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Since Catalina I have been getting daily freezes, where the entire operating system locks up. I can still move the cursor around and audio keeps playing as well

Since Catalina I have been getting daily freezes, where the entire operating system locks up. I can still move the cursor around and audio keeps playing as well, but everything else is completely frozen. Once in a while the freeze lasts so long the computer crashes resulting in a crash report: Termination Reason: WATCHDOG, [0x1] monitoring timed out for service Termination Details: WATCHDOG, checkin with service: WindowServer returned not alive with context: unresponsive work processor(s): WindowServer main thread I am at my wits end to what can be causing this. Is anyone else experiencing similar freezes?

fender1959 6y ago
I have the same issues !! I have a couple of raid drives and third 10T - a second dell monitor connected to my iMac pro 18 core....If I loop a time line in fcpx, loop audio in Logic, run the Black Magic disk test my system will freeze, still playing audio then give up the cursor then hang fully and crash = in the spin dump we get the watchdog time out !!!! I am on 10.5.5 looks like its some kind of GPU issue
jurip 6y ago
I just had that yesterday. Not sure if I've ever seen it before, but yeah.
zerkten 6y ago
Sounds like what they were talking about on the atp.fm podcast recently.
logical_proof 6y ago
I am! It only happens when I am on multiple monitors (clamshell opened or closed) and usually when I am in a video conference (zoom, hangouts, and G2meeting). Thought it was overheating.
- brmcd 6y ago
  Im seeming to have the same issue. 2019 MBP connecting through USB-C. However, I find the issue is less frequent (to non existent) after I switched to a USB-C to HDMI adapter.
- gtCameron 6y ago
  I had that same issue with multiple monitors a year or two ago. Tried everything, reformatting, different OS versions, etc. Turns out it was one of my mini displayport -> hdmi adapters, replaced that and everything was fine.
  - smsx 6y ago
    I had the exact same issue with a 2017 13” MBP. Switching from one of those tiny usb c hubs to a full fledged dock with external power solved it.
ryanianian 6y ago
I had this happening for a while, and I tracked it down to time-machine backups starting. Every hour the backupd cronjob would trigger and I'd get a minute or so of beachball. Similar WATCHDOG termination message. It crashed a couple times and corrupted the backup database. I disabled time-machine and haven't had any freezes since.
- derefr 6y ago
  Is it a remote time-machine backup, i.e. to a Time Capsule (or a NAS pretending to be one)? Time Machine used to use AFP, but since AFP was deprecated, it now exclusively uses SMB for remote backups. (Specifically, it creates a sparsebundle image on the SMB share, and then locally mounts it.) Now, Apple has their own implementation of SMB; and it seems to have been seeing frequent updates in Catalina (see https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210803 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210803). Since the Apple SMB stack has some decent amount of kernel integration—and Time Machine doesn’t really have any—I’d guess that recent changes to Apple SMB are also the culprit for any freezes where it’s in the critical path. And Apple SMB seems likely to blame, because there are already other well-known regressions from the recent changes to Apple SMB. Seemingly, there’s a lot of cowboy coding going on in this part of the system right now. For example, macOS can no longer connect to SMB shares via their mDNS names (e.g. smb://example.local). This means that any SMB server that shows up in the Finder sidebar (through an mDNS announcement configured to achieve AFP or Time Machine serving) now just chokes and kills the Finder process when you try to connect to one of its exposed SMB shares through that sidebar connection (see e.g. https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/3/post/129160 https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/3/post/129160). You now have to explicitly connect to the share using its IP (e.g. smb://10.0.0.1) from the Finder ⌘K modal. Weirdly enough, Time Machine itself isn’t broken for the SMB shares it auto-discovers through its configuration modal, so presumably they realized their error in that specific case and made Time Machine pre-resolve the mDNS name in the smb:// URI to an IP address, before attempting the connection. But they forgot to add this same code to the Finder. :/
  - riobard 6y ago
    I'm hitting the stupid SMB bug everyday but the symptom seems to be different. I tried to manually connect to `smb://nasbox.local` in Finder and it works with `nasbox.local` appearing in the sidebar. I can also click `nasbox` (without `.local` and this is advertised by the avahi-daemon on the nasbox I believe) and it opens the network shares fine. However, if the Mac goes to sleep for a while and then later wakes up, I can no longer access the shares with the same message "The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “folder_name” can’t be found". This is so damn frustrating.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain? Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Apple hardware it seems incredibly difficult to go elsewhere.
- doctorwhat 6y ago
  You can't discuss logically with apple fanboys.
  - abluecloud 6y ago
    What a childish attitude. Some people like cheap laptops. Some people like expensive laptops. Some people, like you, obsess over people's choices. An, apparently, if you make a choice (the wrong one, in your eyes), you're not allowed to complain when things go wrong. Jeeze.
- SamuelAdams 6y ago
  OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) is no longer supported, unfortunately.
  - everdrive 6y ago
    The last good MacOS
    - parasubvert 6y ago
      Idk, Mojave is/was pretty good.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I really think Snow Leopard is remembered overly fondly because it's direct successor—Lion—was quite bad. But, Apple fixed Lion's problems in 10.8 (Mountain Lion), and avoided introducing any new ones in 10.9 (Mavericks). Consequently, 10.9/Mavericks is my actual favorite version, and what I'm typing on right now. When I decided I was going to downgrade my main machines earlier this year, I did a lot of comparisons of Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. I could not see a compelling reason to pick Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion. Mavericks performs well and never seems to crash. When I loaded all three up in VMs and starved them of resources, Mavericks remained the most responsive, I suspect because it supports memory compression. (Interestingly, Snow Leopard lists 1 GB of memory as the minimum required, whereas Mavericks lists 2 GB, but Mavericks still seemingly did better with 1 GB than Snow Leopard.) Design-wise, while I prefer Snow Leopard's higher contrast in some places, it has a tendency to look either garish or plain in others. 10.8/9 look more refined, without going all flat. And while 10.8/9 have a lot of stupid defaults, I have a setup script I've been using for years which fixes most of them: https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Mac-OS-X-Wowfunhappy-Setup-Script/blob/master/Set%20Up%20OS%20X.command https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Mac-OS-X-Wowfunhappy-Setup-Sc... The one big advantage of Snow Leopard would have been compatibility with PowerPC apps via Rosetta. But, there are only a handful of PowerPC apps I'd actually want to use, and a lot of Intel apps that support 10.9 but not 10.6.
