Mac Os Mojave freezes

Alas. So much for the easy solution.

This list (https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/apps-work-macos-mojave-3678735/) might point you to some trouble spots among the big software contenders, but it's worth noting I have a pretty good spread of many of the apps listed there (CS5, Word 2011, etc), and none of them crash or burn, nor do they contribute to any slowdowns on my Air. The trouble I was having on my Mini appears to have been due entirely to a failing HD.

That is the next thing to check, by the way. Run Disk Utility on your drives and see if any of them report problems in the SMART status (bottom left of the table of info here):

If it says anything other than "Verified", you'll need to replace the drive soon.

In addition to that, run over your Mac with a fine-tooth comb. If there's any third-party stuff loading in your system menu, or anything loading under "Login Items" with your user account, make sure it's up to date. Also, older software that was not cleanly uninstalled might have left something behind that's interfering with your system now — though tracking that down might be extraordinarily difficult.

Some third-party apps require you to disable SIP (system integrity protection) to install and run. If you don't remember ever booting to recovery and entering this command in the Terminal:

csrutil disable

…then you probably don't have any such software on your machine. Nevertheless, try loading Terminal (you don't have to reboot to do this) and enter this command:

csrutil status

If you see anything other than "System Integrity Protection status: enabled.", you'll need to boot to recovery, select Terminal from the Utilities menu, and enter this command:

csrutil enable

…Followed by a reboot. You can only enable or disable SIP from recovery. You can't do it from safe boot or even via sudo.

Among other things, SIP keeps permissions on files and folders what they ought to be. If those permissions get munged, some programs (and possibly macOS itself) might have trouble functioning.

Do you have a third-party peripheral, such as a keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, or some other hardware element? Confirm its drivers are up to date.

If you have Flash, make sure it's the most recent version. (Check it via the Flash Player item in System Preferences; if it's not there, you probably don't have Flash.) I got a system dialog today telling me the Flash updater daemon was 32-bit, not 64-bit, and so I needed to run an update (the default is for it to auto-update, but I turned that off years ago). Apps that have daemon programs like that, running in the background periodically, are likely suspects in quietly causing trouble in a largely-untraceable way.

Also, take a look at Font Book and see if there are any fonts listed that appear to be damaged or poorly coded. Problematic ones should show the yellow caution triangle next to them in the fonts list. Consider turning those off, or removing them, if there are any.

I've seen problems like software-extension incompatibility before, and it always results in unpredictable system performance somewhere. The trick always is finding out which program is the source of the problem. You've probably seen EtreCheck referenced in other posts in this forum. It might be worth running a report on your machine, seeing if there's anything noted in it, and removing the problematic software, if any.

Although I have posted before on this subject I thought it may help if I described my issue in detail and steps I took to identify the source of the problem - other users may find this useful even if the cause isn't exactly the same.

Initial Problem: When changing App accessibility settings in "Security and Privacy" settings on my iMac (21.5", late 2013, 1Tb Fusion drive) the system "froze" - even my desktop clock app stopped. This problem never occurred prior to moving to Mojave (I'm currently on version 10.14.2.

What did I do next next? I tried switching to different apps, quit apps etc. I then got the "beachball". I couldn't force quit or even get the iMac to shut down and eventually had to just switch the power off. Restarted in safe mode, and tried again to change app accessibility with same effect. After a couple iterations I rebooted and, once I'd tried to tick an app accessibility box I then didn't touch anything else. The box remained unticked and the system froze as before, but after a delay of several minutes the box suddenly showed as ticked and the system unfroze. Any further attempts to change app accessibility permissions had exactly the same effect. However once unfrozen the iMac works perfectly in all other respects

Initial conclusion: I have a specific issue that freezes the iMac. The additional problems of beachball, inability to quit/force quit apps etc. are due to my attempting to use the iMac while frozen, and subsequently on unfreezing the system being overwhelmed by stored keystrokes/activities. So I can use the function, but only if I wait for several minutes for the system to unfreeze - not ideal. This has also hampered Apple and other technicians from running diagnostics as in most instances their remote access software requires accessibility granting for it to run. Note that this issue occurs regardless of which app I am trying to switch permissions for. I did find that listing my connected external NAS drives and backup SSD in the Privacy area in Spotlight did reduce the time taken before the system unfroze, so kudos to the poster of that tip.

