Mac Pro keeps logging out since El Capitan

Upgraded my Mac Pro to El Capitan, all went well. I logged in, then logged into iCloud and that also went well. But then it crashed with a kernel panic, restarted OK.

It now is running OK but after a few minutes it will log me off and back to the password prompt. Very frustrating and not able to work with it in such very short windows of time.


Anybody else seeing this?


Paul.

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 4:29 AM

Reply
393 replies

Oct 10, 2015 10:38 PM in response to Paul Hodson3

Can I suggest that we don't post any more examples of 'particular configurations' or ask for 'configuration specific' fixes?


As noted, this problem exists across multiple configurations and there are some temporary and inconvenient work arounds.

If anyone comes up with a different work around or even a fix, just post that!


My opinion - feel free to ignore, but I am interested in solutions and workarounds - emptying my inbox each day with 'how do I fix mine?' posts is getting frustrating.

The particular configuration details are important when posting a workaround - we might be able to spot similarities.

Oct 11, 2015 8:11 AM in response to Pablo Gabs

It seems that with one video card, two monitors is possible with EC. I was doing that with one GT120. Problem was trying to run EC with both GT120s that are installed with two monitors on each card. = No Go = Crash, crash, crash. The problem has not been solved. It is a basic coding problem with EC, it is not a "settings" issue. If you are OK with just two monitors on one card, then go for it. Does run faster than YOSE. I have EC on an iMac and 13" MBA and they are doing fine. But I downgraded my Mac Pro to Yose after EC crashed my second video card. Now I'm back to my four monitors with both cards functioning as designed on Yose. If you are a non-believer and want to experiment with EC, be sure to back up everything to a second hard drive BEFORE you install EC, because if you need to downgrade to Yose from EC, it will be a clean install and disk wipe. EC will not let you downgrade to Yose and your TM will not be available.


Eventually, Apple may re-code EC to enable our Mac Pros to run EC as the machines are designed. But for now, EC is a rock pile for earlier Mac Pros with multiple video cards running multiple monitors.

Oct 15, 2015 12:42 AM in response to Paul Hodson3

MacPro


Tested with 10.11.1 Beta 4 (15B38b): Still not fully corrected.

Different issues thought, to summarize :

On MacPro 2009 4,1 upgrade to 5,1 with W3520

Slot 1 : GT120 (genuine) -> 1280x1024 monitor

Slot 2 : GTX 650 (plain PC version) -> 1980x1200 monitor

Standard configuration of 'Mission Control' (different spaces on monitors)

  • With 10.11 (latest Developer version ) : all is OK
  • With 10.11.1 Beta 1: still all is OK
  • With 10.11.1 Beta 3 : random Logout issue (as all of you noticed)
    • random logout, (speeded up when calling Finder, Xcode, Safari, ...) whatever the monitor
    • if both monitors are connected (DVI) to GTX 650 : 100% OK, no random logout anymore.
  • With 10.11.1 Beta 4 : (after PRAM reset + boot in safe mode (clearing the system caches), + reboot)
    • if main menu is put on GT120 : Main display is quite sluggish, just launching 'System.Prefs' and you get ugly artifacts on that window, 'About my Mac' same issue. Then system comes to freeze (just mouse pointer, but nomore keyboard actions (Cmd-Q, Sht.Cmd-Q, Cmd-Tab ... etc) --> PowerButton reset
    • If main menu is put on GTX650 (stock PC) : display is OK, but after a while, savage logout when working with apps.
    • if both monitors are connected (DVI) to GTX 650 : 100% as every-body noted. (just no boot screen/logo)

Oct 15, 2015 2:09 AM in response to Captain Will

A bit confusing. You are saying that with 10.11 "latest developer version" of El Capitan all is OK. But I believe that most people on this thread (in including me) are using the official 10.11 release. and are seeing all the problems. So that would sort of mean the issues were introduced between the latest 10.11 deliver release and the official release ... Or do I understand this wrong?

Oct 16, 2015 1:00 AM in response to Paul Hodson3

Hello!!


I too have had this issue on my 4.1 Mac Pro with two GT 120 cards. Thankfully all my data was backed up to a Macbook Pro so I didn't lose much wiping the machine back to 10.5 then upgrading up to 10.10 again wasn't too painful. It's stressing that this issue is something I called Apple about and spent over 4 hours on the phone with them about. They blamed my hardware saying "Newer OS's seem to find the hardware issues that sometimes are lurking in a machine. Bring it into an apple store for diagnostics to rule out or find what we think is a hardware issue." Thankfully I now know that it is a bug in their programming. Hopefully I can both upgrade hardware and upgrade software soon but so far, not too impressed with the new OS.

Oct 17, 2015 3:00 AM in response to is just me

What really gets my goat is that Apple must have known that 10.11 was broken if you have > 1 display card, it would have been really nice if they had warned us not to update, but no, just release it and pretend everything is wonderful and leave anyone that was fool enough to believe the hype and "upgrade" dead in the water.


Mac OS X releases have gotten much worse lately, there was a time, when then didn't have much money they produced really solid software, now they have giga-bucks they couldn't care less! It's really amazing to watch a really cool company strangle itself with its own success...........


My advice to anyone with this problem is to downgrade back to whatever they were using before.


FWIW, the short time I was using 10.11 it seemed much more responsive while it was working, which wasn't for long, since it soon crashed!

Oct 18, 2015 1:37 PM in response to Paul Hodson3

Reverting to OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) seems the only way around this problem, short of crippling our hardware by removing graphics cards. Here's a recent article on downgrading from OS X 10.11 (El Capitan):


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-downgrade-os-x-el-capitan-yosemite-older-version-15 23475


My Time Machine backups switched from Yosemite to El Capitan on October 1. I reverted to the last backup made with Yosemite on that date.

Oct 19, 2015 4:49 AM in response to Eric Root

Ok I sent Feedback as I am going to hop on this thread myself.


I am having the same exact problem. Turning off "Displays have Separate Spaces" does not work.


I have an Early 2009 Mac Pro with 2 X (NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512 MB) and ever since I updated

to El Capitan I get random logging out. It's whenever I interact (dragging, clicking and etc) with any app on the second monitor. My system has gone haywire and the screen goes to garbage and will either log out, lock up, or crash.


I would think your testing would have machines as early as 10.8 that can upgrade to El Capitan on hand to do full testing to ensure everything is working before releasing the OS.


Hopefully this is fix because my productivity has gone out the Window and forced to work on the first monitor.


Kenneth

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Mac Pro keeps logging out since El Capitan

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