culturestate 6y ago
Any time I get these they come with a bushel of IOAccelerator errors; I'm fairly sure (in my case, at least) it's a problem buried somewhere in the video decoder stack. I can reproduce it pretty reliably by previewing a bunch of videos in Messages, and quitting the app usually solves it. Edit: I use a 13" MBP, so that rules out most popular theories e.g. problems with the discrete GPU or graphics switching.
rayiner 6y ago
Tons of people: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/constant-kernel-panics-userspace-watchdog-timeout-no-successful-checkins-from-com-apple-windowserver.2222878/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/constant-kernel-panics-... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-mbp-gpu-panics.2221004/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-mbp-gpu-panics.22210... There's like a dozen threads on MacRumors and the Apple discussion forums on various crashes, mostly related to sleep, but also to the watchdog timing out for WindowServer due to GPU lockups.
- ksec 6y ago
  One of the reason why I dont like GPU acceleration in general. And this isn't just on macOS, Windows, Firefox, Chrome. May be it is better on iOS since Apple owns the whole stack from Metal to Drivers to actual GPU.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Genuine question: How is GPU accelerated rendering more prone to crashes than just doing it on the CPU? Also, on macOS, Apple practically controls the whole stack too. Putting macOS on something that isn’t their hardware is a challenge. Side note: there’s errata on the Intel CPUs, but I’m sure there’s also some (confidential) errata on the “A” series processors in iDevices. If iOS can work around the errata, why couldn’t macOS?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      The GPU is a whole separate computer, running code independently, with its own clock scaling and power management. Having two separate things that can break is more complexity than one thing that can break. And having to have the two communicate in order to do delicate procedures like waking from sleep increases complexity dramatically. Also, on many Macs, it's actually three separate things. There is the CPU, the integrated GPU, and the discrete GPU. The system switches between the two GPUs dynamically based on load and whether the system is plugged in.
      - 6y ago
hmhrex 6y ago
Same here. It was frustrating to not see a fix for this in the changelog. Hopefully they fix this soon.
taf2 6y ago
I had similar issues as you but it turned out to be the hardware was bad... I replaced my macbook pro and it's been great... But the other hardware issue on the new macbook pro's is if you charge on any of the USB-c ports other than the one on the right side, you'll likely run the laptop too hot... so charge on the right side not the left side and you should be good... it's crappy i know... but new laptop i've almost and charging on the right side i've nearly forgotten about all of my apple hate...
satysin 6y ago
Have you tried the "nuke from orbit" approach of a full system wipe (T2, SMC and NVRAM reset, delete recovery partitions, Pre-boot volume, etc) and doing a fresh install and setup rather than restoring from backup? I know it shouldn't be needed but sometimes it is the only option. It isn't much help to you but my experience with Catalina has been very positive on a 2018 15" MacBook Pro. The initial release and first two point updates had some silly UI bugs but since .4 it has been solid as a rock for me. I just updated to .5 and noticed I haven't had to restart my laptop since the last update I installed 42 days ago. In those 42 days I haven't had a single issue so I am pretty happy about that.
- MperorM 6y ago
  Yes, I have reset t2, smc, nvram, even reinstalled the entire operating system. I have the same problem on both 16 inch laptops I've owned (first one was stolen) suggesting it has to do with the software I use. I am unable to identify a single application as the culprit, unfortunately.
  - satysin 6y ago
    Yes if you have such issues on two different machines it is most likely software rather than hardware. It is frustrating and time consuming but have you gone step-by-step on a clean system to at least narrow down when the issues begin to occur?
  - vardump 6y ago
    By any chance are you running VMware Fusion?
vardump 6y ago
Same. My freezes seem to be caused only by GPU lockups. Other scenario only a reboot can fix is sometimes menus don't draw and/or video playback doesn't work in any app. But at least Bluetooth is nowadays more stable!
vadarvariu 6y ago
I've had the opposite problem: started getting awful freezes on a MBP 2018 running Mojave on the day this latest Catalina version was released. No immediate explanation: cpu/ram/disk load perfectly normal, machine just incredibly slow (think 10 minutes to start up). Exact same behaviour in Safe Mode and nothing obvious after some common diagnoses. Bit the bullet and finally updated to Catalina, all problems gone. Not sure what to make of this but it definitely resonates with stories of Apple practically forcing updates.
kup0 6y ago
I get 'watchdog timeout' kernel panics. For a while it was daily, since reinstalling OS now it's random. The issue is I use a far different system than most reporting the issue. I see mentions of macbooks, sleep, etc, but I'm running an iMac 2013, a program that keeps it awake 24/7, etc. No idea yet what the underlying cause is, but the panics started with 10.15.1 and got worse with 10.15.4, they were not an issue prior to 10.15.1
MintelIE 6y ago
I had this Watchdog timer issue on OS X and it was causing major slowdowns. My solution was to stop using OS X, Apple support didn't really seem to have any solutions or suggestions other than reinstalling OS X, which I tried, and after a while I ran into the issue again. If I'm going to be my own Applecare at least with a Free OS, I can access the source code.

