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

I formatted my Mac and reinstalled macOS, the solution I was hoping to frequent freezing (after about 30 minutes of normal use). To my terrible surprise, my Mac still froze. A hard shutdown and restart and here I am.


The log says this: "BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available"


I'm at a loss. I haven't installed any software and it froze. A quick hardware diagnostics didn't find anything wrong with my hardware. This is a new 2018 MacBook Pro. It was working great until Catalina.


This is terrible. I place myself in the helpful hands of the internet in the hopes of solving this.

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 5, 2019 6:04 PM

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Posted on Apr 18, 2020 8:32 AM

I have the same issue. Happened within the first week of owning my new 16" MBP. I asked an Apple tech at the store about the error (BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available) and he said he'd never heard of it.


Just happened again for the 2nd time. Computer is less than 2 months old. Very disappointing.


414 replies

May 11, 2020 4:18 PM in response to pedro-ale

Hey everyone,


I seem to have the same issue. Happens at every start up with my newly purchased Mac mini 2018.


I have a Glyph Black Box Pro hooked up to thunderbolt 3, a windows wireless usb keyboard and mouse on one of the USB connectors, and my RME UFX audio interface on the other USB. Monitor is going through the HDMI.


Been having issues downloading content to the external as it will eject itself and fail to operate. Also getting some audio drop outs once in a while. Pretty ridiculous that a machine of this value is so faulty. Do we know of any fixes yet? Why is this happening?


It's really frustrating and have no idea what my error message means. I'm noticing it is much longer then most of the posts I've seen here. Scroll bar seems to go on for days when I try to get to the bottom but here are a few screen shots:



Jul 6, 2020 8:42 PM in response to pedro-ale

Same thing happening to me too. I got the new 16" Macbook Pro about 1 week ago and it's happened 4 times now. Twice last week and twice today. I've read that resetting the SMC might help so that's what I'm about to try and do.


I'm very disappointed. This never happened once on my previous Macbook Pro (mid 2015) and I would push that laptop to the limit.


Nov 19, 2019 4:02 PM in response to pedro-ale

I have/had this problem as well. I was starting to think there was hardware issue, so i ran the hardware check.


getting 4 to 7 crashes per day for about 2 weeks since I started keeping track.


none of them showing up in the console app interestingly enough for crash report ..etc (dear apple, bug report on that).


I reinstalled OSX via the optoin+cmd+r during boot method ..etc and thus far haven't had a single crash post that. (only going on about 12 hours w/out a crash right now).



i've also set my touch bar to the "F1,F2,etc, Keys" since I was also at the same time seeing lots of crashes that appeared to be touchbar OS related .




yeah, 10.15.X is a disappointment with the number of bugs I'm hitting.


Nov 22, 2019 2:09 PM in response to VikingOSX

I would advocate that everyone screen capture the crash message after reboot, otherwise i'm not sure how to find history of the crashes. I also suspect the more people that report the issue the faster (if ever) apple will get RCA and fix/improvement ..etc out.


for what its worth, I've been going down that path, and it hasn't been a good example of apple care/support/experience. but keep your head up and keep pushing on them.


I made a genius bar appointment, had to be about five days out to get first available appointment that was at a location that was an apple store, since I guess they are busy with all the broken stuff sold to customers.


I checked in 10 minutes early. was told wait at a table. 25 minutes after my appointment start time I asked where I was in the queue. that seemed to get someones attention to go track down why I wasn't been helped.


eventually a tech came to meet with me. he was rude, imo, and talking to others while I was trying to answer his questions. He did not give me the impression that he was at all listening to the details of what I was telling him, just going through some motions. but maybe that not considered rude anymore.


he ran the fast hardware check (reboot holding the d key) with their tools ..etc didn't find anything he felt was meaningful. told me that we would wipe my machine and if it happens again call phone support. Also to call phone support to report the issue and any other issues I might be having. Once the reinstall of 10.15 start he left and told me someone else would be checking me out since he was leaving and there wasn't anything else he could do, but to call in or come back if the issue continues. He then went to go chat with the young women in the store who were looking at various items. He was still there when it finished.


