Constant Kernel Panics – userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer

[star-affinity]

I have now gone 7-8 weeks without a Kernel Panic issue since Apple replaced my Logic Board. I no longer have to turn off any of the system preferences listed in many of the posts in this thread (ie. Automatic Graphics Switching, Enable Power Nap, Put Hard Drive to Sleep when Possible, Prevent Computer from Sleeping Automatically when the Display is off). Appears to be a Logic Board Issue with the 2019 16" MacBook Pro.

Great to hear! The thing is this ”watchdog” problem also happens on many other Mac models supported and unsupported (like my MacPro5,1) by Catalina. I had zero trouble in High Sierra, but since changing my graphics card to RX 50700 XT (same generation that's in the current iMac) and updating to Catalina those ”watchdog” kernel panics has been happening. I did have stability problems in Windows 10 on the same machine, but since getting the graphics card replaced it is stable, however the ”watchdog” problem continues in Catalina.

I guess I can't expect too much of this 10 year old computer. But it still runs really well for my needs and since the problem is happening on other machines I've been hoping for a fix. If it is hardware related I guess I'm out of luck if it's not realted to the GPU or another replaceable part. Hmm…

No not yet! So far (1 day in) I haven't been able to reproduce the issue.

They had said that the old machine/motherboard was stable in their 24 hr stress test and that it was all software related... but I did an erase and reinstall and still had the problem... with the new one so far so good, I will report back in a few days

Alrighty!
Hope it stays.

 

[johnalan]

Great to hear! The thing is this ”watchdog” problem also happens on many other Mac models supported and unsupported (like my MacPro5,1) by Catalina. I had zero trouble in High Sierra, but since changing my graphics card to RX 50700 XT (same generation that's in the current iMac) and updating to Catalina those ”watchdog” kernel panics has been happening. I did have stability problems in Windows 10 on the same machine, but since getting the graphics card replaced it is stable, however the ”watchdog” problem continues in Catalina.

I guess I can't expect too much of this 10 year old computer. But it still runs really well for my needs and since the problem is happening on other machines I've been hoping for a fix. If it is hardware related I guess I'm out of luck if it's not realted to the GPU or another replaceable part. Hmm…



Alrighty!
Hope it stays.

Sad to say I had another KP this morning, on the machine with the new logic board. I don't even have any apps installed yet, I was just playing in Safari, rebooting a couple of times a day to check if it was stable over the weekend and boom, KP.

I completely give up.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Sad to say I had another KP this morning, on the machine with the new logic board. I don't even have any apps installed yet, I was just playing in Safari, rebooting a couple of times a day to check if it was stable over the weekend and boom, KP.

I completely give up.

I would be very frustrated with this situation and with Apple. The good news is you left the system clean which will make it easier to report back to Apple.

 

[johnalan]

I would be very frustrated with this situation and with Apple. The good news is you left the system clean which will make it easier to report back to Apple.

I have now escalated beyond my Senior Advisor and to Apple Customer Relations, I have requested a call back tomorrow, will update here with their response.

I have another MBP (work machine) and it's not doing this.

 

[star-affinity]

Sad to say I had another KP this morning, on the machine with the new logic board. I don't even have any apps installed yet, I was just playing in Safari, rebooting a couple of times a day to check if it was stable over the weekend and boom, KP.

I completely give up.


View attachment 950697
View attachment 950696

Looks very similar to the log I get on my 10 year old MacPro5,1 with a RX 5700 XT graphics card.
Seems confirmed it's not hardware related then and can't really blame my computer (which isn't officially supported by Catalina) for the fault.

I've had an open ticket on Apple's Feedback system since December last year and I haven't heard anything back despite following up with new info and logs from mine and other's over the months – MacBook Pro 16" from 2019 being among them.

Looking forward to hear their response from your call back.

 

[drdaz]

I'd be interested to hear what kind of displays everybody in this thread are using. I have 2 LG 4k monitors attached. And I have a sneaky suspicion that this might be triggered by the type of screens we're using.

I've had this issue with an MBP since the first release of Catalina. I built a mighty Hackintosh to get around the problem; and for the past 4 months I was using an rx 570 in there with *no* unexpected crashes at all. Last week I upgraded the card to a 5700 xt, and this watchdog timeout on Windowserver came back. So it looks to me to be driver-related.

 

[star-affinity]

Last week I upgraded the card to a 5700 xt, and this watchdog timeout on Windowserver came back. So it looks to me to be driver-related.

Exactly what I've ben thinking; graphics drivers and it seems only for certain GPU models. Interesting that it was fine with the RX 570.

I have a quite old 23" Apple Cinema Display connected via a DisplayPort to DVI adapter from HP. Also have a TV connected via HDMI, but I had the problem before connecting that.

 

[drdaz]

Exactly what I've ben thinking; graphics drivers and it seems only for certain GPU models. Interesting that it was fine with the RX 570.

Indeed. But it can't be *just* the drivers I don't think, otherwise everybody using an external display would be hitting this, and there would be pandemonium 😃. My MBP runs a Vega 20 GPU btw. So it looks like it might 'just' be the drivers for AMDs more recent architectures that have the issue.

According to my case in Apple's feedback reporter / bug reporter, there are less than 10 registered reports of a similar issue. Which seems... unlikely, given the number of threads and posts about this in various forums.

 

[Benz63amg]

These of you having these KP issues, do you have an SSD or Fusion Drive?

