Macbook Pro 2019 randomly shutting down and/or beachballing

ClaireTo wrote:

I took my Mac to a shop and was told the problems were most likely caused by the nearly dead battery, so they replaced it. But the problem is still occurring and the battery is being used up very fast every day.

Would love to get feedback on the EtreCheck Pro report that's attached. Thanks.

EtreCheckPro version: 6.8.12 (68084)

Report generated: 2025-09-27 09:25:19

Download EtreCheckPro from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 6:52

Performance: Below Average

More text below.

<the rest of the EtreCheckPro report.log>

Much easier to read here, there are better ways to copy and paste...

ref:

Your run time <Runtime: 6:52> you would expect less then 3 minutes

Kernel Panics are predominately caused by hardware faults or faulty third-party kernel extensions.

Learn what to do if your computer restarts or shuts down unexpectedly, or you get a message that your computer restarted or shut down because of a problem.

If your Mac restarted because of a problem - Apple Support

you can post the kernel panic in the same Additional txt box.

To trouble shoot further you can:

—A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

This test will tell you if third party interference; most extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account. 

***wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries— connect the charging cable, this will make the wired keyboard successful Safe Boot your Mac.

unplug all non-essential peripherals when testing

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

all known to cause issues on the macOS

Please post the complete Kernel Panic report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar. Kernel Panic logs are located in "/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports" with a file name usually containing "kernel" and/or "panic". If there are no Kernel Panic logs in that folder, then look in the "Retired" subfolder. I'm curious if the EtreCheck reports summary of the panic may have missed a critical item that may provide a clue for us.

The only possible software I would question is the Magic Control Technologies and the VPN software. VPNs do not provide the privacy & security people think they do unless they are being used to connect to an employer's network and then most people will use the VPN software the employer supplies. See the following article about VPNs:

https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29

Otherwise I will leave the software diagnosis to the others since I am not a macOS software expert. I just pointed out items that I've never seen in any other report.....unusual is usually a good place to start when troubleshooting problems.

Also, try running Disk Utility First Aid on the hidden Container to check the condition of the file system. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Even if the First Aid summary says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll through the report to see if any unfixed errors are listed. If there are errors, then run First Aid again until the errors are gone. If the errors remain after several scans, then try running First Aid while booted into Recovery Mode.

If none of our suggestions so far help, then I would suggest the nuclear option of performing a DFU Firmware Restore which will reset the T2 security chip, system firmware, and internal SSD (the data on the internal SSD will be destroyed). This will require you to reinstall macOS through Internet Recovery Mode. Make sure to have a good backup of your data before performing this operation.

If a DFU Firmware Restore doesn't solve the problem, then most likely the Logic Board in your laptop is bad. The Logic Board in your particular model laptop (MBPro 16" 2019) does have a high rate of failure compared to earlier models. If there is a hardware issue, then I do not recommend spending any money on repairs for multiple reasons (one is that some users have noted having the replacement Logic Boards fail almost as soon as they get home after a repair & Apple confirms another bad Logic Board). The money spent on repairs for the Intel Macs is better put towards a new laptop.

I agree with @John Galt that Apple did a very poor job diagnosing your laptop. I'm sure the battery was either worn out or failing, but it was highly unlikely to be the source of your problem.....an experienced tech would have known that, but Apple's techs have no clue how to read or deal with Kernel Panics.

ClaireTo wrote:

thank you! I tried deleting the garbage but it was taking me forever.

Yeah, it was a pain.

I still haven't had time to write a quick script to parse the log so it is more readable, but I did give the condensed version a quick look. Here are some of the important aspects I found so far, maybe it will help another contributor to possibly point to a possible source:

panic(cpu 10 caller 0xffffff801f4b089b): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from logd (0 induced crashes) in 120 seconds\nservice returned not alive with context : unresponsive dispatch queue(s): com.apple.firehose.io-wl \n

logd has not exited since first loaded\nservice

last started kext at 11019822076568: @filesystems.smbfs\t6.0 (addr 0xffffff7fb1dd4000, size 667648)\n

loaded kexts:\ntw.com.mct.driver.MCTDisplay\t0.1\ntw.com.mct.Trigger5Core\t3.3.3\n@filesystems.smbfs\t6.0\n

It appears the log daemon (part of macOS) was not checking in properly. So something is interfering with a macOS system process.

I'm not sure what Apple process or feature the "com.apple.firehose.io-wl" reference is related. I'm too tired at the moment to look it up. If this is relevant, maybe another contributor can provide some insight to this part.

The interesting part comes from the items listed in the back trace which includes the MCT extensions. Remember I mentioned that unusual tends to be a good place to start looking? You should uninstall the MCT software by following the developer's instructions (either the software has a menu option to "uninstall", or you may need to download an uninstaller app from the developer of the MCT software you installed (or whatever app which may have included the MCT extensions). Once you uninstall the MCT software, then run EtreCheck again to make sure all references to the MCT extensions are gone from the report. That extension is oddly named too with the "ntw" part unless that is a network country/region code.

Also of note, is last started extension was for SMB which is used to sharing & accessing network shared folders. This is part of macOS, but perhaps something with network sharing was unexpected & caused the crash. I would first suspect the MCT software since the SMB loading last may just be chance.

I think between everything posted on this thread, you likely have the solution to your crashes.

Good luck & let us know how it goes.

SSD too slow - SSD is showing poor performance.

and

File system: 101.20 seconds

That's very slow. The repair shop may not have evaluated the entirety of the Mac prior to blaming everything on a dead battery.

I'm unable to access the file. You can cut out a section if it just contains random characters. Some types of Kernel Panic logs will contain mostly random characters. When you see actual "readable" text, that is what needs to be posted. Now that "readable" text may be all bunched together with lines like, but you will see actual words....that is the part we need:

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xfffeecda12af): macos panic\n"@anamehere.h:1112\nPanicked task 0xfffffbadc202f70 : 0xffffff800a9b0ea7 \n.........

Actually when I tried again I was given an option to download the file. I removed a huge chunk from the center of the file which contained random characters (it is actually data in a binary format only useful to the developer....maybe). Here is the condensed down version of your Kernel Panic log (I had to cut a lot out which included readable text as well):

I haven't had time to go through it yet. However, it almost looks like there are two "panic" sections in that log so I need to look at both. Unfortunately Apple's formatting of the log file doesn't allow for carriage returns......those carriage returns are embedded as "\n" which is making it difficult to read this log. I'll need to do some magic on that file to make it more readable.