"BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header)" — Catalina freezing all the time!

Dear Swiss Photographer

Yes, I had this crash without external display being connected. Right from day 1 of my new macbook pro. It would randomly occur.

The easiest way I could reproduce it is by watching Netflix on it and it would occur.

Apple thinks it is a hardware problem and decided to replace my macbook. So lets see how it goes in the new macbook

Hi,

i tried to contact a few it-bloggers regarding this issue.

At the moment just one of them created an blogpost.

https://borncity.com/win/2020/01/22/macos-catalina-bad-magic-iboot-panic-header-bug/

also available in german.

In my case, I may have isolated the cause of the problem to an external Thunderbolt RAID drive that worked fine with Mojave and earlier.

Since I've unplugged that device, I've had no crashes.

When I had that drive plugged in with no other external devices, I had at least one crash.

I can't say for certain that this is the cause, but it might be.

I have a MBP 13” that I bought in November of 2019. Since day one it has restarted randomly with the BAD Magic error. This MBP does not have Automatic graphics switching. This unit restarts almost exclusively when it is in sleep mode. I have had it happen while attached to a dock with two monitors and while the laptop is detached from the dock. The frequency has slowed over the past few weeks, but it happens a couple times a week.

Even the deepest sys diagnose done by Apple fails to address the issue. The engineers in Apple’s Ireland office which is responsible for the cases in Europe, cannot address the issue. All they say is that everything is fine, and whatever happens is due to 3rd party software. In my case that was Adobe, Final Cut Pro...

Bad Magic kernel panic is hardware related in my opinion.

Apple denies existance of such an error. Why? To keep share prices from plummeting...

Some units at least needs a recall.

By the way if anyone is curious, it happened same way as previously - after opening the lid from sleep. No apps were opened, froze for 5-10 seconds, fans were spinning fast for a sec, turned off, and turned back on. Log appeared.

Sooooo, after three weeks of flawless operations, my replacement macbook pro 16 did it again. Freeze upon waking up from sleep with iPhone 11 connected and on battery power, high-rev fan spin, crash, and the dreadful Bad Magic message upon reboot. Contacting Apple support tomorrow, really ****** that there is still no fix for this!

Just got a brand new 16" 2019 MacBook Pro. This morning when I woke it up from hibernation the keyboard was frozen, after a minute or so the fans started at max speed and then the Mac crashed.

Once it was started up again I got the error log "BAD MAGIC! kernel panic... could not log issue"

I called apple, the supporter I talked with didn't seem interested in resolving the issue one bit, just to end the call. He said to me that it was a strange issue as he had never heard about it before and that there was nothing in their archives about it, if it happened again I could reach out to them again but at this point, they couldn't help. I told him that it is impressive that he had never heard about it before as there are hundreds if not thousands of reports on this issue on their bloody forum. Then he told me to hold for a moment so he could check it out, after a few seconds of silence he said yes I do see there are a few threads about it.

At this point, he is still not in any position where he wants to actually investigate the issue or help me.

Before the conversation ended I said that if this is what you can expect from a $3.900 dollar computer I would like my money back, as I haven't even had it for a week yet. He said that if the issue happens again I can send it to them and get a replacement once they have investigated it and confirmed the fucking issue!!

On apple discussion, Reddit and mac rumors together there are serval thousands of reports of this EXACT issue and he plays dumb with me along with wanting me to wait for 2 - 3 weeks while they investigate it, and only offer me a replacement.

My whole income is from working from my computer, I can't go without it for 2 - 3 weeks.

If this is how apple treats an 8-year loyal customer then I might as well switch over to Linux permanently.

I have faced with the exact shameless act for my two computers. After talking to some 11 representatives and numerous genius bar visits per each mac, only then could I get the units replaced.

Don’t think replacing solves the issue in a guaranteed fashion. The protocol is there. They reject the existance of this issue.

This is what this company has become...

In my case, so far, it seems that a bad external Thunderbolt drive would crash the machine with the Bad Magic error. Maybe the drive is not "bad", but it's definitely corrupted. I went from many crashes each day to no crashes once I disconnected the drive. Fingers crossed.

Interestingly, I'm restoring the data using another MBP with Mojave, and I've had only a few crashes, and then the OS started reporting that there was a hardware issue with the drive.

The real bug seems to me that the Catalina OS does not adequately notify of such hardware or corrupted file issues and that it crashes with no good messages.

I wonder how many people here get a crash with zero external devices.

This is exact behavior I got from the dutch customer care support APPLE! When I confronted him asking "how come you can't find any issue about it in your database he got offended that I am doubting his technical ability" :P :P They are all useless. If my replacement also has this problem i will return it and get my old macbook display fixed

It is impressive that a company that size acts this way! I would respect them way more if they just said, we know this is an issue, but we are still looking into it and can't recommend a permanent solution right now. Perhaps try this and this, would you like us to reach out to you once we get to the bottom of this issue?

Instead, they just order their tech support to play dumb with us and utterly waste our time with that sharade.

Update: I have posted a few times on this thread and was the person that solved the problem of the crashes by unchecking "Automatic graphics switching" and putting my Battery and Power Adapter sliders to "Never" and unchecking "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". Worked for a month until I just took my laptop on a trip. With just the power cord attached, I got 5 Bad Magic crashes in an hour. Quick fan WHOOSH and the black screen. Restarted, left case open, waited a few minutes, then WHOOSH. Rinse, Repeat. Just got it home, plugged both LG monitors in and my OWC dock, closed screen and going on a half day without crashes again. WTF?

Would try obtaining a replacement, but seeing people on this thread with their 2nd replacement machine showing the same problems. Not sure what the answer is at this point.

I sent a tip on to macrumors.com and referenced this forum. I guess we all just continue to make noise and get Apple to notice and admits its even an issue?

sea206 : I tried what you did and it worked for a few weeks, after that the kernel panics resumed as usual with external devices + sleep mode.

Test of the moment : another thing that seems to reduce crashes is to keep the fan at medium / high speed* to avoid the sudden flash overheating that happen always right before the "Bad Magic" reboot. (MBP users can feel it right above the touch bar when a crash happen, this zone is very hot and after reboot the CPU temp is around 100°, the unit is still unstable at this point)

* with the help of iStatMenus App

There is no such “solution”. It doesn’t mean it is solved when it does not hit you for a while.

As a person who is having problems since High Sierra (2018 August units shipped with this OS) on these machines, I do not believe Catalina is the one to blame. OS updates just change the name of the kernel panic.

The problem is there hardware-wise. They are just trying to fix it instead of a recall.

“Dear Rotten Apple, thank you for showing once again in my life that money is what counts, but to remind we did not buy classic cars, you make us ask each other for remedies, beg for replacements.”

I am now a regretful owner of macbookBuggyPro and an ImacBuggyPro.