fender1959 6y ago

I have the same issues !! I have a couple of raid drives and third 10T - a second dell monitor connected to my iMac pro 18 core....If I loop a time line in fcpx, loop audio in Logic, run the Black Magic disk test my system will freeze, still playing audio then give up the cursor then hang fully and crash = in the spin dump we get the watchdog time out !!!! I am on 10.5.5 looks like its some kind of GPU issue

jurip 6y ago

I just had that yesterday. Not sure if I've ever seen it before, but yeah.

zerkten 6y ago

Sounds like what they were talking about on the atp.fm podcast recently.

logical_proof 6y ago

I am! It only happens when I am on multiple monitors (clamshell opened or closed) and usually when I am in a video conference (zoom, hangouts, and G2meeting). Thought it was overheating.

brmcd 6y ago
Im seeming to have the same issue. 2019 MBP connecting through USB-C. However, I find the issue is less frequent (to non existent) after I switched to a USB-C to HDMI adapter.
gtCameron 6y ago
I had that same issue with multiple monitors a year or two ago. Tried everything, reformatting, different OS versions, etc. Turns out it was one of my mini displayport -> hdmi adapters, replaced that and everything was fine.
- smsx 6y ago
  I had the exact same issue with a 2017 13” MBP. Switching from one of those tiny usb c hubs to a full fledged dock with external power solved it.

