Help diagnose the cause of sudden crash/restarts on 27" iMac? (EtreCheck and Crash Report attached)

Allan Jones wrote:

— Outdated versions of DivX have long been sources of stability issues. If you need it, update it, otherwise, dump it.

— MS deprecated Silverlight several years ago. Some pundits say the leaving it on a computer is a security risk. I think it is simple not needed today.

— Old stuff that probably was moved by Migration Assistant Note the dates are older the your computer):

3rd Party Preference panels:

FinderPop (? - installed 2018-01-17)

Flip4Mac WMV (? - installed 2018-01-17)

MacFUSE (? - installed 2018-01-17)

Perian (? - installed 2018-01-17)

Secrets (? - installed 2018-01-17)

ArcanaStartupSound (? - installed 2018-01-17)

Witch (? - installed 2018-01-17)

Those need to go.

Thanks, all uninstalled.

Tesserax wrote:

• Short answer: Most likely a third-party kernel extension (kext), is causing these kernel panics.

Longer answer: This kernel panic indicates a general protection fault (type 13) that occurred in kernel mode. The key clues in the panic message are:

Faulting instruction pointer (RIP): 0xffffff801ef26c38

• Panicked task: PerfPowerService (related to macOS power and performance management)

• General protection fault (type 13)

•

What are the potential culprits causing them?

Accessing an invalid memory region

• A corrupted or buggy kext(s)

• Issues with hardware, like failing RAM or storage

1.

One simple test would be to:

Power down your Mac.

2. Remove any peripherals except the keyboard and mouse.

3. Then boot up your Mac in Safe Mode. Run in this mode for a few hours to see if the panics reoccur. If they do, then I would suspect hardware. If they don't, one or more of those kexts need to be reviewed.

To get a listing of all non-Apple kexts, you can use the following command in the Terminal app:

• kextstat | grep -v com.apple

Have now deleted everything anyone in this discussion has suggested an The Terminal command you suggested now returns the following which I believe shows no non-apple related kexts remaining, correct?

Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded

No variant specified, falling back to release

Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>

Attaching an updated report from EtreCheck. Everyone, please let me know if you see anything else that is clearly suspect as specifically related to the documented kernel panics.

Tesserax wrote:

To get a listing of all non-Apple kexts, you can use the following command in the Terminal app:

• kextstat | grep -v com.apple

Results from the terminal command:

Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded

No variant specified, falling back to release

Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>

  180    0 0xffffff7f96a9f000 0x2ff4     0x2ff4     com.Cycling74.driver.Soundflower (2) 2D779840-7439-31E5-8A66-D786C3F47B75 <179 7 6 3>

  198    0 0xffffff7f96a54000 0x7ff8     0x7ff8     com.binaryfruit.driver.SATSMARTDriver (0.10.3) 0ADB1286-BDC2-3974-8D80-8D6A25E062BC <34 33 29 6 3>

Uninstalling soundflower now.

The binaryfruit driver is for DriveDx and was only recently installed to check drive integrity due to the reported issues. (found nothing)

den.thed wrote:

To start with, Little Snitch, FileZilla, Private Internet Access VPN.

Then Restart in Safe Mode followed by a normal Restart and test.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

Again macOS 15.2 had some bugs and you should update to the latest macOS 15.3.1

Thank you! Updated to 15.3.1

Of the three apps you mention, only Little Snitch shows up in the third party kexts.

What's the issue with FileZilla? What would you recommend instead for FTP/SFTP transfer management?

PRP_53 wrote:

Depending on OP's usage of DiskWarrior 5?

Could that too come under possibilities ?

Never used it, so shot in the dark

https://www.alsoft.com/requirements

Note: The “Startup Disk” of macOS 10.13 High Sierra through macOS Sequoia (15.0) with SSDs (Solid State Drives) cannot be rebuilt with DiskWarrior as they are automatically pre-loaded with Apple File System (APFS)

Thank you.

Haven't opened Disk Warrior in many years, and it doesn't have any associated kexts or background daemons enabled.

Okay, after upgrading to 15.3.1 and uninstalling soundflower, I think that terminal command now seems to suggest there are no longer any non-Apple kexts running?

Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded

No variant specified, falling back to release

Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>

Anyone?