High Sierra freeze

Short Version - a suggestion.

Try Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Combo Update

The "Combo" includes the full version of High Sierra 10.13 along with its latest .3 update.

(It will NOT erase your data. It can be used to install a macOS X on a formatted HD.)

Long Version - my fun.

After a very long struggle, Siri works and I haven't seen any system-wide "hiccups". I think the video freezes made it more obvious.

A month ago, thinking it might speed things up, my internal HD was formatted for APFS using Command-R. That went rather quickly, just a few minutes. I can't say for sure if APFS started the "hiccups/freezing".

I tried the Time Machine drive, after 3 HOURS, it said it was unable to format that drive as APFS.

I wanted to reinstall the OS High Sierra, hoping it would fix the problem, but Command-R could only install Yosemite. Huh? Ummm, I don't think so. Disappointment and sadness Apple couldn't modernize Command-R by now.

I opened Command-R's Disk Utility to see if it needs repair. It didn't show. It must really be damaged. But Time Machine showed. It must be the OS X HD. Further disappointment, you can format for APFS but Apple can't see APFS if you need any help.

The quickest solution is to by a new external HD. Did a quick look around, both, Amazon and Best Buy had an external USB3 2Tb for $69 (internal was just 1Tb). Being there's a Best Buy just 1 mile away, it was a no-brainer.

Before attaching it, I wanted to see if the High Sierra's Disk Utility is better. Not only did it see the drive, but it fixes several errors it found. Should I have done this first? Was the new drive needed? I don't think I would have considered to wipe the drive and download the combo. It found errors, but it was still not working properly. It was an endless cycle.

Knowing there is no way I was going to allow Time Machine to install the OS on the new boot drive, I did a format to HFS, then the combo install, Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Combo Update. It went as expected, about an hour. Siri worked perfect.

But, after that happiness, there was terror. I saw no other way to move all of my data (passwords, settings, etc.) other than going back to Command-R and selecting "Restore from Time Machine Backup", hoping the new OS install won't be written over. That took about an hour, too.

As it was doing that, I left to shop a little and get a bite to eat. I wasn't too confident I'd see my desktop with a working SIRI again.

It worked! I must have asked it a dozen stupid questions. It wasn't perfect, I did see a couple of those "SiriNCService quit unexpectedly" errors, but it keeps working. I was stopped by the "com.apple.asistant" requesting my Keychain password. From over 5 years ago, is it serious? Nothing I knew worked. Siri locked me out.

I have no idea why, but in the Keychain Access menu Edit > "Change Settings for Keychain Login..." it accepted my account password, when nothing else would. Being that I liked it, it accepted that as "old" and the same thing as the "new". "Always accept", Siri was back.

I haven't seen any freezing/"Hiccups" in the past few days.

I'm saving APFS for another day. When Command-R supports their own file system and current OS (they can easily see if my machine is compatible with a particular version, check it for updates), I may reconsider.

As they have said hundreds of times in the past, good advice was always "Try the Combo Update". MS Windows has "power off, then power on, call us tomorrow if you have problems", macOS X has "install Combo Update".

As a followup:

With the combo update apparently fixing my freezing and Siri issues on the newly formatted external drive, I made sure to do a manual Time Machine back-up before I touch anything else.

Being that my internal drive was fine, I decided to use command-r to re-install the freshly created Time Machine internally. It worked fine, I thought because I've seen Siri look normal for a few minutes before erring out.

While I had the time, I thought I'd use Onxy's "Automatic" tab. No errors.

I'm not sure if it was Onyx or it was just a matter of time, but High Sierra went back to its old ways. Darn.

Being that it fixed it before, I installed Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Combo Update again.

It didn't take as long as before, but it seems to be my solution.

One pleasant surprise, before I could do it, Time Machine already adjusted which drive to backup and which to exclude. (I didn't want to be backing up the external version of the OS)

I am still not 100% happy; it still gives occasional "SiriNCService quit unexpectedly" errors, but unlike before, Siri continues to work fine... I hope.

I'll never say "but it works for me". I hate those people, they don't bring anything useful to the party. Besides, it's still not 100% and that fraction keeps me constantly worried. I feel like 20 years ago, I don't care how automatic you think it is, I still "save and duplicate often".

Side note: With OS X Internal or USB3 external (no hub), it didn't appear that much "snappier". Running the OS externally is fine. But then, I don't do gaming or much 3D graphics anymore.

The moment you have a working desktop and a browser, however flakey, Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Combo Update. It won't lose your data. Just keep an eye on it. It will reboot a few times. Maybe it will ask you twice for your password. Definitely import your email when asked.

(Apple needs to seriously decide to either give a real time or none at all. "Calculating..." indefinitely is useless. There's a progress bar there, Apple should just have a percentage amount riding above it. At least it's something to watch to verify it hasn't completely stopped.)

I've not lost any information during these freezes so I'm surprised your Mac has been so hard hit. But then again I never use Microsoft Word. I stopped using it when Apple no longer supported it. It was a pain anyway as websites and emails interpreted it as containing code.

