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

Mr Hogan, I have been getting this since High Sierra. If there was something to be done on the software side, they would have done it since then. Please have it replaced if you can, while you can.

PS : Got two units changed. No problems with 1 of them. Other is coming from China. I suspect they are trying to contaminate me with Corona virus.

I did some research and found that this issue is likely caused by a hardware issue with the T2 Chip. And when plugged into external devices like a monitor it's more likely to happen. I've had it happen over 10 times in the last week or so after plugging my computer into a monitor because I'm working remotely, and don't have my iMac here.

I had the same problem. I call apple.nl and explained them. They instantly replaced mine and I got a brand new MacBook Pro. And on that it didn't have this problem.

Don't Do Anything Suggested by Folks here. Nothing works!

Apple knows about this problem and they DO NOT want to acknowledge it. They are still selling them because on some machines it occurs like once a month. They first try to sell this broken macbooks and then if we complain they give us the NON-BROKEN one.

At work also we have the same series of Macbooks and NONE of them were broken

Personal ones were broken.

Make sure to call Apple

Tell them about this problem and ask for a replacement and I am 100% sure the next macbook you get is PROBLEM FREE.

Have you tried starting in Safe Mode, to avoid third party apps opening? For that matter, have you installed any new ones recently...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Connecting a USB-C gigabit ethernet adapter to the MAC or to the LG Ultrafine hub will cause my 16" to panic every couple of hours so that might be worth a try.

I got my 16’ MBP replaced and haven’t have had any crashes in the first 4 days! If you’re experiencing the problem just get your computer replaced...

Can people who own a 16" report their T2 chip version? Mine has a bad magic kernel panic. And I doubt there is a new T2 hardware to address the issue...

Please

Go to terminal

paste the below command

/usr/libexec/remotectl list

Mine is (J680AP) iBridge2,3   J680AP   4.2 (17P2551/17.16.12551.0.0,0)

My friend in Germany bought one, and this one has j152fap

Please try the following, may ir may not work.

TURN OFF ANY SECURTIY MEASURES THAT NECESSITATES THE USE OF T2 CHIP (SECURE BOOT, DISK ENCRYPTION ETC) from recovery screen before starting mac os.

https://support.apple.com/en-me/HT208330

——-reset the T2 controller: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295#t2"

——"Another recommendation was to reflash the T2 controller firmware: https://help.apple.com/configurator/mac/2.7.1/?lang=en#/apdebea5be51"

———T2 chip query (to check whether replacement logic board is the same faulty batch or not)

Interesting and helpful,

If i'm following all the information gathered in this thead, they are all consistent in the same points that i will list here. In hope someone at Apple will acknowledge this problem as high-level as we can't rely on fairly new and expensive units for everyday use and work :

• The crashes provoke kernel panics "Bad Magic" (without logs) but not only, some crashes have logged errors
• Some units reboots after some screen-freeze moments
• Some reboot happen after the fan kicks at maximum speed, procs. start over-heating with any activity happening
• They seem to be touching only units with the T2 chip and Catalina OS, to be confirmed
• For laptops crashes, everyone seems connected to a power-supply
• A wide range of people here have crashes tied with any device* using usb-c ports or the machine entering-exiting sleep-mode (* hubs / screens / ext. hard-drives)
• It's not regional
• Even very recent 16" MBP with fresh iBridge / T2 firmware are plagued with it (J152fAP / J680AP)
• Seems to be usage and or temperature sensitive as some people use the unit for weeks without problem and then it crashes many times a day without any recovery possible after it begins
• SMC and PRAM reset seems to be a fairly short fix for a few and not at all for most
• Very recent replacements units have the same problem
• Motherboard replacement don't fix the crashes

If you experience an exception to this list please share it, we can maybe narrow down the culprit(s) and hopefully find a temporary fix till Apple takes action.

Today i was within the apple-support chat in Germany and also in the US.

They all told me that i have to check the hardware with an Technican on-side. Also both did not found any internally documented cases related to the "BAD-Magic" issue.

Also they told me to fill in an bug report on: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

So maybe if someone have time to fill it in too, this would bring some more attention on this.

I did one report for MacOs and one for my device, MacBook Pro 13" also i linked this disscussion page, where everything is well documented.

The US-Support flagged my casenumber and will document this internally. So maybe we will get some more attention if more people will open support-cases.

Finally I went to a Genius Bar, my MacBook Pro 16' passed all the hardware tests. We gonna try turning off the FileVault and see how it goes for next days. The support guy told me he didn't have any other case like mine yet, He wrote my case to pass it through internal channels. Hopefully macOS Catalina 10.15.3 will fix this problem. I also showed him this thread.

Looking all the cases the problem should be related with Catalina and the T2 chip.

Well depends on your use case. I immediately took a replacement. That’s because mine would do as soon as I turned on netflix. Thats a primary use case. You should too. They gave me a new macbook which doesn’t have a problem. At work too, none of these macbooks have a problem even though they connect to external monitors.

Honestly how I see it is this. Apple is aware that there is an ugly batch of macbooks which are produced and distributed. They are in no mood to do a recall and get another bad name. There are people who don’t mind this problem once every 2 months. That’s how they are going on. PLEASE GET IT REPLACED. APPLE SHOULD FEEL THE HEAT.

Once you ask for a replacement they will give you a device which wouldn’t have this problem. I AS AN APPLE USER LOST TRUST IN APPLE AFTER THIS

Apple genius bar even claims they don’t have a trace of this issue in “their” data base. I tweeted also. No response. Very disappointed

@orcoonx

So how do you replicate it? Since disabling graphics card switching I have zero issues with Bad Magic crashes with HyperDrive USB-C hub or my Trust USB-C hub or without them whereas they used to happen at random.

If there is a possibility to replicate it please advise so I can get my unit replaced before it Bad Magics again.

@gabefromprinceton It can’t be related to USB-C/Thunderbolt peripherals if I experienced crashes without any peripherals plugged in. Furthermore, since disabling graphics switching, I can use my HyperDrive USb-C and Trust USB-C hubs without issue... so clearly there is something else at foot.

@RhythmDriver

IN MY CASE, for both of the macs I had, I replicated the bad magic panic. Here is how:

As I explained earlier on these discussion pages, you need to get yourself an HDD with corrupt files on it (You know the files back in the old times where the hdd head kept trying to read the file over and over again but couldn”t due to a bad sector) Old style spinning disks which are dated are the ones to go. You probably have one, or get yourself a magnet and create one.

I took them my macbook 2011 and my 2018 imac pro and my 2018 macbook pro. I also brought my WD thunderbolt 2 enclosure with the thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter ( MMEL2ZM/A) And a regular usb 2.0 3.5” enclosure... With my macbook 2011, while transferring the corrupt files, it just pops up a dialogue box saying such and such files are corrupt and unreadable. But the faulty macs just restart with fans on giving the bad magic error. The genius bar people got amazed, and wrote a report right away. But even so, it took me many months to get Apple to replace them. They made me carry everything again and again until they saw that replacement is the way to go.

For your ease you can use the rsync terminal command to locate and find the corrupt files. With rsync you can see the name of the corrupted file before it bad magix.