Macbook pro 16 2019 freezes randomly and restarts

gargvishal wrote:

I had a MBP16 Grey i7 16 GB 512GB. It worked OK with very few crashes (once in 2-3 days) in the first few weeks but after 5-6 weeks use it started crashes every 10-15 minutes. I could see that the crash frequency was increasing with usage. I reinstalled the OS 3-4 times and did all what was told by the Apple support. Finally Apple took it back for refund. I again purchased the same configuration but this time in silver colour. I have been using it for 3 days and no crash so far. However, when I ran Geekbench 5 with Compute API: METAL and Computer Device: Intel UHD 630 Graphics, as suggested by @visualinventor, I am getting similar error in the Console Log app. When I change the Device to AMD there are no errors. So I have a laptop which is not freezing but giving errors running Geekbench 5. Will start freezing after a few weeks of usage?

Your LB is defective. Waiting and hoping is not going to help you. Yes, it gets worse and you will begin to get panics and reboots as time goes on. You are highly recommend to contact Apple and open a support case. If you have a custom MBP, you will have a heck of a wait due to LB shortages, so you may just open the case and tell them to contact you when the LB part is in. Since China production is fully running at this point, I expect shortages to lessen.

Your work around for this right now is to go into System Preferences/Energy Saver...turn off "Automatic graphics switching" and turn on "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" on the Power Adapter tab. This works ONLY on power and you will likely get issues when on battery. But at least you can fully use your machine on power without these issues in the short term.

I hate to tell you this, but if it is the kernel panic with the Powerplay failed to resume, it’s not a coding bug. It’s a hardware issue and was confirmed by Apple. I suggest that you follow the thread over at MacRumors as it goes very deep into the issue.

if it’s a coding bug, everyone should have it. Mine had the issue. I sent the machine to Apple. They confirmed it was hardware. Logic board was bad. They gave me a new computer. Not more panics. It’s hardware.

So I haven't had this issue since I've received the 2019 MacBook Pro 16" back from Apples repair center. Before I sent it off to get it repaired, I took screenshots of all my hardware/software under System Report and pictures of my MacBook to see what they all did prior to sending it back to me.

They said that they only "Reinstalled MacOS" on the repair paperwork but I did notice when doing comparison with my screenshots to the MacBook now, that my Apple T2 Security Chip now has a different firmware version. So they reinstalled MacOS and also updated my T2 Security Chip firmware to a higher version. No other firmware versions changed and nothing else was different. I reformatted and reinstalled MacOS once I received the MacBook Pro back from the repair center and the T2 Security Chip firmware is still the version they updated it to, which is higher than what it was originally.

My MacBook Pro has not been having these issues since they did this and I've put around 40 consistent work hours into this laptop with a very large volume of applications running at once, taking up a lot of resources.

When I sent in the MacBook and received it back, it had the same version of MacOS on it, which was the most recent version at that time. So there was no MacOS version difference. Just only a difference in my T2 firmware version. I believe their T2 Security Chip firmware update resolved my issue, but only time will tell.

I solved my problem.

My brand new macbook pro 16 (Shipped 2. april 2020) also restarted (crashed) over nigth - actually it crashed (Kernel Panic GPU) everytime it went to sleep mode. I had nothing installed except default OSX with updates.

1. Reset: Pram & NVRAM (still crashed)
2. Reset: SMC (still crashed)
3. Internet Recovery Command+Option+R (when booting) (Crashed under installation, but continued afterwards)
4. Disabled "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off." & "PowerNap.." in Energy Saver settings (Problems disappeared)
5. Two days later I enabled "Prevent computer from sleeping...." and "Powernap..." again (Still no problems)

I don't know if step 1-3 is necessary, but I think so.

So a macbook pro 16 that I almost returned, is now working perfectly - and I'm very happy:-)

So far what we have found that manufacturing dates have played a role in this. Pre-March seems to have a higher chance of the problem. Getting a Logic Board replacement seems to only be effective if you get a > March board. Those who have seen this problem re-occur have gotten pre March boards as replacements. My replacement was a March 3 manufacturing date and have no problems at all with this one.

Anyways. I would tell Apple support to be sure the new logic board is manufactured March or later. That will increase your chance of a fix.

Good luck. This is not a pleasant fix. Also thank you for reading the entire thread. It will give you a strong foundation to get this fixed. Knowledge is power.

The panic messages that seem to be related to hardware issues have been discussed earlier in the thread, so I'd read back through to see exactly which ones.

I'm dealing with the "PowerPlay Failed Resume" panic at the moment. This particular panic, per Apple, could be hardware or software. They're just not sure, yet.

Others in the thread, though, have reported it is indeed hardware, and the only fix is to have the hardware replaced w/ a logic board and/or whole system that was manufactured in March of 2020, or later.

Do you know when your hardware was manufactured? (You can install "coconutBattery" for an easy way to find out...)