ryanianian 6y ago

I had this happening for a while, and I tracked it down to time-machine backups starting. Every hour the backupd cronjob would trigger and I'd get a minute or so of beachball. Similar WATCHDOG termination message. It crashed a couple times and corrupted the backup database. I disabled time-machine and haven't had any freezes since.

derefr 6y ago
Is it a remote time-machine backup, i.e. to a Time Capsule (or a NAS pretending to be one)? Time Machine used to use AFP, but since AFP was deprecated, it now exclusively uses SMB for remote backups. (Specifically, it creates a sparsebundle image on the SMB share, and then locally mounts it.) Now, Apple has their own implementation of SMB; and it seems to have been seeing frequent updates in Catalina (see https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210803 https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210803). Since the Apple SMB stack has some decent amount of kernel integration—and Time Machine doesn’t really have any—I’d guess that recent changes to Apple SMB are also the culprit for any freezes where it’s in the critical path. And Apple SMB seems likely to blame, because there are already other well-known regressions from the recent changes to Apple SMB. Seemingly, there’s a lot of cowboy coding going on in this part of the system right now. For example, macOS can no longer connect to SMB shares via their mDNS names (e.g. smb://example.local). This means that any SMB server that shows up in the Finder sidebar (through an mDNS announcement configured to achieve AFP or Time Machine serving) now just chokes and kills the Finder process when you try to connect to one of its exposed SMB shares through that sidebar connection (see e.g. https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/3/post/129160 https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/3/post/129160). You now have to explicitly connect to the share using its IP (e.g. smb://10.0.0.1) from the Finder ⌘K modal. Weirdly enough, Time Machine itself isn’t broken for the SMB shares it auto-discovers through its configuration modal, so presumably they realized their error in that specific case and made Time Machine pre-resolve the mDNS name in the smb:// URI to an IP address, before attempting the connection. But they forgot to add this same code to the Finder. :/
- riobard 6y ago
  I'm hitting the stupid SMB bug everyday but the symptom seems to be different. I tried to manually connect to `smb://nasbox.local` in Finder and it works with `nasbox.local` appearing in the sidebar. I can also click `nasbox` (without `.local` and this is advertised by the avahi-daemon on the nasbox I believe) and it opens the network shares fine. However, if the Mac goes to sleep for a while and then later wakes up, I can no longer access the shares with the same message "The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “folder_name” can’t be found". This is so damn frustrating.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Why do you guys put up with this? Do you like pain? Edit: I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know why people put up with this. I bounce between Linux and Windows and have no loyalty to either of them. I've settled on Windows with WSL2 on my desktop but I'm tempted again to install the new Fedora on my Thinkpad. Is it the lock in? With my hardware I can run anything I want except for macOS. Once you buy Apple hardware it seems incredibly difficult to go elsewhere.

doctorwhat 6y ago
You can't discuss logically with apple fanboys.
- abluecloud 6y ago
  What a childish attitude. Some people like cheap laptops. Some people like expensive laptops. Some people, like you, obsess over people's choices. An, apparently, if you make a choice (the wrong one, in your eyes), you're not allowed to complain when things go wrong. Jeeze.
SamuelAdams 6y ago
OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) is no longer supported, unfortunately.
- everdrive 6y ago
  The last good MacOS
  - parasubvert 6y ago
    Idk, Mojave is/was pretty good.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I really think Snow Leopard is remembered overly fondly because it's direct successor—Lion—was quite bad. But, Apple fixed Lion's problems in 10.8 (Mountain Lion), and avoided introducing any new ones in 10.9 (Mavericks). Consequently, 10.9/Mavericks is my actual favorite version, and what I'm typing on right now. When I decided I was going to downgrade my main machines earlier this year, I did a lot of comparisons of Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. I could not see a compelling reason to pick Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion. Mavericks performs well and never seems to crash. When I loaded all three up in VMs and starved them of resources, Mavericks remained the most responsive, I suspect because it supports memory compression. (Interestingly, Snow Leopard lists 1 GB of memory as the minimum required, whereas Mavericks lists 2 GB, but Mavericks still seemingly did better with 1 GB than Snow Leopard.) Design-wise, while I prefer Snow Leopard's higher contrast in some places, it has a tendency to look either garish or plain in others. 10.8/9 look more refined, without going all flat. And while 10.8/9 have a lot of stupid defaults, I have a setup script I've been using for years which fixes most of them: https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Mac-OS-X-Wowfunhappy-Setup-Script/blob/master/Set%20Up%20OS%20X.command https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Mac-OS-X-Wowfunhappy-Setup-Sc... The one big advantage of Snow Leopard would have been compatibility with PowerPC apps via Rosetta. But, there are only a handful of PowerPC apps I'd actually want to use, and a lot of Intel apps that support 10.9 but not 10.6.

