High Sierra freeze

Apple closed the bug I opened about the freezes and WindowServer leaking memory with message:

"Engineering has determined that your bug report (34985149) is a duplicate of 34714347 and will be closed. "

So there is some hopes of a fix in 10.13.1

I had freezes issues for about a few months in Sierra. However it was 3rd party software causing it and when it was fixed: Sierra had no more freezes. When I didn't run the software, Sierra had no crashes.

Don't discount 3rd party software as being incapable of using Apple's developer libraries in a way which can cause you trouble: they can and occasionally do.

As far as "firmware updates are permanent" I discount that. Apple does have downloadable firmware updates (you could downgrade (I suggest you don't downgrade firmware; that's unlikely to be your problem - firmware updates target a specific well known issue and do not effect "other things" they are very very careful people).

Obviously? As someone above said try a Guest account. But I won't say installing Sierra is an answer (I say stick with High Sierra), and won't say installing from scratch will solve any 3rd party software issues: nothing will solve 3rd party software issues except their updating it - you were perhaps only lucky in Sierra.

Enable apple's feature to "send them information about crashes" and post here any information you can find on crashes - if that's possible for you to do (if you even get such a message). That might help avoid "a total re-install". But really? A fresh install doesn't take that long especially if you start it just before dropping off to sleep 🙂 It's an Apple after all.

There is easy way to replicate the freeze.

1. have a mac with high sierra

2. attach 4K display

3. set display mode to "scaled" instead of "Default for display" and select "More Space"

4. open many windows

5. start moving them around. between displays, and within displays.

6. see ui freeze quite fast.

It is possible to replicate this without 4K external display, but it takes much longer then to replicate

This is what I reported Apple via bugreport and they acknowledged that it's known issue.

I had the same Problem as described. WindowServer eats a lot of Memory and then after 2 up to 4 hours the Macbook Pro 2012 Retina freeze. iTunes still play music if this happens but everything else won't work. Even the mac freeze and i do an ssh login with mit iPad and execute kill -Hup windowServer won't work - nothin hapens, Terminal freeze also.

So i decieded to do an reinstall of macOS Sierra. Butt still the same Problem. Onyx Caching cleanup also doesn't work.

So i installed last week the latest high sierra beta on an external drive. And have no crashes since then. So after some days without crash, i did a copy of the macOS 10.13.1 Beta (17B45a) with CarbonCopy Cleaner from the external SSD to an extra partition on internal drive. Speed is now better then run the macOS from external SSD. Now since one week, no crashes! Now i am on macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 beta 4.

So they solved it. There are some other minor Bugs with this beta - but i can handle it. Everything is better then 3 to 4 crashes a day.

So help is on it's way.

I Looking forward to Upgrade to the official 10.13.1.

Hi everyone,

I think I might have found a solution to my freeze problem! Found a hint on another website, tried something and now I have has no freezes for the whole day in spite of heavy workload and also provoking situations which caused freezes or a crash before. So keep fingers crossed! If it fails again, I will let you know.

Here comes my configuration, symptoms, and the solution:

iMac 27", early 2012, 32 GB, 3TB Fusion Drive, two supplementary non-Apple displays, lots of periphery

Freezes with no clearly visible pattern, between 10 and 50 secs, often combined with strange HD sounds, which already made me think my HD is going to die... often several times an hour. Crashes more than twice a day - all of this very annoying, specially when doing interview recordings over the internet.
The only discernible pattern was linked to graphic: videos, websites on safari with a lot of moving parts, Adobe Audition edition, where the wave display moves a lot, and similar

This made me follow a hint related to the Graphic cards driver! I have Nvidia 1 meg GC - the one that was originally built into my iMac.

SO I UPDATED THE DRIVER THAT CAME WITH OSX 10.13 WITH THE LATEST ONE I FOUND HERE:

http://www.macvidcards.com/drivers.html

This also installs a new item in the System Preferences, where you can chose between your new Nvidia Driver and the OSX one. I kept the new Nvidia and that stopped the freeze problem - well at least so far, but as I said, never had a whole day without problems before. And it sounds somehow logic that the problem relates to a Graphic card.

Hope it solves your headache too, let me know!

Guys, the fact that the freezes happen to old and new MBP means it is the high Sierra update.

