System Freezes - 2015 MacBook Pro

[MalagLagoon]

Would anyone have any idea why I get system freezes with my 2015 15" MacBook Pro? I've had system freezes for many years - but lately they seem to occur multiple times a day - whereas a couple of years ago it was ~maybe~ once every other week.

The symptom is that the cursor freezes, the keyboard stops responding, and the audio stops. If the freeze occurs while typing - the buffer continues to record keystrokes and when the system comes back all the text will quickly update.

I'm running Mojave 10.14.6

Any help appreciated.

ML

 

[pinchies]

I am having the same intermittent freezing issue on my mid-2015 retina Macbook Pro too.

Frequent, periodic freezes, for about 10-15 seconds, and then the system comes back like nothing happened. Mouse keeps working some of the time, but the rest of the system is frozen.

I have confirmed that this ONLY occurs for me when I am using the discrete GPU. When using the integrated GPU, it works fine. Unfortunately for me, that means no external monitors!

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), macOS 10.14.6 (18G8012)
2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, and AMD Radeon R9 M370X (2GB).

Any advice is welcome!!

Seems to be related to this thread, but some people seem to have this with single graphics machines, whereas others have this with dual graphics machines. Mine is dual graphics.

 

[MalagLagoon]

I am having the same intermittent freezing issue on my mid-2015 retina Macbook Pro too.

Frequent, periodic freezes, for about 10-15 seconds, and then the system comes back like nothing happened. Mouse keeps working some of the time, but the rest of the system is frozen.

I have confirmed that this ONLY occurs for me when I am using the discrete GPU. When using the integrated GPU, it works fine. Unfortunately for me, that means no external monitors!

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), macOS 10.14.6 (18G8012)
2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, and AMD Radeon R9 M370X (2GB).

Any advice is welcome!!

Seems to be related to this thread, but some people seem to have this with single graphics machines, whereas others have this with dual graphics machines. Mine is dual graphics.

I continue to have this @#$%!!! problem (as I typed this!). There seems to be zero explanations or solutions. Sometimes Macs just suckballs.

 

[Howard2k]

Have you tried doing a full reset and new OS install? I know it’s drastic but if it happens form a fresh greenfield install it’s more likely to be h/w related, but if that solves the problem then at least you know it’s more likely to be something to do with your software deployment. And after the test you can restore from backup.

 

[Fuchal]

I've had this problem on Mojave and High Sierra. Upgrading to Catalina fixed it for me.

 

[MalagLagoon]

Have you tried doing a full reset and new OS install? I know it’s drastic but if it happens form a fresh greenfield install it’s more likely to be h/w related, but if that solves the problem then at least you know it’s more likely to be something to do with your software deployment. And after the test you can restore from backup.

I've done everything but stuff peanut butter up my nose. Say, do you suppose ? . . . oh, never mind. Actually, I plan on a macOS reinstall soon - but, if I recall correctly TimeMachine backups aren't real images so that's slowing me down with jumping straight into a reinstall (well, I guess I wouldn't want to install a recent image at this point).

Wait. Is that a 335?

 

[Howard2k]

I've done everything but stuff peanut butter up my nose. Say, do you suppose ? . . . oh, never mind. Actually, I plan on a macOS reinstall soon - but, if I recall correctly TimeMachine backups aren't real images so that's slowing me down with jumping straight into a reinstall (well, I guess I wouldn't want to install a recent image at this point).

Wait. Is that a 335?

I’ve had great success with restoring from TM.

And yes, that’s a 335 (but not mine)

 

[Brian33]

This is kind of a long shot, but your "freezes" sound a lot like a problem I had on Mojave. The 'tccd' daemon was crashing and being restarted at the times of my freezes -- at initial login and about once an hour or so.

Look in /var/log/system.log and see if you have messages referencing 'com.apple.tccd.system' similar to this:

Aug 25 14:17:03 imac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.tccd.system[3708]): Service exited due to SIGABRT

If you do, see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/security-update-2020-004.2246032/post-28970745

If you don't have those messages, it's some other problem...

 

[MalagLagoon]

This is kind of a long shot, but your "freezes" sound a lot like a problem I had on Mojave. The 'tccd' daemon was crashing and being restarted at the times of my freezes -- at initial login and about once an hour or so.

Look in /var/log/system.log and see if you have messages referencing 'com.apple.tccd.system' similar to this:

Aug 25 14:17:03 imac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.tccd.system[3708]): Service exited due to SIGABRT

If you do, see https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/security-update-2020-004.2246032/post-28970745

If you don't have those messages, it's some other problem...

