to be power cycled.

Needless to say Catalina has not impressed me so far.

Update 2 and a preliminary sign of success (2019 MBP 16”): I removed Avid's "Avid Application Manager" app and its associated Library/Application Support/Avid/Application Manager subfolder. Next day, today, Jan6, there was no crash! System just woke up as it should. I hope this news is helpful for others on or visiting this thread. I did notice, searching about this app, that there are a few "issues" with it so perhaps this was indeed my culprit. I'll report back in a few days. Good luck to others!

Update 3 and it crashed again (2019 MBP 16”): So... one overnight without a crash and one lunch break with a crash. Only difference was power was plugged in during lunch. Ugh! Back to the drawing board.

I would suggest using the ComboUpdate to anyone reinstalling Catalina. It seems to have stabilized things here - for the moment.

I'm going to let the computer sleep the drives one more time to see if that's still part of the awakening problem.

Hi , I have the same problem.

I change recently the ssd, for an owc ssd 1tb . And my mac crashes when it going to sleep.

I need to know if it can broken my new ssd.

Or someone try to back to the previous OSX ?

Final update.

New iMac 2019

10.15.2 update has sorted my problem. Sleep now works fine and the system still seems stable after a couple of weeks.

This fix came only after my many phone calls to Apple’s help line giving them the info they needed to develop the fix.

I recommend that anyone with this problem takes the time to call Apple and slog through it with them as in my case that worked.