Macbook logs out by itself

i've had the same problem. have an external display plugged to recent model of MacBook Pro. have been logged out and then immediately logged in (there was no prompt for password though). the audio has been somehow affected- all audio apps are rendered mute :/ in my case it had to do with Boom (that boosts the gain of mac's audio). after restarting boom the audio was fixed..

"the log out-and-in" problem does concern me a great deal. if I had something unsaved I would be enraged big time.

anyone there know an answer to that?

I've just noticed the same problem. I too have been plugging in my MacBook Pro to an external display on and off but never had this problem before. I have currently updated with the new security update but haven't noticed anything after that either.

But the one thing that I have done to is install Boom (to boost the volume of the speakers). I wonder if this is causing issues. I wasn't listening to any music or anything however I suspect that it could be at fault?

I'll try uninstalling it and see what happens.

How many guys have Boom installed and are having the problem?

I just noticed that Boom isn't running when I logged back in after it logged me out. Have you guys had that?

Remember the time that it happened at and you might get a reason in the logs.

How and where do I check the logs?

Applications/Utilities/Console

Scroll down on the left hand column until you see "Files" and click the subfile system.log then track down the time that it happened at.

The spontaneous logouts have been happening to me both on my MacBook Pro and my iMac at work. I have Boom installed on both! Could it really be Boom-related?? It sounds like it might be.

Before that issue started, I was having an ongoing problem with my Mac going into deep sleep instead of regular sleep. This has occurred ever since I bought it in December 2010 and definitely before I got Boom. I took it in for repair and they replaced the logic board, but the deep-sleep problem continues, and now the spontaneous logouts.

The logoutys always seems to occur when I've got half a dozen or more processor-intensive or memory-hog apps open at the same time—InDesign, Dreamweaver, Numbers, anything by Microsoft, two dozen or more tabs open in Chrome—all at the same time. I'll reach a moment where I've asked it to do something that requires a lot of processing—such as asking InDesign to "Find and Replace" every instance of two paragraph returns in a row in a 60-page document. All of a sudden, the cursor will disappear, and I know what's coming... A few seconds later, the blue screen of death, and then the login screen. Fortunately, I'm smart enough to save religiously, so I've been able to recover pretty easily, but it's extremely inconvenient and always seems to happen when I'm working against a deadline. And since my Mac is relatively new, these two problems combined make me feel less than confident about the future of my investment.

For starters, I'm going to uninstall Boom. But I would really appreciate it if Apple would look into this. A Google search reveals this is happening to a lot of people.

Here's a snippet of my console log following the last spontaneous logout. I looked back over the last 24 hours, and it's almost all the same: every line mentions Sophos, my antiVirus software. Could this be the problem? I've been using it almost since I first got my Mac.

7/3/11 12:42:48 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2569]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:42:48 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:42:48 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2570] 2011-07-03 00:42:48.383 ReportCrash[2570:2a03] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2569] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004248_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:42:58 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2572]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:42:58 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:42:58 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2570] 2011-07-03 00:42:58.533 ReportCrash[2570:1407] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2572] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004258_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:43:08 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2574]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:43:08 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:43:08 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2570] 2011-07-03 00:43:08.671 ReportCrash[2570:2a07] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2574] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004308_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:43:17 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2576]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:43:17 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:43:17 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2570] 2011-07-03 00:43:17.843 ReportCrash[2570:380b] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2576] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004317_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:43:27 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2578]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:43:27 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:43:27 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2570] 2011-07-03 00:43:27.981 ReportCrash[2570:3933] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2578] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004327_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:43:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2580]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:43:38 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:43:38 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2570] 2011-07-03 00:43:38.118 ReportCrash[2570:3c3b] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2580] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004338_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:43:48 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2582]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:43:48 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:43:48 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2583] 2011-07-03 00:43:48.288 ReportCrash[2583:2803] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2582] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004348_localho st.crash

7/3/11 12:43:58 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent[2585]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault

7/3/11 12:43:58 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.sophos.managementagent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/3/11 12:43:58 AM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[2583] 2011-07-03 00:43:58.425 ReportCrash[2583:1407] Saved crash report for SophosManagementAgent[2585] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SophosManagementAgent_2011-07-03-004358_localho st.crash

My MacBook has in the last few days just logged out without using externals, just goes to blue screen and either re-starts or shuts down! Seems to be no real reason.

Well, I'm happy to report that it looks as if the Boom audio utility was indeed the problem, at least for me. I uninstalled it approximately 4 days ago following these instructions, and my MacBook Pro hasn't logged me out since! What a relief!

You should still uninstall Sophos. It isn't working and wouldn't do you any good even if it did work.

Linc, why wouldn't it do me any good if it did work?