High Sierra freeze

Well I have now gone all day without a freeze!!!

I changed "Autoplay" in Safari's "Settings for this website" to "Stop Media with Sound" while I was on the Facebook page. So far nary a freeze.... I can't believe I stumbled on something that works but it has for me so far... and pretty easy for a layman like myself!

familyadams wrote:

I solved my High Sierra freeze up's by: Go to Safari,then Facebook, then under Safari choose Preferences for this website and turn off Autoplay for videos. That alone seemed to do it but I have also gone to Facebook settings under that little arrow on the top right and corner, choose Videos from the far left menu, and turn them off there as well. Haven't had a freeze now in over 24 hrs!!

lol
now go into the Photos app, and crop one of them

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

Just the latest update, how I fixed my issue (for now):

I have signed up for Apple Beta program to be able to install 10.13.2 Beta 6 and so far the flight is OK, there is still an error about "Month 13 out of bounds", but nothing is freezing. I am not going to downgrade, because the issue will anyway be fixed soon, I think. In the worst case I just install Linux in dual boot until they fix it.

I will report if any freeze happens after, because previously I had freezes, then removed some plist services and it stopped freezing for a few days, then started again. In my case freezes were very irritating - about 3 times in 10 minutes sometimes.

For me it has nothing to do with Chrome - instead displaying graphics or pictures causes the hang. So Chrome might be a trigger for this if you are viewing video or graphics. As was mentioned earlier, reverting the OS version does not revert the system drivers (graphics) that came with the update. Which explains why several people mention this problem beginning with the high sierra update but not going away when reverting. My bet is on graphics drivers because of the way it fails half-way in the middle of a redraw.

mrwrighty wrote:

ekwin123 wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42438745

How is this relevant to this thread. The discussion is OSX High Sierra, freezing on Mac's not iOS slowing old devices.

I believe ekwin123 is theorizing that the performance issues with High Sierra are a forced obsolescence attempt targeting older Macs.

I have been following this thread for quite sometime and have gone to the most current beta and back again in an attempt to fix this issue that showed up immediately after installing High Sierra.

A clean install of Sierra and Time Machine restore is only solution I have found. I have none of the symptoms while running Sierra. My apologies for reiterating what many others have already said. I am sure everyone is understandably frustrated.

All the freezes I have had correct themselves without requiring a hard reboot.

2/3 of them are everything but the mouse is frozen - and then a window(s) flicker and brief increase in cursor size before returning to normal.

1/3 of them are rainbow wheel with mouse movement.

I only see this on my late 2013 Mac Pro (128 GB RAM, AMD FirePro D500 3GB) connected to 3 Thunderbolt Displays.

I have never seen the issue on my 2016 15" Touch Bar MacBook Pro or 2015 12" MacBook... even when connected to external monitors.

There could be something to the idea that Apple is handicapping certain Macs - and in my case coercing Mac Pro users to "upgrade" to iMac Pro.

spk0 wrote:

I did complete reinstall on clean SSD twice on my mid-2014 MBP back then. It had zero effect on the freezes. Clean install, no additional software addded and just Terminal.app was enough to replicate the freezes.

I now have mid-2017 mbp to do my work with. I'm planning to reinstall High Sierra now on the mid-2014 mbp and start debugging

Are you able to reinstall again, but this time do not use the new APFS file system. Just to see if it makes a difference to the freezes. There is antidotal evidence it might help.

On my friend's Mac (OS X 10.10 no Siri, I think.), making sure it was still freezing on boot-up, I did a Command-R. Not cherishing my re-education on UNIX (even with the steps printed out) and preferring to use Finder to delete the easy-to-access files, I chose to reinstall via Time Machine. I chose 2 days ago, being the most recent time it was working fine.

That took 1 hour. Just as I was checking on its progress, it booted itself back to its normal desktop. I seriously didn't expect that (my life isn't suppose to be that easy). Before anything else happens, I went straight to the Finder and located Mac HD > Library > Extensions.

From the previous notes here, everyone had a different kext file cure. I surmised it was being caused by older kext not compatible with a newer version of Mac OS X. Although, I did have some doubts being that it was a much older Mac version.

In list mode, sorted by date, I deleted all but the top 2, one was for Epson. I dragged the other 8 to a new folder on the desktop. I rebooted.

It booted perfectly, even their original place in Solitaire and I trashed the folder of old kext files.

No sparks or smoke, that's a good sign.

——————-

On my own computer with latest 10.1x.xx beta, although it was working poorly, Finder was fine and I was able to delete all kext files older than 2017, about 4 files. 8 remain; Epson, 3 Logitech, and 4 others. No Time Machine was necessary.

Rebooted.

By doing so, my Siri is back to normal (no errors, very responsive, I missed it) and I haven't experienced any system freezing.

Yes, it really is "snappier" when you remove the crud and clean the pipes.

This was a very easy fix with a huge "THANK YOU" for the people here with that advice. You helped to repair 2 computers and a lot of frazzled nerves. Perhaps more will be helped by you, I need to check out my other Mac user friends.

Apple should be ashamed. This was a simple MS-style problem that went ignored by Apple in a very MS-style of indifference.

My High Sierra has been running smoothly for 2 weeks now after reformatting my USB back-up hard drives - backing up works fine now as well. And when I plugged in another drive (that I had not reformatted in HS) last Friday the freezing happened again, big time. This solution might work only for some on this list though...

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.)

Just my 2 cents : iMac 2015 same problem here, reboot in safe mode, used Onyx app maintenance tool, reboot and now is all ok since 3 days. Even faster.

I'm on the latest beta. Froze 1 minute after installing and started using the computer. What seems to work so far is the Onyx maintenance tool. Hasn't froze once since I ran it.

I installed 13.1 public beta. Appears to have solved the problem.

My freeze problems (which got worse for me when I went to 10.13.1) seem to be Safari related. If I don't run Safari, the screen freezes stop.