Next Stage: Apple suggested that McAfee LiveSafe was a possible culprit. There had been an Apple "32-bit alert" regarding McAfee LiveSafe, but My LiveSafe is on version 4.5.8.0, 64-bit having been introduced at 4.5 some time ago. I uninstalled McAfee LiveSafe, and immediately the freezing issue was resolved. On re-installing I found that the problem returned. I then individually disabled and re-enabled McAfee's various functions, and isolated the Real-time anti-virus scan as the culprit. So now I have at least a viable work-around in that I can disable Real-time scan, make my changes to Accessibility for any app as required (or when downloading 3rd party apps needing permissions to install) and then re-enable the McAfee LiveSafe real-time scan.

Where am I now? McAfee tech has set up a logging file to try and pinpoint what the actual cause of the issue is (primarily in terms of high occurrences of CPU time) and how it can be resolved; in reality I'm pretty sure that I'll end up with McAfee saying that the problem is Mojave and Apple saying it's McAfee LiveSafe. And maybe the next update on one or the other will fix it...or not.

Anyway, main reason for posting this was to point out that in my case I have identified a single initial point of failure and have been able to develop a work-around. The starting point is to just wait and see if the system unfreezes before touching anything else.

Status update: I have seemingly stalled the panics for a few days (although every time I make this claim here, destiny rewards my impertinence with a crash soon after). What I am attributing the crashes lately is an incompatibility between Mojave and my Nvidia GPU drivers. So I installed an app that disables my discrete GPU and forces the Mac to use only the integrated Intel graphics. No crashes so far. Some of you might want to try this. I used gfxCardstatus 2.3. It's a free tool you can easily find online.

Slower performance in some apps is probably a better option than having your Mac shutdown in the middle of something.

This worked for me. My Macbook Air is performing well now. I simply tuned off Spotlight in System Preferences by dragging all my Disks (I have 1 internal and 3 external) in the Privacy tab to prevent Spotlight from searching them. Essentially I have disabled Spotlight, which for me, is no big deal as I never use it.

Hopefully this can help others experiencing the freezing and spinning rainbow wheel.

I suggest you use the program created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. It will provide a snapshot of your system which we can analyze to possibly determine the cause of your problem. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. On the screen with Options, please open Options and check the bottom 2 boxes before running. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy to Clipboard” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown.

Etrecheck – System Information

Not necessary. Just go into Spotlight in System Preferences (before your Mac gets too bogged down to do anything), go to the Privacy tab and + to add all your drives. When Apple finally fixes this, go back and remove the drives you want to index. No restart required. You won’t be able to use Spotlight search or Outlook search or anything else that relies on Spotlight’s index for now. There are other search apps in the App Store that May tide you over for now if you need it.

I suggest you use the program created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. It will provide a snapshot of your system which we can analyze to possibly determine the cause of your problem. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. On the screen with Options, please open Options and check the bottom 2 boxes before running. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy to Clipboard” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown.

Etrecheck – System Information

That might be a conflict with an existing file or extension, rather than an OS problem.

On a few threads in a few places here, users have reported finding a configuration file, called "sysctl.conf", in the /etc directory of their Macs. This is a really old holdover from several OS releases past, and particularly if you've used Migration Assistant to move prior OS installs to new Macs, that file may be present on your current drive. If it is, delete it. If it's not, look at any other third-party software you have that might be outdated.

I'd try some simple things to get more info (etrecheck isn't terribly helpful overall for actually solving problems, I find)

- Boot into Safe Mode: Hold Shift down while booting and keep it held until you see "Safe Mode". Then reboot without Shift held down. Safe mode clears a bunch of caches and turns off many third party extensions and things. It's the one thing that cleared up lots of Time Machine issues I had a while ago. Also, if you want, you can try and work WHILE IN Safe Mode (some applications may not work as expected) and see if the issue persists. If it doesn't, it's likely a third party bit of software causing the issue.

- Launch "Activity Monitor" (it's in Applications > Utilities and from the Finder you can just hit Command + Shift + U to open that folder directly) and toggle between CPU and Memory as you work. Under Memory there is a "Memory" column, toggle this so the greatest/largest number is at the top. Do the same under CPU for "% CPU" column and leave this running as you work. Check it when things start slowing down or get weird and it may offer a clue to what's happening. Look at "Process Name" and remember what processes are using the most memory and CPU when issues show up.

