High Sierra freeze

I have MacBook Pro retina 2013 and it was the worst nightmare few weeks ago. I was absolutely sure that the update killed the GPU. But now I can say that the problem is fixed permanently. I had all those freezing all of a sudden after I upgraded to High Sierra. At first, I thought 'clean install' would magically help so I did it. I wiped it out and install High Sierra simply by using MacBook recovery menu. No luck. But then after I read GeorgeW751's comment and I did exactly what he did. I thought for seconds the problem is gone but it was happening again. So I boot up with safe mode and restart, but this time I ran the diagnostic by just pressing D key during the startup to make sure the GPU is malfunctioning. It took more than half an hour so I thought it was freezing again because it says it is 90% done and stuck in there forever. But at that time I was too tired to turn it off and try other method so I gave it more time. Fortunately it was moving again and finished the job but it said there was no problem found. It didn't even say it fixed few stuffs. But after it finished it, the freezing is magically gone. Not even glitches and all, better than ever. I don't know if GeorgeW751's solution was necessary or not because I didn't try the diagnostic after the first re-installment. And just few days ago, my father's MacBook upgraded to High Sierra and had similar problems. So I just ran the diagnostic and it fixed again.

I think the diagnostic can also fix problems too. It just doesn't say anything to user what it does.

The solution for me was to go back to Sierra, it worked perfect. It was frustrating because I knew my iMac could run High Sierra. My (non Apple) SSD was formatted to APFS while upgrading and the freezes began. To go back to Sierra you have to erase the disk to HFS+ and I wondered how to upgrade to HS without APFS, it actually is possible (after downloading the installer from the App Store run in terminal /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO ) it's going to upgrade to High Sierra WITHOUT APFS and since then it's NEVER frozen again! Hope this helps!

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.

As far as I am concerned reinstalling Mac OS did the job for me. I did not loose anything any file or whatsoever. I booted holding CMD R. In recovery mode I chose to reinstall Mac OS and I don’t know why but I did not loose any data even my wife’s account and files were there. It fixed everything. I had a problem so big that I thought my MacBook was broken and now the problem is gone so you might want to try to backup important files before doing so and try it

I've got the the exact same issue. I backed up my MBP (mid 2012) and reinstalled, still no good. Created a new account on the same MBP and everything seemed to be fine. Then I enabled iCloud and the freezing came back. I've disabled I cloud and so far so good. Bit of a pain if iCloud is the issue will run without it for a few more days and report back.

I am sending just confirmation that those temporary/recoverable freezes introduced with High Sierra to my MBP are gone. It seems that they was I/O related. Upgrading of firmware on my 3rd party SSD did the trick.

I had this same problem and tried many things without success. However I applied the most recent update 10.13.4 (17E199) while in safe mode (just happened to see the update while trying that) and the problem has gone away!

Wondering what application you are referring to?

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.

Although I was able to tame my 10.13.4, my friends were still having issues.

For me, what happened was a huge improvement.

1. In Safari > Preferences > Search > everything in “Smart Search Field” unclick them all. I can only guess it puts a strain on Macs that aren’t the fastest, latest, greatest.

2. An even greater improvement was the removal of the “DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials Safari Extension”. I’m NOT talking about the basicThe DuckDuckGo search browser in the “Search” > “Search engine” selection. It’s great for its anonymity, lack of ads/clutter.

There is a separate Extension at Safari > Preferences > Extensions called “DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials” Remove it.

See https://youtu.be/bGVM0pm-DRk

Once again, I think it is placing too much of a workload on Safari.

I came to this conclusion from the hint that the “beachball” was only while it was over Safari, not the Finder/Desktop. It gave the appearance Safari was working on something very hard.

In Safari, remove/unclick everything you really don’t need. If it speeds things up, slowly add them to see if you can spot the task(s) hogging all of your Mac’s time. Also, check the Websites > Plug-Ins for anything you don’t use.

I understand that most of us use Safari for nearly everything and if it gets frozen, the Mac can appear frozen, to the point of locking up the rest of the Mac, especially if you start clicking on everything in the Finder, resulting in more “beachballs”. To that, all I can say is let your Mac catch up. Don’t touch anything and see if the “beachballs” start to vanish. Then carefully and slowly remove many of the Safari extensions and Smart Search options.

Personally, I use just the AdBlock Ultimate Extension, keep all of the Smart Searches turned off and use DuckDuckGo as my browser of choice.

In my case it seems to be related to the RAM dropping really low, say 200 MB, and not cleaning up properly, then the MacMini (late 2014 - 4 GB ram) freezes. The only solution for me is to run the app from the App Store 'Memory Clean 2' by FipLab with auto clean enabled, Threshold level set to 400 MB.