Old BMP has Nvidia

New MBP has AMD

It cannot be the driver of the graphic card. The problem is the OS that controls this GPUs. Most likely a firmware issue with very bad power management code...

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kallisti, I apologize for the tone and for proposing the test of a bug which I have and you tested unsuccesfully. I know this is not about the freeze problem (will get to it down this comment), however I missed an important piece of information about the Calendar bug that Apple has chosen to ignore for over 6 years. I told you to insert an event on Oct 22nd. Please try again with "all-day" set and see what happens. Immediately the event will show up (in Month View) as lasting from Oct 15th to Oct 22nd, even though the event details tell otherwise (a single day duration). I just checked on my wife's MacBook, both with my rarely used account and with hers (she has never used Calendar, so there are no preferences recorded). The bug is really universal, unless it depends on localization (I use en-GB with a few changes). I invite all readers of this thread to test that.

Back to the freeze problem, 24 hours without running Safari means no freeze so far. Yesterday's freeze happened because I forgot to change my default URL handler to Chrome, so Safari came up inadvertently and I didn't notice. When I did and decided to "migrate" the opened pages to Chrome, there came another freeze. If this test confirms Safari to be the culprit, it will remind us of the Windows-Internet Explorer affair, in which the latter had access to hidden system calls that others don't. In the macOS case, Safari would be using a "private" syscall that got inadvertently bugged in High Sierra. Of course this is just a theory so far.

It's not about any particular software. All graphics related activity freezes the ui. Some faster, some slower. I have not used Safari for years and my mac freezes 5-6 times a day. Also it freezes much faster with nVidia video card compared at intel or AMD.

Either this is new bug or the new Metal2 graphics framework is using the graphics drivers a bit differently to manifest older bug in the drivers.

attaching (multiple) 4K displays is the fastest way to freeze the ui.

Macbook Pro 15 Mid 2014 with NVIDIA 750m. After updating to High Sierra, the system started to freeze multiple times a day. Everything except mouse is stuck, music is playing in the background, but can not be controlled by multimedia keys. Hard reset is the only escape from that.

I started to search on the internet and found this - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=773705#c87

As I'm using Chrome a lot, I thought that was the problem that caused my Mac to freeze. So I bought a new Macbook Pro 13 2017. And you know what? It freezes the same way like the old Mac.

I'm switching external monitors (4k@60hz) and projectors (FullHD) multiple times a day. I have noticed that each time my Mac freezes, there're new system reports created in Console.app. Those reports are named "WindowServer_<date>_<hostname>.userspace_watchdog_timeout.spin" and are full of endless stack traces.

So I have two Macs with completly different specs having exactly the same problem.

Did you try to open and close the clamshell multiple times? Once you close the clamshell you really need to press on an application or on the task bar before you open the clamshell again. This is when the screen gets frozen

Update; it fell on its face when I stept away this morning. 10.13.1 does not resolve the GPU Dump that I see.

My reported bug has finally been marked as a dupe of https://bugreport.apple.com/web/?problemID=34761400

The 'High Sierra Freeze' issue appears 2-3 times daily for me on my 15" MacBook Pro 11,3. I am connected to two 27" external monitors via Thunderbolt. A coworker experiences the same issue while her 13" MacBook is connected to an external monitor. The freeze doesn't seem to be App specific and is a real productivity killer!

TEMPORARY FIX:

During the freeze, I disconnect the Thunderbolt cables and open the MacBook. The resulting graphics screen refresh seems to cure it and I reattach the monitors. The fix only lasts for a while, then I have to repeat the process. Graphics/graphics card issue? Time will tell.

Something interesting I read yesterday is that Adobe engineers are aware of graphic problem with High Sierra and from what they say it has to do with the intel GPU controller under the OS.

It is possible that the intel GPU kicks-in when it sops not to and screws up everything....

10.13.1 fixed it for me. MacBook Pro Retina mid 2012, nvidia graphics, no permanent external monitors (haven't taught since the fix, in which I attach an HDMI projector). No previous trick, including kallisti's would work.

I think we're seeing more than one problem here.

For the people with extreme symptoms, where the computer has become utterly useless even after being wiped, it's possible you're dealing with a legit hardware problem and should def run the Apple Diagnostics test:

How to use Apple Diagnostics on your Mac - Apple Support

but yeah, what the **** indeed

The fact that this stuff made it out of beta is making Apple look like a bunch of Mother*******************************unts