Beyond that you can delve into terminal commands like "fs-Usage" to see LOTS of details of what your Mac is doing under the hood but it's scope is beyond this post.

This is what I did, after following lots of other advises (which might have helped, but not to the extend that the problem was fixed).

It took me two days to get my Mac working again (it's a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015), now on 10.14.1). The machine froze about one minute after logging in, all the time, even if I did not start or do anything.

So, I had spotlight already disabled, and all login apps removed. I tried with another (freshly created) user, but that had the same problem.

Eventually, I started my Mac, opened the activity monitor as quick as possible, sorted by "CPU Time" and had a look at the running applications (before my Mac froze again).

I started uninstalling the third-party applications which were on the top of the list and restarted, until, with Avira and Mysql removed, my machine was working again. Hooray! I do not know which one of both was the problem (and right now, I do not care), and it might be other applications causing the freezing for you, but you might have a chance fixing your problem following the same steps and removing some third-party apps, one after the other.

Hope that helps!

I would honestly try these steps:

Shut down the computer. Then turn it on, but right when the Apple Logo appears or you hear a chime, start holding Command and R at the same time. Then once you see MacOS utilities, choose your language. Once you get in, select “Reinstall MacOS Mojave”. This will not erase any data.

Julian

Probably not crashing, but running s l o w.

Please create new thread and post

I'd run etrecheck. Etrecheck will analyze your machine and software and generate a report. Post results here so others can view.  Experienced users have found the reported information useful when diagnosing problems. The proprietary stuff in the report gets filtered.

Install and run

-- Download etrecheck.  Goto the  EtreCheck  download page.  The download link is at the bottom of the screen

-- Install etrecheck. Goto your download folder. Double click on EtreCheckPro.zip

-- drag the app to the application folder if you wish.

-- Double click on etrecheck to run.   The first five runs are free.

• An alternative explanation how to install, run and report output for the EtreCheck Application
• Using EtreCheck to Troubleshoot Potential… - Apple Community
• -- Explanation of EtreCheck  output by etresoft, the author.
• Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

How to report etrecheck data.

When the report is done, click on the export icon.

click on "Copy report" to copy to the clipboard

Get back in your web browser and access your discussion. Create a new reply. Click on the <> code icon. Paste you etrecheck output into the code block.

which results in...

Robert
PS. You may find Old Toad's write up helpful.
Error - Page Not Found - Apple Community

Update: a week ago I decided to give Mojave another try, but this time erasing the hard disk, installing a clean copy of Mojave and then restoring from the Time Machine backup. After first successful boot in my account, I also decided to have Spotlight avoid indexing Google File Stream's volume (the i/o errors came back in thousands).

While keeping all my fingers crossed, I’ll say that Mojave has behaved pretty well. No freezes, no lockups so far. I’m still not completely convinced about APFS, kinda seems slower than HFS+ on a Fusion Drive, but well… once booted up, the iMac responds.

Found a solution, it helped me:

- Turned off Spotlight in System Preferences, in the Privacy tab added my disk

- Boot in Safe mode and then restart.

After that I noticed that it works faster and does not freezes. MacBook pro late 2013.

Before that I tried it but it did not give effect:

- Reset NVRAM https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

- reset of the SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

Ok. I’m sure that the minute I post this, all **** is going to break loose over here but — FOR ME, the problem SO FAR appears to have been resolved with the 10.14.1 update. Spotlight has indexed my entire Macintosh HD and the system has been stable for about 24 hours, which would not have been possible previously without disabling Spotlight indexing.

I have seen a number of folks here report similar issues that cannot be addressed simply by adding Macintosh HD to the privacy tab in the Spotlight section of System Preferences. Everyone’s system is unique.

However, if you found, after updating to 10.14 and facing these same issues, that you could stabilize your system by preventing Spotlight indexing, I would encourage you to update to 10.14.1 (if you haven’t already) and allow Spotlight to begin indexing again.

As I said earlier, if you find that it reverts to the old behavior you can just turn indexing off again. It may work for you, it may not. As I said, for me and many others, Apple appears to have fixed the bug in 10.14.1.

Best of luck!