I am getting this (which seems to have occured right around that moment I was typing message #3 of this thread) :

Mar 30 10:35:45 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.01000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[37883]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[67]

 

[Brian33]

Mar 30 10:35:45 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.01000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[37883]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[67]

I believe that’s an unrelated issue, having to do with Spotlight indexing. I and many others get those messages but they don’t seem to cause any noticeable freeze. Here’s one thread on them, but I wouldn’t worry much about them:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s-search-index-from-working-properly.2248163/

 

[MalagLagoon]

I believe that’s an unrelated issue, having to do with Spotlight indexing. I and many others get those messages but they don’t seem to cause any noticeable freeze. Here’s one thread on them, but I wouldn’t worry much about them:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s-search-index-from-working-properly.2248163/

Not saying this is it, but I had another freeze - so I quickly checked the log - and there it was at the exact time I experienced the freeze: Service exited due to SIGKILL

 

[Brian33]

Not saying this is it, but I had another freeze - so I quickly checked the log - and there it was at the exact time I experienced the freeze: Service exited due to SIGKILL

Interesting. You could try disabling spotlight indexing for all of your volumes, and see if your system freezes stop happening. To do so, go to System Preferences-->Spotlight-->Privacy tab. Add your boot volume to exclusion list. If you have any external drives connected, add all of their volumes too, or eject/disconnect the drive.

You may not be able to turn off indexing for Time Machine backups. You could either temporarily disconnect any TM drive, or temporarily uncheck its "Back up Automatically" box.

These steps should effectively turn off indexing, and so should prevent (hopefully) all, or at least most, of the "mdworker -- Service exited" messages from appearing. Now use the Mac for awhile and see if you get any more system freezes!

If you're comfortable using Terminal.app, you can enter this command to monitor the system.log file in real-time for mdworker messages:

tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep "com.apple.mdworker"

When you're done, in Terminal, hit Ctrl-C to quit the 'tail' command and return to a command prompt. Don't forget to re-enable your TM backups, and you can delete your volume(s) from the Spotlight privacy pane.

One thing to note: when you delete a volume from the Spotlight privacy pane, the system will re-build the index for that volume. This will probably lead to lots and lots of the "mdworker -- Service exited" messages, until the whole volume is re-indexed. It may have some impact on performance, too. Don't worry -- once the index is done it will go back to normal.

 

[MalagLagoon]

I just caught a freeze - and quickly grabbed the system log. Here's a snapshot. I've been meaning to remove the com.lacie.driver.mvumi - if possible. I use LaCie external hard drives every day - connecting through Thunderbolt 2 (and a newer LaCie drive using USB). But, I see this service/listing/log (com.lacie.driver.mvumi) constantly even when the LaCie drives aren't connected. I wasn't using the LaCie drive during this freeze.

Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Apr  2 17:13:26 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Apr  2 17:13:26 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.lacie.driver.mvumi): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Apr  2 17:13:57 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Apr  2 17:13:57 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.lacie.driver.mvumi): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Apr  2 17:14:28 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Apr  2 17:14:28 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.lacie.driver.mvumi): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Apr  2 17:14:59 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Apr  2 17:14:59 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.lacie.driver.mvumi): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Apr  2 17:15:29 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Apr  2 17:15:29 Lepuss-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.lacie.driver.mvumi): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

 

[Brian33]

I see this service/listing/log (com.lacie.driver.mvumi) constantly even when the LaCie drives aren't connected.

Looking at your system.log messages, it seems the launchd process is restarting the LaCie driver process about every 30 seconds. While that may seem like a lot, my guess is that it leaves plenty of time for the system to respond to user input and thus it's unlikely to be related to your system freezes. But I don't really know. Do these messages seem to appear time-related to every system freeze, I wonder?

However, if it were me, I'd uninstall the LaCie driver anyway, unless there's some particular value in having it installed. The drives should work fine without any special "drivers," and I like to avoid unnecessary software on my systems. Probably the LaCie software provides low-level diagnostic or error checking features; you could always re-install it when and if you have problems with their drives.

Getting these system freezes every day must be really frustrating! My daughter has a 13" 2015 MacBook Pro (running Mojave) and hasn't had this problem.

 

[MalagLagoon]

However, if it were me, I'd uninstall the LaCie driver anyway, unless there's some particular value in having it installed.

It could be coincidence that the LaCie logs occur at the same time as the system freeze. I just don't know. I plug several different LaCie drives into the Thunderbolt 2 ports. Would I need the LaCie drivers for that? Otherwise, I'd be happy to uninstall the LaCie driver - if only I knew how. =/

 

[Brian33]

Your LaCie thunderbolt drives should work just fine without any special LaCie software. I don't know how to remove it, though. Is there a LaCie app in '/Applications'? If so, it might have an 'Uninstall' menu item somewhere. Or, if it came on a disk image (.dmg file) and you still have it, there might be an uninstall app within the disk image. Or, try LaCie's web site for an answer.

