iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020 Sonoma crashes , black screen. Don't know why.

Question

iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020 Sonoma crashes , black screen. Don't know why.

My iMac is about 2 years old now. Has operated flawless until recently, after Sonona. For an unknown reason the computer crashes. Black screen unable to get a response. Reboots itself. Generates a report which I always send to Apple. I have not had any data loss. Open apps restart with no issue. Wondering if anyone else is having this issue and if Apple is doing anything with the reports. To be clear this first happened after the first update to Sonoma. Did not have any issues before Sonoma.

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Dec 13, 2023 6:58 AM

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Answer 1

WheelieNick

Level 9

50,661 points

Dec 13, 2023 7:13 AM in response to sparkchaser1200

Try and boot the Mac in the safe mode to see if the issues persist

if they dont persist in the safe mode they have something to do with an external piece of software

urn on or restart your Mac, then immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the login window.
Log in to your Mac.
You might be asked to log in again.
On either the first or second login window, you should see “Safe Boot” in the menu bar.

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

149,220 points

Dec 13, 2023 2:36 PM in response to sparkchaser1200

Doing a Safe Mode restart takes less time than it took you to write your reply to Wheelie Nick. If you want assistance then it's wise to follow the instructions provided. If you don't want assistance then okay.

BTW, do you have any of the following third party apps installed on your Mac?

· Antivirus Apps

· Cleaning Apps

· Security Apps

· VPN Apps

· Maintenance Apps

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Answer 3

Dec 13, 2023 11:49 AM in response to WheelieNick

WheeieNick

Thanks for the suggestion. I do not have the time to experiment in Safe Mode for a issue that usually only happens once a day. Stuff like this happened all of the time in the PC world where I came from 10 years ago. We just "Control-Alt-Deleat" once a day and moved on. Since switching to MAC I enjoyed a trouble free never failing machine. This iMAC is a recent purchase, replacing my 10 year old iMAC. For the first time on a MAC I have returned to these pesky problems with out a clear solution. I started this discussion hoping I was not the only one having this issue. I will continue to check here to see if my issue is unusual or not.

I still do not know where the "Reports" go, who if anyone reads them, or what they actually mean. I do not know how to read the code in the report so I have no clue what the report might be pointing to the error, hardware or software. I was hoping to be enlightened along those lines.

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Answer 4

Dec 13, 2023 3:00 PM in response to rkaufmann87

rkaufmann87

“If you want assistance then it's wise to follow the instructions provided.”

Thanks for the heads up on what is wise. I feel that your reply is a bit condescending.

Booting to Safe Mode is the first step in any troubleshooting process. I have yet to ever have gotten anywhere close to the fix by booting into Safe Mode.

So I restart in Safe Mode and nothing bad happens and the computer does not crash, now what.

All of those apps you mentioned are totally un-necessary for a MAC so no I do not have any of those.

I do use a third party backup but it does not start on startup. I have to open it.

My original question is what happens to those reports that are generated after an event. Are they useful in figuring out what caused the event? If I could read them would they give me a clue about what was happening at the time of the event.

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iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020 Sonoma crashes , black screen. Don't know why.

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