Crashing MacBook Air - linked to Safari?

Question

Crashing MacBook Air - linked to Safari?

My wife's MBA early-2015 keeps crashing. It seems to be partially linked to Safari (particularly when she watches movies) ... but Google Chrome also crashes at the same time - and even occasionally the finder. (FireFox less so - but even that sometimes.)

I have:

Used (added) Norton to search for adware - found and eliminated one.

Cleaned up Safari history, cookies, etc (Completely reset it)

Reset the P-Ram

Reset the EMC

Done a hardware check (all OK)

Done a drive check (all OK)

Used (added) EtreCheck to see if anything shows up.... (nothing obvious)

Gotten rid of all 32 bit programs (using EtreCheck)

No Safari extensions

Eliminated Flash (Using the Flash uninstaller)

Eliminated Java (Following Oracle's method)

(No other OS extensions.)

Eliminated ALL Google software

Reinstalled the OS (Which is and was completely up-to-date.)

The only thing I can find is that when the crashes occur, I get ~75% processor use from "mach_msg_trap" or "diskimages-helper" and ~25% from "mds" - and the machine is clearly running full out. This might be tied to "AXVisualSupportAgent" but I cannot tell..... A dump of AXVisualSupportAgent shows mach_msg_trap as all of its usage.

ANY HINTS - or suggestions - Please!!!

I am at a complete loss.

Thanks!

MacBook Air

Posted on Aug 15, 2020 12:33 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Matthew Goeckner Author

Level 1

30 points

Sep 8, 2020 10:17 AM in response to chuck_3rd

Thanks for the hint. It was useful in finding a solution.

I erased the portion of the HD that contained the OS - and reinstalled the OS - as per your suggestion. This did not work.
Based on your idea, I backed up all of my wife's documents and then deleted my wife's account on the computer. I then created a new account for her - and put the documents back into place. This seems to have solved the problem.

Thanks for the idea.

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Answer 2

chuck_3rd

Community Specialist

Aug 16, 2020 7:05 PM in response to Matthew Goeckner

Hi Matthew,

We understand how frustrating it can be to have an app crash unexpectedly, and you've taken some excellent isolating steps so far. We do want to clarify a couple of things:

What version of macOS is this on under About This Mac? The latest version would be macOS Catalina 10.15.6.
When reinstalling macOS, did you erase the disk first, using the steps outlined here? How to erase a disk for Mac
When the issue occurs, does it close only the affected app, leaving your at your desktop? Or does it force the entire computer to restart, or give a persistent error of some sort?

Reply to this thread with that information, and we'll dig a bit deeper.

Cheers!

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Crashing MacBook Air - linked to Safari?

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