I have found a post from Christopher (sorry not to quote your full username but I can't currently find your post) dated 10th January saying to do the following

"Report it to them the next time it happens. That‘s what I am going to do and that’s what all of us should do, really, in order to maximize the chances of this getting fixed promptly. The next time it happens, make a note of the time. Then after you restart, pull all your Console logs from that time and send them to Apple along with a description of the problem here: https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ "

For those like me who don't know where the console logs are go to Applications/Utilities/Console

And I am going to follow his very useful advice

• Choose Apple menu > System Preference
• Click Security & Privacy, then click Privacy.
• Click Analytics.
• Share Mac Analytics

I am using a Dell P2715Q which is a current model 27" connected to one of the TB/DisplayPort outputs on the Mac Pro. Not sure if there is some sort of pattern but it's worth mentioning.

Thank you for the notification about the new OS! Installing this update now.

This is consistent with quality control issues that I've encountered with Apple over the past ~3 years:

• Brand-new iMac comes out of the box with lines of dead pixels on the display (Apple Store agreed to repair but not replace)
• Malfunctioning hinge on brand-new MacBook Pro Touch Bar (Apple Store unwilling to even repair)
• Many well-reported glitches on the underpowered, $4,000 MacBook Pro Touch Bar
• Apple's awful, flimsy laptop power cables
• Planned obsolescence and occasional quality control problems on iPhones
• Countless software problems, OS stability issues, and glitches.

Apple's focus now is on pinching pennies in the Stores and the supply chain, targeting the upper segment of buyers, and releasing incremental improvements to the iPhones. I read Steve Jobs's biography again recently and it made me sad to see how far Apple has fallen from the days of trying to keep prices down and demanding product perfection.

So far 10.13.2 Beta 6 (17C85a) - 18 hours and no freeze

previously 10.13.1 - longest time before freeze was about 2 or 3 hours, over several days

Things that made no difference to 10.13.1

• verified disk
• reset NVRAM
• reset SMC
• removed Magnet
• added BootCamp and external drives to Spotlight private list (did improve speed)

Mac Pro late 2013, 6 core, AMD firepro D500

Parallels 13, Paragon NTFS

globalisReal wrote:

• verified disk
• reset NVRAM
• reset SMC

if you're a noob, and there's 28 pages to a thread for an unresolved problem, just dont even think about giving advice without reading the thread first

Resume of the thread to help newcomers:

High Sierra 10.13.0

• It was freezing almost every mac, proved for the variety of configs reported by the owners in this thread.
• Almost everyone with a 4k external monitor has multiples freezes along the working day
• The issue appears to be related to new Metal 2 and WindowServer.
• The issue isn't easily reproducible, appears to be trigged by some usage pattern
• Some people reported some hacks that helped to get fewer freezes, but as the problem is related to usage patterns, there's no effective and universal solution yet. Feel free to try reset here and there, but there's no guarantee and even if the problem ease, it will not stop.

High Sierra 10.13.1

• The problem continues
• But this version is a little more stable for SOME mac configurations. So, a lot of people are getting constants freeze yet and some are "ok". For example: my mac pro retina 2012 with geforce 650M freezes only once a week now, before was 5 times a day.

The only solution to stop the freezes completely is downgrade to Sierra, as a lot of people reported in this thread.

I think that is it.

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.

Same issue. Everything works fine then all of a sudden whatever is on the screen freezes and must reboot. I also had issues with the file system this morning where the I took a screenshot and the file didn't appear in finder. Then I tried to browse the file system via finder and was getting an error message about something being moved (sorry I don't recall the exact message). This was browsing any directory on the file system. A reboot resolved that but for how long?

I get my macbook freezing and very slow. I reset memory , pvram and smc and same issues. Then I reinstall my MacBook from scratch and works fine with macOS Sierra. Then I upgrade again to High Sierra and same freeze and slow. A last attempt was start from external drive and works very well... macOS High Sierra in external usb 3 SSH drive works like a breese but in internal SSd freeze and slow performance still unsusable.

I am having the same issue. Previously the system worked perfectly. Then after updating to High Sierra it froze twice within the span of a couple days: once when I was playing a game from an external hard drive, another time when I was watching a stream on Twitch.

In the process of restoring from a Time Machine backup of MacOS Sierra. Will see if that solves it, then update. I am expecting it will. I don’t have the time to troubleshoot all the console logs and such. Will leave that to Apple.

I upgraded to High Sierra yesterday and everything worked fine (was slow at first, but seems it was because of indexing etc after upgrade.)
Today it started freezing up, while doing some work on my MacPro 2017 that I recently bought. I realized that I got an iCloud error message that kept popping up and that my finder completely stopped responding. After a few hard reboots and a couple of swear words, I eventually got to log out of my icloud and completely shut it down... everything started working smoothly again. I then realized it might be because i switched on my previous mac and realized that was the issue, so after switching off my old macbook, my icloud started working again on my new mac... I don't know if that could be the issue for any of you, but yeah, this caused my mac to completely freeze up. Hope it helps for someone, although I suspect many of you have other issues. Just posting this response here because this was where I ended up, trying to figure out why my mac was freezing. Hope it helps.

Update: restored to Sierra and a freeze subsequently occurred again. So it isn’t the operating system that’s causing the crashes for me at any rate, it is something else. Thinking it may have to do with the interplay between my external hard drive & enclosure, and my iMac. I’m now going to try disconnect the external drive entirely and see if that resolves my crashing. If it does, I’ll get another storage solution; if it doesn’t, it’ll be back to the drawing board over here...

I hadn't considered the possibility that the problem may be rooted in the firmware--thank you for raising it. And yes, if the crashes recur for me, I'm going to save the console logs and send in bug reports to Apple as well.