What is SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired)?

I narrowed this down to the USB-A ports and older USB devices.

I had a USB 4-port hub with a few USB devices attached and it would do it. I took out the hub and just had a 10-year-old USB drive I was using for my TimeMachine backup and it still did it, but less often. I disconnected the USB drive and it hasn't done it for three weeks straight.

I now just hook up the backup drive abou3 times a week just long enough to do a backup and then disconnect it.

this is a logic board issue. watchdog is a component in the processor which resets after a period of time. Usually processor takes care of that. However when the system/processor fails to reset the watchdog, the timer expires and the system reboots which resets the timer. This can happen at anytime. No connection to what you might be doing. I suggest take video when this happens & submit this video at apple store/service centre. They will replace logic board like they did for me. Hope this helps the affected users!!

I have never seen those two choices. I see the GSoD for a couple of seconds and then a restart that is much quicker than a usual restart, which ends with the login for my account. When I login, I see the report with just the one issue; SOCD report detected: (AP watchdog expired). You are the first to report this multiple restart issue. Do you see this report after the restart?

As was established by Apple as reported by sajal101 towards the bottom of page three of this thread, this is not a software issue, this is a logic board issue. The only way that Apple will fix it for you is by you making a Genius Bar appt for Apple to install a new logic board under the warranty.

I had the issue previously that did go away with an update.... though I haven't done the most recent to 11.4. I'm still sitting on 11.3 and haven't had the issue since getting to 11.3. I do believe that this could be caused by a faulty logic board but it is also possible that it could be problem with the software mismatching where it's sending data. That also depends heavily on the particular reason your Mac crashed as the same error could result from multiple different locations depending on what that particular feature interacts with.

Most often though I'd look at an erase and reinstall first. Reinstall is good and all but it'd be more efficient to just run a Time Machine backup, and then erase and reinstall clean. Test for a bit, then migrate data with Time Machine if the issue doesn't occur after the regular interval.

Most often I've found that crashes along these lines have more to do with installed programs and how they interact with hardware than actual hardware issues. If the issue occurs after an erase and set up as new install then I'd swing by and see about getting the logic board sorted out. There are a whole bunch of other steps Apple Care will have you take, they are important and should be done, but the be all end all if it keeps happening is an erase and reinstall. So if you're up for it then.... yeah.

It was this Sabrent 4-port USB hub. It has served me well with 2 different Intel Mac minis, so I suspect that it is the USB 2.0 model.

I plugged it in long enough for System Report to verify it is USB 2.0.

Mine continued through multiple updates and a reinstall of the operating system. Then wiped the entire hard drive and reinstalled. Still happened. The Apple Certified technician talked to Apple engineers. Had to have the mother board replaced and now is no longer happening. Also, M1 chips apparently don’t like WD external backup hard drives, so got a Seagate. Hope this helps.

My M1 Mac mini locked up when I was trying to reinstall macOS Big Sur after having been using the Monterrey beta. I had been informed by online Apple Support that this was necessary before they could install a new logic board for this issue. The Genius bar was able to restore the mini to Big Sur in less than an hour and I took it home with the factory settings without having a new logic board installed.

I used a Time Machine backup to restore my data. I again installed the beta.

One of the peripherals that was attached to the mini was my Canon MG 2520 all-in-one printer. A few days after bringing the mini home I experienced the GSoD, but without the SOCD report on reboot. I detached the printer and have never experienced the GSoD again going on over a month now.

I return to my original idea voiced in the early days of this thread, these GSoD are being caused by certain attached legacy USB-A devices.

M1 Mac mini, macOS 11.5.1; Watch, series 5 GPS/cellular, watchOS 7.6.1; iPad Pro 2nd Gen, iPadOS 14.7.1; iPad Air 2, iPadOS 14.7.1; iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 14.7.1; TV 4th Gen, tvOS 14.7  HomePods, audioOS 14.7 and Airport Express w/ Airplay 2

Well, I had this same problem and spent numerous hours with Apple Support. Finally I took it to an Apple Authorized repair place and they found that my Western Digital external hard drive wasn't compatible with the M1 chip. (recollections of Microsofts disastrous Vista.) But even that didn't fix it. They had to replace my mother board and the problem was solved. Just thought you all would want to know!

An M1 rebooting and hanging doesn't sound right, my iMac M1 has been absolutely outstanding and I had this error just once. Have yours exchanged, there's definitely something wrong with yours which is not (only) this SOCD error

hey gang, had a mini breakthrough if you've ever gotten stuck in the rebooting cycle of death like I had happen last night where it rebooted 15 times in a row before I gave up and went to bed.

When it reboots, it will give two options, can't remember them off the top of my head. But the blue button on the bottom right (I think) essentiually reopens everything that was previously open, trying to get you back to where we were.

DO NOT SELECT THAT OPTION.

For whatever reason that option will also recreate the problem that crashed our computers, and then it will continue to reboot over and over again.

As soon I selected the button on the bottom left (which is esentially a clean restart), it stopped doing it.

Hope this helps people until Apple can deliver us a fix.

That has not actually been established. sajal101 was speculating based on a misunderstanding of what a watchdog timer is. This could very well be a software issue. For some folks it's cleared up due to software updates, while for others it hasn't. It's possible that there's issues with third-party drivers causing issues, like if people have VPN clients installed or are using slightly-out-of-spec USB devices.

What other devices do you have connected to your computer? Also, maybe in System Information you can find something about a bad kext, like by going to Software > Extensions and then sorting the list by 'obtained from' to see if there's any non-Apple extensions which are loaded.

Depends on what hub you're talking about.I updated the firmware of my CalDigit hub, and I deleted all Logitech software from my machine and I haven't had a crash since.

That is incredibly untrue. While some systems do have hardware watchdogs, that is generally not the case in consumer electronics, and in this context the watchdog is probably a kernel process that keeps track of other kernel processes to ensure there's no deadlock or crash.

Software watchdogs are used pretty much everywhere that things need to keep running, and this is almost definitely a software watchdog. For example, launchd (which MacOS uses to keep system services running) is a watchdog.

Even if the M1 has a hardware watchdog there's no evidence that this is a logic board issue. In fact, even if this specific watchdog is a hardware watchdog, that still doesn't mean it's a logic board issue that's causing the system reboots — it could very well be a software fault that's leading to the watchdog timer not being serviced in time.

Other than that, if the issue persists with a clean install, set up as new with only a keyboard and mouse connected then hardware is the next step. Especially if you're up to date. I've been on the phone about it a couple times when it was happening to me and generally speaking if you've done everything and they don't want to submit to engineering and call you back, I dealt with them for over two weeks with an issue another device, then hardware would be on deck at that point. When I spoke with them about this, they did mention that they'd had some other people call about it so I don't know if it's something they're actively working on or something that they're still looking into.

Either way, if getting the logic board is what you want to do then see about getting it done. I just wanted to share my experience with the issue and my knowledge of dealing with similar processes on other Macs that I and my family have owned. In my experience, it's normally software related. Out of all the times my Mac or phone have acted up, I'm more than confident in saying that easily 98% of all of the issues were related to some setting, program, driver, or package that I, by doing it myself or by installing a program that did, changed something with how it functioned.

(This is the reason I will never install chrome on any mac..... the way they run extensions is freaking dumb.)