 

[johnalan]

Any word on if a clean install of latest Big Sur fixes this?

 

[johnalan]

These of you having these KP issues, do you have an SSD or Fusion Drive?

Both.

 

[Benz63amg]

Both.

What do you mean both?

 

[johnalan]

What do you mean both?

Happens on machines with SSDs/NVMe and HDD and Fusion.

 

[fleabag-router]

I'm seeing this behavior on my refurbed macbook pro 2019 with Catalina and an external monitor attached (27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display). I've seen a few spinning beach balls and mostly notifications in the morning that the computer has restarted.

It's been suggested that I try

1. Disable the ""Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" under the energy saver system prefs
2. Disable: "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" under the energy saver system prefs

so I just made sure those were set appropriately.


Looks like:

panic(cpu 4 caller 0xffffff7f905a1ad5): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from com.apple.WindowServer in 120 seconds
service: com.apple.logd, total successful checkins since load (14540 seconds ago): 1455, last successful checkin: 0 seconds ago
service: com.apple.WindowServer, total successful checkins since load (14510 seconds ago): 1439, last successful checkin: 120 seconds ago

Backtrace (CPU 4), Frame : Return Address

... blah blah...

      Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
         com.apple.driver.watchdog(1.0)[832CC890-EE61-33E0-8FD4-8D354BCD0921]@0xffffff7f905a0000->0xffffff7f905a8fff

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: watchdogd
Boot args: chunklist-security-epoch=0 -chunklist-no-rev2-dev

Mac OS version:
19G2021

 

[drdaz]

Any word on if a clean install of latest Big Sur fixes this?

I've just booted Big Sur on my Hack. There's a major version update for the AMD gfx driver kexts compared to current Catalina (from 3.x to 4.x). Given how bad AMD's drivers were last year on the Windows side of things, I've got some hope this could make a difference 🤞🏼.

 

[Djacir]

I'd be interested to hear what kind of displays everybody in this thread are using. I have 2 LG 4k monitors attached. And I have a sneaky suspicion that this might be triggered by the type of screens we're using.

I've had this issue with an MBP since the first release of Catalina. I built a mighty Hackintosh to get around the problem; and for the past 4 months I was using an rx 570 in there with *no* unexpected crashes at all. Last week I upgraded the card to a 5700 xt, and this watchdog timeout on Windowserver came back. So it looks to me to be driver-related.

2 x 28'' samsung 4k and 1 x 32'' samsung 4k.
Computer lid down most of the times.

 

[drdaz]

Well so much for my theory that this might have been related to some LG monitors and some Radeon drivers 😂

 

[telepati]

Well so much for my theory that this might have been related to some LG monitors and some Radeon drivers 😂

No, it is happening with Dell monitor too.

 

[Zippy3505]

I've just booted Big Sur on my Hack. There's a major version update for the AMD gfx driver kexts compared to current Catalina (from 3.x to 4.x). Given how bad AMD's drivers were last year on the Windows side of things, I've got some hope this could make a difference 🤞🏼.

Have you had any since Big Sur?

 

[telepati]

Have you had any since Big Sur?

My main drive is Bigsur since the beta release. And yes this issue still persists.

 

[Zippy3505]

My main drive is Bigsur since the beta release. And yes this issue still persists.

Bummer

 

[tommiy]

Think this is becoming obvious now that the issues could be caused by a hardware fault within the apple hardware. A number have reported that the exchange of the logic board fixed things which seems to be the only thing that does fix things. The software changes looks like its exposed this problem and after such an extended period of time I think its obvious that the software is not going to be changed to make the problem go away. I guess its time for all to consider getting their logic boards repaired to make this go away as it looks like it will persist with BigSur. For those with 16in MAC that are still covered it looks like the option is to return them for a replacement board. Unfortunately for all others it seems that paying apple is the only way out of the problem.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Think this is becoming obvious now that the issues could be caused by a hardware fault within the apple hardware. A number have reported that the exchange of the logic board fixed things which seems to be the only thing that does fix things. The software changes looks like its exposed this problem and after such an extended period of time I think its obvious that the software is not going to be changed to make the problem go away. I guess its time for all to consider getting their logic boards repaired to make this go away as it looks like it will persist with BigSur. For those with 16in MAC that are still covered it looks like the option is to return them for a replacement board. Unfortunately for all others it seems that paying apple is the only way out of the problem.

Not sure this is a logic board issue as some users like @johnalan has had their logic board replaced and the problem came back. To me it looks very much like it could be graphics driver issue.

 

[tommiy]

logic boards are recycled...probably more than possible that a replaced one still has the same problem. If it was a driver issue you would have expected that apple would have addressed it inside of 12 months. Quite obviously what ever it is it is not within apples control aka the hardware the end user has. That seems to be the most likely answer. Otherwise why wait 12+ months to fix a driver issue.

 

[Taz Mangus]

logic boards are recycled...probably more than possible that a replaced one still has the same problem. If it was a driver issue you would have expected that apple would have addressed it inside of 12 months. Quite obviously what ever it is it is not within apples control aka the hardware the end user has. That seems to be the most likely answer. Otherwise why wait 12+ months to fix a driver issue.

If you look at some of the crash logs you will see the the graphics driver is one of the first listed loaded kexts. For example, look at post #652 you will see that the first loaded kext is for AMD Radeon X6000. I believe that AMD is still having some issues with their graphics drivers even after 12 months. I have even seen references by people having these types of crashes in Windows related to AMD graphics.