High Sierra freeze

I have gone two days now with no freezes. I also did a 10.13.2 clean install. First, I made a clone of my startup SSD disk with Superduper! and restarted my system on an external drive. Then I used the info that I got from macOS Sierra: Delete Your APFS Partition the Right Way - The Mac Observer to delete my APFS partitions. Then I used the info from http://osxdaily.com/2016/08/30/erase-disk-command-line-mac/ to completely erase and reformat my SSD drive with the MacOS Extended Journaled format.

Then I rebooted the system with the 10.13.2 installer USB thumb drive that I had previously created and installed High Sierra. Of course, it converted the SSD format back to APFS. The point is that I truly did a "clean" install. I have only reinstalled some very basic apps until I verify that the freezing issue is truly gone. So far, after two days, my 2014 27-inch iMac has NOT had any issues. Before, it would freeze up after a few hours or certainly overnight.

I should also mentioned that I had previously formatted my SSD drive with the case-sensitive version of the APFS. This time, I did not. So I don't know if that could have been a factor (using the case-sensitive APFS format). I never had any issues with any programs using the case-sensitive APFS format. But I decided to go back to the default APFS format.

Hopefully, this info will be helpful. There still must be some underlying Apple bug that is causing these issues. If my iMac freezes up again, I will immediately report back, but for now my experience is much better than what it use to be.

It really sounds like a process is hanging. Can you try opening Applications/Utilities/Console and see what messages are being shown in the log? My guess is that there will be one message repeated frequently.

Please DO NOT COPY AND PASTE an entire console log. Just a few relevant lines is all that’s needed. If you see one message being repeated frequently, or it shows as being from the Application that you’re currently using, that’s where to start.

I've been getting freeze-then-crashes on my iMac (27-inch, Late 2013) since I first bought it.

After upgrading to High Sierra, it got worse. I was getting about once or more every day.

BUT High Sierra is showing a Graphics Driver icon in my menu bar. It was put there by the NVIDIA Driver Manager System Preferences panel.

When I switched from NVIDIA Web Driver, to OS X Default Graphics Driver, the crashes stopped!

Peter, I hate to tell you but your experience is not typical, so it’s unlikely “Apple” will fix your crashes. The most likely cause is outdated or incompatible software that is installed. You can run EtreCheck (at EtreCheck.com) to get a comprehensive list of all of the extensions and such that are installed on your system and are the most likely cause of the crashes. If you post the report it generates here, we can take a look and try and help you track down why it’s crashing. But just getting angry about it and complaining on here won’t do any good. :(

Give is a little bit more info, and we can try and help you get it sorted. We’re all volunteers who just do this because we want to help.

Hi email2jayne,

I noticed all of my HS problems stopped when I unplugged my USB HDs (they are not SSD). Plugging in after booting did not help.

I erased and reformatted them to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and now everything works nicely. I tried to reformat them to APFS but could not despite multiple attempts. Importantly, when I reformatted them on this HS machine to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), 1 HD still made this machine freeze.

I then used an old machine running 10.4.11 to reformat it, then reformatted again on this HS machine, and now it runs as it should. However, I've now lost the option to reformat all my external HDs to APFS in disk utility.

If you are a Mac hoarder like me, you could try the above route.

I also tried reformatting on a Windows machine but could not manage, despite help.

HTH

Hi,

after upgrading firmware in my 3rd party SSD this problem is gone. I have late 2011 13" MBP with 8GB of RAM and Kingston SSD. Just after upgrade to High Sierra there was two problems:

1. boot time delay of about 10 minutes (apfs_vfsop_sync: failed to finish all transactions in sync()! (err 16))
2. freezes that happens few times a day and last from about 10s to two minutes

I never have to force power off my machine, it always recover from freeze, but it was very annoying. After firmware upgrade of SSD drive (in case of my Kingston SHSS37A240G it was from rev. SAFM00.Y to SAFM001B) both problems are gone.

I must mention that the freezing which had stopped for awhile after the 10.13.4 update, recurred as suggested it would by others here. I then contacted Apple support and after a number of troubleshooting measures discussed, was told to inactivate the contents of my ~/library/LaunchAgents folder by selecting all and right clicking "new folder with contents." I did find one Launch Agent from an incompatible software, Printopia v. 2. The developer claims that it should only crash the application under High Sierra but it was installed as a system preference pane and since that LaunchAgent is gone, I've been freeze free for 4 days. I know I should but it back and prove the problem recurs but for now I just like using my computer again. Hoping I don't jinx myself with this post.

Opened a BUG to Apple. This is easily reproducible.

Have a Mac with external display, set then to scaled resolution (More Space) then open some windows and start moving them around. Inside one display or from display to another and watch WindowServer memory footprint to grow fast. After reboot WindowServer uses about 200MB memory but after moving windows around it's now using 2GB of memory. Eventually after a while WindowServer freezes and is not recoverable or killable.

