windowserver crashing? Next troubleshooting step?

Question

windowserver crashing? Next troubleshooting step?

My 16" Macbook pro has become very unreliable in the last day or so. It's been on 10.15.7 for awhile, and working just fine. But now out of the blue I'm getting. Constant freezes that I can only escape with a hard reset. Strange graphical aberations. I'll launch a web browser and the icon will just keep bouncing.

I've dove into troubleshooting recos on the forums and tried resetting PRAM, SMC and doing a disk repair. The problems persist.

Based on some advice found in the forums here, I've also started exploring Console (which I know nothing about). I notice that the crashes seem to correlate with a crash report and the process name is "WindowServer" I fear a hardware issue, but really not sure what to try next. Any ideas on next troubleshooting steps?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 28, 2020 10:23 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 28, 2020 6:00 PM in response to professional_photog

Don't worry about looking at the system logs as Apple has made them unusable with recent versions of macOS. You will just drive yourself crazy looking at them.

Even if First Aid shows everything is "Ok" click on "Show Details" to look for any unfixed errors which may be causing problems.

Run the Apple Diagnostics.

Run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 30, 2020 8:07 PM in response to professional_photog

You have a few items installed that I am not familiar with such as the VPN. Make sure all the software is completely up to date.

If the system is having Kernel Panics, then post several of the most recent Kernel Panics here using the "Additional Text" icon. You can find Kernel Panics in "/Library/logs/DiagnosticReports". The Kernel Panic files will begin with "kernel" and end in ".panic". Also look into the "ProxiedDevice" folder for any filenames beginning with "panic" and ending with ".ips". If you have panic files in both folders, then post several from each folder.

Try booting into Safe Mode to see if the issue still occurs.

Disconnect your external drive and any other external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.

You can also try reinstalling macOS over top of itself which should not affect your data (just make sure to have a good backup just in case).

Reply

Answer 3

Dec 1, 2020 4:50 PM in response to professional_photog

I'm currently investigating a similar issue on a MBPro 15" (2020) which is having Kernel Panics related to a GPU Reset/Restart (I forget if it was "reset" or "restart"), but which also contain "panic" files in the "ProxiedDevice-Bridge" folder which references the BridgeOS which from my understanding is basically the T2 chip. I'm not sure which one is the main fault. I've narrowed the issue down to a bad Logic Board as I've disconnected all non-essential items.

You should make sure to have a good backup. Then I suggest performing a clean install by first erasing the physical drive before reinstalling macOS. See if you can reproduce the crashes without installing any third party apps or migrating/restoring from a backup. If you can get the laptop to fail reliably with a clean install it will make things easier when you have Apple examine the laptop since they will want you to perform a clean install.

I recall a bunch of posts on these forums last year regarding GPU and/or sleep/powersave issues with the 16" model which required Logic Board replacements. IIRC sometimes disabling Sleep may have helped since many times the issue occurred when waking the laptop.

Reply

Answer 4

Nov 29, 2020 5:57 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you!

FWIW I contacted Apple support and they basically ran through all of the troubleshooting steps I had already done, and then suggested a clean install. Glad to get a bit more of a nuanced response, though I'm not against a clean install if that's the only possible solve.

I will run the tests you suggested and report back with results including Etrecheck results.

Cheers.

Reply

Answer 5

Nov 29, 2020 6:59 PM in response to professional_photog

Ran Etrecheck and Apple Diagnostics. Quicker and easier than I thought it would be.

Unfortunately though, from what I can make out, no obvious solution.... Apple diagnostics said "no issue found"

Etrecheck noted "runaway processes" but I'm not quite sure how to act on that.

Pasted below is the full Etrecheck report as you suggested.

Etrecheck Log

Reply

Answer 6

Dec 1, 2020 5:44 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you. This is all extremely helpful. I will report back as things progress.

Reply

Answer 7

Dec 1, 2020 5:55 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you for the followup!

Several of your steps align with recos that came from Apple that I've already tried (update all software, boot to safe mode, reinstall OS without affecting data)

The issue was still occurring, so I did *another* OS reinstall and cleared of the drive, and issues are still occurring.

I followed your advice about looking for Kernel Panic files, and I think that turned up some potentially valuable info... While there are not any Kernel Panic files ending with "kernel" in that folder, there are many with a name like "Kernel_2020-11-30-112718_Jacobs-MacBook-Pro.gpuRestart" About 25 seem to have been generated yesterday.

I can't upload the full document on this forum. (I get the error "Body should not exceed 100000 characters.")

However, I have uploaded them all here, and pasted the first section of one of them below.

As for ProxiedDevice, all I see is a folder called "ProxiedDevice-Bridge" which does not contain any files that say "kernel" or "panic"

I'm not expert, but guessing this potentially points towards any issue with the GPU? If that's the case, I think next step is a trip to Apple (still covered under AppleCare), and I'd love to go in with as much info as possible so they can properly diagnose and fix the issue the first time around.

Thank you so much for your help on this. I'll be standing by in case there's any more digging I can do to help figure this out.

First portion of one Kernel Panic GPU

Reply

windowserver crashing? Next troubleshooting step?

Similar questions