macOS Catalina 10.15.2 freezes/crashes MBA every single day – am I alone?

[muju79]

Arrived here after having received a brand new MBA from my IT department.
This is pure garbage, it keeps freezing after booting, I have to frequently force shut down as well due to random spinning wheel of death appearances. So frustrating, I'll downgrade to Mojave.

 

[xnsys]

Good luck - I had to return 10x MBP 16" in the end because we couldn't work with them with the enforced 10.15.2, and couldn't down-grade them to 10.14.6 - so these machines will no doubt be on the refurbishment pile.

Such a waste...

 

[lambertjohn]

Arrived here after having received a brand new MBA from my IT department.
This is pure garbage, it keeps freezing after booting, I have to frequently force shut down as well due to random spinning wheel of death appearances. So frustrating, I'll downgrade to Mojave.

Good luck downgrading. Let us know if you're successful.

 

[muju79]

Update - I've tried to do as suggested (not sure if above or somewhere else...), disabling all energy saving sleep and napping and whatsoever, just keeping this thing all active while it's on, either on power adapter or on battery. Been using it since yesterday evening and no freezing so far, in conditions in which before trying this it was freezing all the time. Not sure about the reasons, but it's working so far for me, I hope it lasts...

 

[MacRS4]

I've taken to using Amphetamine to stop my machines sleeping during the day, then actually closing them down rather than sleeping. No crashes since doing that.

Really irritating.

 

[bcomer]

I have Catalina running smoothly on a 2015 15" MacBook Pro, 2013 Trashcan and 2019 Mac Pro.

Tasks involve software development and photo editing.

It is not perfect but what software is - hopefully the next service pack will give you guys some relief.

 

[PlayUltimate]

No issues on a MacBook Air or iMac.

 

[xnsys]

I have Catalina running smoothly on a 2015 15" MacBook Pro, 2013 Trashcan and 2019 Mac Pro.

Tasks involve software development and photo editing.

It is not perfect but what software is - hopefully the next service pack will give you guys some relief.

No issues on a MacBook Air or iMac.

Are you guys connecting to network SMB shares, and sleeping your machines rather than sitting down?

I hear that Beta 3 is being released at 6PM UK time / 10AM PST - supposed to have an updated SMB...I might be tempted to install to test if this is the case, will run on a spare machine that's just built first to confirm.

 

[aaaren]

Thought I'd chime in with a fix that worked for me. My issue was that my 2018 15" MacBook Pro would shut down (with no warnings) every 10-20 seconds. It was hot, and fans were blowing pretty hard. I assumed overheating.

I suspected this is a GPU issue after investigating various processes capping out resources. PRAM/NVRAM/SMC resets didn't seem to do anything. A gentleman on a different forum said, for whatever reason, turning off "Automatic Graphics Switching" in his "Energy Saver" preference pane, stabilized temps enough to run. That worked for me, but CPU usage was still bad enough to cause tediously slow interface lag.

To take some usage off the CPU I turned off anything (such as Chrome, which I use heavily for work) from using "hardware acceleration" to similarly force the system to use the discrete GPU.

I can confirm via iStat that the combination of these changes have brought CPU temps down from an idle of 180-200f to 140-170f.

It sounds like there's a few different issues on the thread, but figured I'd post my results in case someone else is scouring as I was. Something definitely seems awry with onboard graphics killing CPU usage.

 

[jthat]

I'm running 10.15.2 with the same SMB freezing issues.

Now I am experimenting with loading the smbfs kernel extension from 10.14.6 to see if that helps.

It may cause data loss, kernel panics, and crashes... but so can messing with kernel extensions.

 

[wiggi88]

I would like to thank user VSG and others who have pointed to the Finder issue being related to SMB shares.

In my case on my 2016 MBP I have been experiencing daily (sometime many times per day) issues since the last OSX upgrade with Finder hanging after sleep. The only resolution has been to use the power button to shut down. I usually have open connections to shares on my QNAP NAS; QNAP also makes the shares available through the AFP protocol (if enabled on the NAS). I switched my NAS connections from the default SMB shares to the AFP shares and have not had a single recurrence of the issue in 3 days.