After my upgrade iCloud locked up with the 2 factor authentication also. Then after turning on my imac for the second time it got to the end of the progress bar and just stopped, froze.

Apple care then got me to to hold the "command" and "R" buttons down when powering up, then went into system settings, disk utilities, main hard drive then first aid option, let it do its stuff. Has been okay since.

That fixed the imac.

The icloud bit was lucky I had a third device still logged in and managed to get around the authentication with the other iPhone and iMac both not being able to log into icloud without one being logged in first.

I have a similar problem with 2011 MacBook Air. I usually do not logoff or shutdown at night, but after High Sierra upgrade, the unit is locked up in the morning when I try to use it. I have to hold power button to reboot. I've also noticed that the fan runs on high continuously when the unit is "frozen".

What I found was that I do not have the problem when my external monitor is disconnected. I have seen no freezing issues since unplugging my external monitor. When I unplug my external monitor, I also noticed the fan stops or at least slows to a level I cannot hear it.

Did not have this problem with any previous versions of MacOS.

Lemgruber wrote:

leroydouglas, how do you suggest to really test this problem... it becomes almost impossible to pinpoint the specific cause.

The fact is a known bug, no further testing required on your part— I see the options:

1. try re-installing the High Sierra on top of your existing macOS

2. wait for macOS 10.13.1 update

3. fall back to Sierra macOS Sierra: Revert to a previous macOS version

Don't bother reinstalling your system, and certainly don't do it over and over. There's a bug in the new graphics system that affects some of us, and reinstalling the OS won't change that.

As a possibly helpful data point: I haven't seen the problem since I stopped letting my system go to sleep or go into screensaver mode. It was affecting me multiple times a day before, now it's been weeks without trouble.

The most helpful thing you can make sure that you have done is to file a radar with Apple about the problem so that they are aware of the extent of the problem. Don't assume they know by the length of discussions in the forums. The people who solve such problems often don't have time to stop by here, but they do pay attention to radar requests. (bugreport.apple.com)

I had exactly this behaviour where every 2-3 days it would result in a lockup of my entire system with a mouse that could still move, but couldn't interact with anything through the keyboard or mouse.

My solution was to uninstall Air Display and it's drivers from my iMac, I'm now on day 6 without a freeze, it's a short time frame, but still at least double what I had experienced before. If anything changes I'll reply to this thread. Otherwise, it was definitely something in OSX High Sierra conflicting with something in those drivers.

Look, what shall I say? I don't want to impose my solution on anyone, but for me, it helped. If it helps anyone else, perfect, if not, sorry, I know how annoying this bug is.

But I can now definitely confirm that replacing the OSX Default Graphics Driver by the latest issue of the NVIDIA Graphics Driver from the mentioned site has stopped the freezes and crashes.

I am not a computer pro, but a power user. And my experience says, that "impossible" does not exist. So, "it cannot be the graphic card" does not exist either. In my case, the driver replacement worked.

Once again: I am on a late 2012 27" iMac, running an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1 GB, which is the original graphic card it was delivered with.

kallisti wrote:

I was experiencing fairly frequent irrecoverable freezes. SSH as root would not trigger a reboot etc.
I have 3 external displays in addition to the one on my 2017MBP (max config)
A lot of ppl are citing the GPU/Metal2 as the culprit and I absolutely agree that seems to be related

Most of the time, the lock-ups occurred while editing in Premiere Pro CC and AfterEffects

However

With High Sierra came a number of other minor bugs that I sought to remedy and I'm not entirely sure, but I may have inadvertently stopped the GPU glitch at the same time. It's been 4 days since the system froze and it ceased coincidentally with the following:

• ran drive repair from recovery (to fix all the damage from the last few panics)

• updated all drivers

• safe booted, logged in to both root account & user account during safe boot (my root login is enabled)

-waited until all drive activity dropped to zero

• reset NVRAM

• turned off automatic graphics switching

• rebuilt LaunchServices

• rebuilt DYLD's shared cache

• rebuilt XPC cache

• rebuilt CoreDuet database

• rebuilt Mac Help

• rebooted twice

it's been 4 days of serious video and audio production/rendering across 4 displays and mysteriously no lockups
I'll report back as soon as one happens again

Revisiting this

At first I thought I had solved the problem, and then when a rogue function in Adobe Premiere panicked my GPU again, I was convinced my solution didn't work.

I would like to report that the ONE AND ONLY thing that locks up my GPU right now is that one morph transition in Adobe Premiere.
Once I stopped using that transition effect, my machine has not crashed for any other reason.

Yes I think Apple inflicted this bug, however, I'm convinced the bug is user-fixable and I suspect you likely do not have to wait for a system update.

Feel free to try the following, it's harmless if it does not solve your problem:

"Download Onyx for High Sierra, go to Maintenance tab, then go to the Rebuild tab.

be aware that Onyx has enough functionality to ruin your OS, so use it wisely"