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Constant kernel panic has made my 2017 12" MacBook unusable - help!

For the last couple years I've been experiencing kernel panic on and off, it's now happening so frequently I'm close to not being able to use my laptop at all. I did reach out to Apple support about a year ago, after doing some basic troubleshooting they recommended doing a system restore. I tried to do the option that allows you to keep your files (not the full one that erases everything) and it ran into some error and wasn't able to complete the process.


During the winter the problem mostly went away and recently came back with a vengeance. I thought it may be related to the CPU overheating but the problem still occurs even when I have a fan blowing at full force directly at it. My OS and all apps are up to date. Malwarebytes scan says no malware. It will happen at any time, including when the laptop is restarting from another kernel panic. Turning off wifi, Bluetooth and all apps does not make a difference.


Please see attached for Etrecheck scan. Thanks in advance!



MacBook, 11.5

Posted on Aug 2, 2021 3:38 PM

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3 replies

Aug 2, 2021 7:22 PM in response to Golden Kiwi

Post a few of the kernel panic logs here using the "Additional Text" icon like you did with the EtreCheck report so we can get some more details about the panics. You can find the Kernel Panic logs located in "/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports" where the file names will begin with "kernel" and end in ".panic".


I'm not a macOS software expert, but if it is a software related, then BitTorrent, and NordVPN would be my first guesses, but you do have a couple other drivers installed that I'm not familiar with, but again I am not an expert on third party apps for macOS. You could try booting into Safe Mode which should disable the login items and the third party drivers (as well as a few Apple drivers as well - camera & Touchbar). You can also try installing macOS to an external USB drive which can save you from having to re-do the internal drive.


Make sure to disconnect all external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.


I suggest running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected.


I also suggest running Disk Utility First Aid on the hidden Container. Within Disk Utility you will need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Even if First Aid shows everything is "Ok" click "Show Details" and manually scroll back through the report to see if there are any unfixed errors listed. If there are any unfixed errors listed, then you will need to erase the whole physical drive and restore from a backup or clone.


Aug 2, 2021 7:45 PM in response to Golden Kiwi


Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes.


Delete these files & restart...


/Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.teamviewer_desktop.plist


/Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.teamviewer.plist


/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.teamviewer.teamviewer_service.plist


Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Aug 3, 2021 1:36 PM in response to Golden Kiwi

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801b30db57): "cluster_push_err: Expected NULL cl_scmap\n
      "@/System/Volumes/Data/SWE/macOS/BuildRoots/d7e177bcf5/Library/Caches/
      com.apple.xbs/Sources/xnu/xnu-7195.141.2/bsd/vfs/vfs_cluster.c:5743


EtreCheck says it found 19 of these panics signatures.

VFS is the virtual file system layer. The VFS layer is an abstraction layer that allows just about any file system to plug into macOS, such as HFS+, APFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, etc... The operating system calls a VFS generic I/O function, which vectors to a file system specific function to perform that operation for the file system in question.


The fact that you are panicing in the VFS layer kind-of implies something file system related, as in maybe the file system specific component did not fill in a VFS layer structure correctly, and the VFS layer is complaining.


Are you playing with 3rd party file systems? Not APFS and not HFS+ ???


If this continues and you do not find a solution, you might consider a full backup (actually 2 full backups using 2 different backup utilities going to 2 different backup drives, because you can never be too careful with your personal data). Then reformat the boot drive, install a clean version of Big Sur, and during the Big Sur startup, when asked if you want to migrate any data from another system, point at one of your backups, and let it bring you stuff back.


This would give you a nice clean from scratch file system, just in case some file system metadata got corrupted and is causing this problem.


This is all just guessing and speculation.

Constant kernel panic has made my 2017 12" MacBook unusable - help!

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