My new 16" MacBook pro always crashed at night and tended to crash after sleep. I contacted Apple Support, they suggested that an update to the operating system should fix this, given that my logs had similar messages as those outlined in this thread (specific kernel panic messages). They indicated that, in the meantime, disabling power nap might work. It did. No crashes since turning off power nap in energy saver preference. Naturally, waiting for an update to fix this issue because power nap is a great feature of macs.

I had tried numerous fixes prior, utilities, reinstall system, etc... Turning off power nap was the only way to stop the crashes and odd behaviors.

For what it is worth, I also have one of the first 16" units shipped and after the 10.15.4 supplemental OS update, (4/24) it was crashing every 5-10 minutes. I did not wipe my data or programs but I did perform a SMC reset and reinstall of the OS from the WEB and it has been stable since then.... the longest span of uptime since November. I always use an external 5K display and I have graphics switching disabled. I had performed the same steps with earlier releases including 10.15.4 (prior to the supplement) without the same success. Your results may vary but it was an hour well spent for me.

I had a similar problem. Just random hangs for 2-10 seconds, sometimes up to a minute. In rare cases, this could result in a reboot if the video system does not start responding. If you disable Automatic graphics switching, the problem does not occur.

3 replacements of the logic board did not fix the problem and Apple issued a refund a few days ago.

P.S. You will not find any logs related to this problem, the diagnosis also does not find the problem.

You can record a video of your problem. Also open “About this mac” while recording so that they see the system version and your serial number.

Do not delay the solution of the problem, otherwise you risk subsequently solving it at your own expense.

You aren't speaking to Apple here. Your machine is under 1 year of standard AppleCare for hardware issues.

Random freezes can be due to:

1. Filevault needing to encode.
2. Backup software running.
3. Third party optimizers. Mackeeper and Advanced Mac Cleaner and zeobit and macpaw software are actually malware and should be removed by a Mac malware removal expert.
4. If the machine gives you a four language screen telling you it needs to restart and automatically restarts, and you have nothing connected to the machine besides power, and have no third party applications installed, then you likely have a hardware issue which Apple Diagnostics usually can detect: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731 when it can't that doesn't mean there isn't one.
5. If your hard drive is over 85% full, open some room by copying stuff to the cloud, flash drives and external hard drives. Your system's swap files may be running into each other when this happens.
6. https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002463 Etrecheck is able to quickly diagnose the causes of freezes, and if you post the results here as directed, someone here can usually tell you where to start looking.

Edit: I just noticed this is a 32 page thread. Folks, please start a new topic thread so you can get focussed attention. Otherwise we will be all over the place trying to solve problems for difficult people.

m0unt41nman wrote:

[...]

People who have gotten faulty hardware who have gotten full replacements no longer have the problem. I am one of these people. I have have no panics (Powerplay failed xxx) and I have the same software as you.

[...]

Your best course of action is to get it replaced. [...]

Agree with everything this bit in particular is very helpful.

Any idea if it's possible to request a replacement rather than repair? It rubs me the wrong way to get a "repair" on a brand new machine, e.g. 3 days of use in my case. I.e. if the device that was sold to me was sold in a "needs repair" state, I feel like I should get a brand new device since I didn't agree to buy a "needs repair" device.

Has anyone had any luck with getting a replacement without wasting time with logic board "repairs"?

Had the same issue with my new macbook , a week after I purchased . I gave it to the customer care of apple with recording of my issue . Initially , they couldn't find the issue but later they understood my issue and changed the logic board with RAM under apple care protection plan. Now it's working fine

I always thought it was a software issue (and in the deep of my heart I still do) but three weeks ago I finally decided to take the my mbp to apple care. They finally replaced logic board including memory, processors and hard drive.

Of course the first thing I tried was doing something that enables the discrete gpu by attaching a second screen, open an Adobe software and doing GPU benchmark with Metal API in Geekbench 5, all things that were causing display freezes and reboots.

With gfxCardStatus I saw that the external GPU was actually activated everytime and I don't experienced any freeze, any reboots and any glitches, even on Chrome.

I still don't know what was the problem but I'd bet a dime to a bad update, maybe back in december 2019, that downloaded faulty drives for the external graphic card and this caused those hardware issues.

I wanted to share my experience, hoping I will never need to post again into this thread.

FYI my setup is:

MBP 16-in, 2019

2.3 GHz Intel core i9 8 core

32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB

MacOS Catalina 10.15.7

This issue is related to GPU switching. Turn off dynamic GPU switching to stop this from happening in the meantime, until Apple's able to come up with a proper fix.

So I stopped using Google Chrome this weekend, ran Firefox with a bunch of youtube videos, then playing a movie on VLC, having iMovie on the Background, and today ran Unity and I haven't had the problem for the last 1.5 days.

I also tried on battery and on power source, computer on a cushion so it'd get warmer more quickly and no pb so far.

I'm using Catalina 10.15.2.

Laptop is:

6-cores 2.6Ghz i7

512 GB

16 GB RAM

Radeon 8GB

Chrome: 79.0.3945.130

I'll try to use Chrome again see if the problem shows up and then update Catalina / Chrome. I'll keep you posted