I did call phone support, they are looking into it for me, however I'm not hopeful there. I can hardly hear the tech who calls me, his voice always sounding very faint and choppy. but at least he is calling me daily with 'I haven't heard back from engineering' updates thus far. I keep asking him when he expects to hear back and he keeps saying within another 24-48 hours, although it's been longer than that.


after going home and manually resetting up my computer (rather than migration assistant from an old one, or restoring of a timemachine backup since when i tried that it would just reboot in the middle of it without warning or error message) it still crashes with the same message. the same crash is not logged in console. which I tried to report to phone support, but i'm not sure they understand what i'm trying to explain. (e.g. that ALL crashes of the OS should get logged to the "console" app)


I went back to the apple store after I figured that phone support was a non-starter the next day. The young lady I suspect is the genuis bar manager recongsed me and was able to find me a tech although I didn't have an appointment since I think she was trying to make up for the last time. The new tech was far more helpful. She listened to my issue, made sure she understood the steps that had already been taken to dianose or fix it, ran a few more checks and then accepted my laptop to ship out for more in depth hardware analysis and repairs. She , IMO, is the only person in the whole process of 5 techs who appeared to me to take real ownership of the issue with me. She told me me what she thought were reasonable options and asked me which one I wanted to pursue. e.g. Rather than telling me that the next step was to wait for a call back, or to go back to phone support ..etc ..etc.


So despite my poor expedience I would recommend everyone who has this problem go in, reboot and hold down the d key till it reboots and runs the dianostics, assuming that clean, make a genuis bar appointment, and ask for the 90 minute hardware test see if anything comes up from that. have lots of screen shots of the crash message ..etc ..etc ..etc



best of luck everyone - will report back if they do or don't find anything with my machine.


(p.s. it may be note worthy to know that my 2014 MBP doesn't have this issue.)

Nov 29, 2019 4:16 PM in response to pedro-ale

4 days in started to get this issue non stop. Mac will run for a few minutes, then randomly freeze, shut off, fans go high for 1 second, then reboots with ' BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available'

This is on a brand new Macbook Pro 16" 2.4ghz 64gb fully spec'd out model, formatted, reinstalled Catalina, same issue. Might have to take it back and get another one.

Dec 3, 2019 11:08 AM in response to mbguercio

I have the same setup. I bought a 16" and plugged in to my 2 x ultrafine 5k monitors, and it would crash endlessly. I took it out with me all day to work (no ultrafine monitors), and zero crashes. Back home and plugged in, and the crashing resumed. I took it back to Apple who swapped it out. I have had the replacement machine for about a week and a half and have had two of these crashes since, but far reduced since my first 16". I know that 2 x ultrafine displays was a factor with my first one.


Having the displays connected makes the fans run audibly non stop, no matter what else the machine is doing.

Dec 5, 2019 7:52 AM in response to pedro-ale

Same issue here, got my first crash today. It happened when I connected a USB-C hub with a memory card in it. The laptop crashed, rebooted, and came back with the same error. My laptop is a Macbook Pro 16 inch 32GB ram, 1TB storage, 2.3 GHz core i9 processor, and 8GB GPU.

I will update here if I get more crashes, but I wanted to add to other posts here that mentioned that this happened when they connected external devices (like a monitor) or so.


Dec 5, 2019 8:25 AM in response to pedro-ale

I am SO GLAD you said THAT as Apple acts like it is just me~

I FINALLY HAD MY MAC working "PERFECTLY" UNTIL THIS UPDATE of CATALINA~

Now the Finder window opens CONSTANTLY i ~~~mean constantly telling me 'IT'S CRASHED"

AND I called Apple but it worked while he was talking to me~

irony IS~HE COULDN'T EVEN COME IN REMOTELY TO "SEE" FOR HIMSELF ????


I SAVED THE SCREEN SHOT FOREVER & finally gave up.

Catalina is garbage & doesn't UPDATE SECURITY~JUST WANTS TO SELL MORE iTUNES & other apps i have no use for!

And the FINDER crashing every five minutes?

They [APPLE] give you a "choice" ~~~REOPEN or OK??? ***?

FIX IT for crying out loud!

Dec 5, 2019 8:39 AM in response to Koseyface

Thank you for say "it's brand new"

as APPLE just tells me ~mine IS OLD...NOT THAT OLD & EVERY DAY and new device is considered "OLD".

I really do appreciate you saying this...

Mine-"OLD" is refurbished & was FINALLY working PERFECTLY ~~~until

the UPDATE of Catalina!

Sad to say, my Android works better than this DEVICE.

AND---iCLOUD "lost" all my photos? As i knew i was getting another MAC PRO & stored them there.

Now GONE???




[Edited by Moderator]

Dec 6, 2019 12:43 PM in response to rhbliss

Update: having spoken with several Apple tech support guys and doing every bit of troubleshooting possible, Apple referred me to my local Apple licensed store for a service. They’ve had it a week and are pretty confident that once you get the “Bad magic” message, it’s game over for your machine. Don’t take that as gospel, it’s just their opinion. Thankfully it’s still in warranty so there shouldn’t be an issue, but not ideal for people out of warranty.

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

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