 

[MalagLagoon]

Your LaCie thunderbolt drives should work just fine without any special LaCie software. I don't know how to remove it, though. Is there a LaCie app in '/Applications'? If so, it might have an 'Uninstall' menu item somewhere. Or, if it came on a disk image (.dmg file) and you still have it, there might be an uninstall app within the disk image. Or, try LaCie's web site for an answer.

At one time I did install their funky app (probably to configure the RAID) and although it did have an uninstall app I believe it crashed while attempting to uninstall itself. However, there is no LaCie related app in Launchpad anymore. =/

 

[MalagLagoon]

Well, this is interesting. I'm getting the same freezing on a completely different 2015 MBP (identical hardware specifications). I did restore from Time Machine. That is, I had a TM backup of the original MBP that would freeze, then I restored to a different MBP with the same HW specs - and get the same freezing issue on the other MBP. So, using the same account & software I get freezing on two different MacBooks.

The only thing I can think of to do next - is to create a completely fresh install of macOS instead of restoring from Time Machine. I *believe* the Migration assistant can help with that (not sure).

 

[Brian33]

I'm getting the same freezing on a completely different 2015 MBP (identical hardware specifications). I did restore from Time Machine.

It seems like that's some evidence that it's a software problem (unless both MBPs happened to have similar hardware problems).

Have you tried using a different Mac account (create a new one if you need to) to see if the freezes happen there also?

I have confirmed that this ONLY occurs for me when I am using the discrete GPU. When using the integrated GPU, it works fine. Unfortunately for me, that means no external monitors!

I wonder if your freezes happen only when using the discrete GPU, also. Hmmm. There's probably some software the allows you to prevent the use of the DGPU.

do next - is to create a completely fresh install of macOS instead of restoring from Time Machine. I *believe* the Migration assistant can help with that (not sure).

Yes, Migration Assistant certainly can make the process easier -- but it could also "copy over" the problem! MA does allow you some selection of what is copied over. You might want to NOT copy over the "system settings" and "other" (if I remember correctly) categories.

Wouldn't it make some sense to do a fresh install and NOT use MA at first? Then use the MBP for awhile and see if the freezes have stopped. If so, use MA to copy over some of your old settings, one category at a time, and see if one type caues the freezes to re-occur.

It sure must be frustrating!

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Well, this is interesting. I'm getting the same freezing on a completely different 2015 MBP (identical hardware specifications). I did restore from Time Machine"

I'm thinking that this is due to -something- (software) that you've installed.

The best way to ascertain this is to create a completely new (temporary) user account with administrative privileges. Leave it "bare bones" -- DON'T copy stuff from your regular user account into it.

Log into the temporary account and use it for a while.
Do the freezes stop?
If they do, that's an indication that "the problem" is localized to your user account...

 

[MalagLagoon]

But, if I created a temp user account I'd still need to use some programs - such as Logic Pro, FCPX, email, Pages and stuff like that. So, by copying do you mean don't install applications?

 

[Brian33]

Hmmm, I think he means don't copy any user preferences to the new temp user account. All your applications will still be there in their usual place, and you can use them from the new user account to test whether the freezes have gone away. If you think you need a certain data file to try to reproduce the freezing problem (for example, a certain video file to edit in FCPX), I think you can copy that over to the new user account for testing purposes.

The idea is to try to narrow down whether the freezes have something to do with your normal user account (like certain user preferences settings) or whether the cause is something system-wide (like System preference settings or installed software). I think it's rather a long shot, but if the new account works fine, you could then start copying over data/setting it up as your (new) regular account, hopefully without the freezes coming back.

Clearly you have a very difficult-to-diagnose problem.

 

[MalagLagoon]

What about scanning for such things as malware, viruses and other nasty things that shouldn't be there? I've never used such a program with macOS (just my Windows machines).

 

[Fishrrman]

"What about scanning for such things as malware, viruses and other nasty things that shouldn't be there?"

Download MalwareBytes and run it:

Official Site | Malwarebytes: Antivirus, Anti-Malware & Privacy

Malwarebytes offers real-time antivirus, advanced anti-malware and privacy protection for all your devices. Launched in 2004 as a free virus scan, we still offer a free basic version 20 years later. Learn more.

www.malwarebytes.com

IMPORTANT:
Select the "home" option.
It's a FREE download

IMPORTANT:
You DO NOT NEED TO BUY A SUBSCRIPTION to run MalwareBytes.
It will run FOREVER IN FREE MODE.
When you open it, IGNORE the button to "Upgrade Now" or "Activate License".
Just click "Scan".
Again, you DO NOT have to buy the pay-for version!

 

[MalagLagoon]

Okay, according to Malwarebytes there are no issues at all found upon scanning. So, that's good - obviously. Although, the scan was only 14 seconds long.