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AppleBoy123 Author

Level 1

88 points

What exactly does the built in diagnostics check?

I’ve been getting spurious panics, sometimes right at boot up. The built in diagnostic system doesn’t find anything, but I have no idea what is checked and what isn’t checked, compared to the in-store diagnostics.

Does anyone know or can point me to actual documentation of the onboard system? Haven’t been able to find any documentation, except how to run it, from Apple.

M1 MacBook Pro 18,4 with Max cpu and 32 gpus, 64g memory.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Jan 5, 2023 8:00 PM

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,464 points

Posted on Jan 5, 2023 8:47 PM

Apple Diagnostics looks at major components. It generally won’t find the cause of a panic.

Apple documents very little. I’m not sure what you are hoping to find.

In Intel architecture, panics are primarily caused by hardware faults and third-party kernel extensions. That probably holds tru with Apple Silicon, but I have never seen anything documenting that.

The kernel extension architecture has changed, also, supposedly to make it more robust against faults in third party extensions.

Starting up in Safe Mode should disable third party extensions, so you can use that to possibly rule them in or out.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

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What exactly does the built in diagnostics check?

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