Thank you and best regards

 

[davidboyd56]

OS10.15.2 constantly freezes with applications e.g. Apple Mail, Safari, Microsoft Office etc etc etc .
Continuing daily problem is, as others say, intolerable.

27" 2017 iMac
also MacBook Pro

After 26 years of daily use and investment in the system-equipment, I have to say that Apple / Mac has become a highly expensive, usability disaster in recent years.

 

[makoeb]

It's samba alright. From previous replies, it appears that downgrading to 10.15.1 may solve the issue. Will try that.

Way to reproduce as follows:
Connect Mac to SMB share
Put mac to sleep
Take out of the vicinity of the network where SMB server reside
Wake up PC = > your finder frozen.

 

[jthat]

I can report I've had no issues since I loaded the smbfs kernel extension from 10.14.6 last week.

My laptop has gone through multiple sleep/wake cycles since (including from work to home, and back, which triggers the issue). I am able to reconnect to SMB shares and freezing is gone.

 

[smolyeet]

where did you find the kernel extention @jthat

 

[hwojtek]

Look into combo 10.14.6 update package.

 

[xnsys]

I would suggest that in the next couple of days Apple look ready to release 10.15.3 - hopefully will have a fix for this in it...

It's always concerned me messing with core system files that when the updates happen, do they get updated or do they remain at the one you've installed...

 

[hwojtek]

The 10.15.3 is out now, the betas didn't solve the issue though, so I wouldn't pin my hopes on it.

 

[xnsys]

Doesn't surprise me - seems that the small GUI issue with the Apple TV 4K where the display hangs off the bottom of the screen hasn't been fixed either....this is just sloppy beyond belief...The one where if you go to purchased movies, all movies and then scroll to the bottom, the bottom row has no text as it's off the screen - a simple fix.

As much as we hate Adobe Cloud for what it is, it does have it's advantage as you can transfer the license easily - couldn't in the old days - if this has not been fixed then the company I support has indicated that they will switch to Windows machines, as the Macs are impacting work...

That will be about £45k worth of sales Apple are about to lose...and I can't blame them on this decision....

 

[Mark_KU]

The 10.15.3 is out now, the betas didn't solve the issue though, so I wouldn't pin my hopes on it.

smbfs.kext has been updated from 3.4 to 3.4.1.

 

[xnsys]

Fingers cross that will resolve that side of the issue, still got the SMB share cannot be found issue though...

but at least the cannot be found problem didn’t bring the system down...

 

[xnsys]

smbfs.kext

Looks like it was modified on Jan 23rd 2020 - so probably wasn't in the previous beta - fingers crossed that this will cure the SMB crashing the system problem.

For reference, these are showing as being created today at the time of the system install, so presumable they got an upgrade too.

IOGraphicsFamily.kext
IOPCIFamily.kext
IONDRVSupport.kext
AppleBacklightExpert.kext
System.kext
AudioAUUC.kext

 

[Mark_KU]

I have tried several Sleep/Wake test runs with my network shares. Fingers crossed no crashes so far.

 

[hwojtek]

OK, I did a coupé of tests and it seems the share gets silently disconnected EDIT: survives the wakeup without any issues*. No crashes.

* I am using Automounter so it's almost a non-issue as the share mounts EDIT: it seems it's this app that reconnects automated shares immediately after wakeup, non-automated (manually connected) shares just stay fully available on the desktop. The apps with files opened located on the shared volume might get confused, though.

 

[nahumyamin]

hey guys, my brand new MBP16' has been constantly crashing upon waking up from sleep mode, can anyone please confirm if the new update (10.15.3) fixes that issue? I've seen a few threads in a few forums that Apple had to replace many units due to an hardware issue, so I've scheduled an appointment with the "genius" guys.. I really hope this update could help me avoid this hustle..