culturestate 6y ago

Any time I get these they come with a bushel of IOAccelerator errors; I'm fairly sure (in my case, at least) it's a problem buried somewhere in the video decoder stack. I can reproduce it pretty reliably by previewing a bunch of videos in Messages, and quitting the app usually solves it. Edit: I use a 13" MBP, so that rules out most popular theories e.g. problems with the discrete GPU or graphics switching.

rayiner 6y ago

Tons of people: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/constant-kernel-panics-userspace-watchdog-timeout-no-successful-checkins-from-com-apple-windowserver.2222878/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/constant-kernel-panics-... https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-mbp-gpu-panics.2221004/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-mbp-gpu-panics.22210... There's like a dozen threads on MacRumors and the Apple discussion forums on various crashes, mostly related to sleep, but also to the watchdog timing out for WindowServer due to GPU lockups.

ksec 6y ago
One of the reason why I dont like GPU acceleration in general. And this isn't just on macOS, Windows, Firefox, Chrome. May be it is better on iOS since Apple owns the whole stack from Metal to Drivers to actual GPU.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Genuine question: How is GPU accelerated rendering more prone to crashes than just doing it on the CPU? Also, on macOS, Apple practically controls the whole stack too. Putting macOS on something that isn’t their hardware is a challenge. Side note: there’s errata on the Intel CPUs, but I’m sure there’s also some (confidential) errata on the “A” series processors in iDevices. If iOS can work around the errata, why couldn’t macOS?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    The GPU is a whole separate computer, running code independently, with its own clock scaling and power management. Having two separate things that can break is more complexity than one thing that can break. And having to have the two communicate in order to do delicate procedures like waking from sleep increases complexity dramatically. Also, on many Macs, it's actually three separate things. There is the CPU, the integrated GPU, and the discrete GPU. The system switches between the two GPUs dynamically based on load and whether the system is plugged in.
    - 6y ago

hmhrex 6y ago

Same here. It was frustrating to not see a fix for this in the changelog. Hopefully they fix this soon.

taf2 6y ago

I had similar issues as you but it turned out to be the hardware was bad... I replaced my macbook pro and it's been great... But the other hardware issue on the new macbook pro's is if you charge on any of the USB-c ports other than the one on the right side, you'll likely run the laptop too hot... so charge on the right side not the left side and you should be good... it's crappy i know... but new laptop i've almost and charging on the right side i've nearly forgotten about all of my apple hate...

satysin 6y ago

Have you tried the "nuke from orbit" approach of a full system wipe (T2, SMC and NVRAM reset, delete recovery partitions, Pre-boot volume, etc) and doing a fresh install and setup rather than restoring from backup? I know it shouldn't be needed but sometimes it is the only option. It isn't much help to you but my experience with Catalina has been very positive on a 2018 15" MacBook Pro. The initial release and first two point updates had some silly UI bugs but since .4 it has been solid as a rock for me. I just updated to .5 and noticed I haven't had to restart my laptop since the last update I installed 42 days ago. In those 42 days I haven't had a single issue so I am pretty happy about that.

MperorM 6y ago
Yes, I have reset t2, smc, nvram, even reinstalled the entire operating system. I have the same problem on both 16 inch laptops I've owned (first one was stolen) suggesting it has to do with the software I use. I am unable to identify a single application as the culprit, unfortunately.
- satysin 6y ago
  Yes if you have such issues on two different machines it is most likely software rather than hardware. It is frustrating and time consuming but have you gone step-by-step on a clean system to at least narrow down when the issues begin to occur?
- vardump 6y ago
  By any chance are you running VMware Fusion?

vardump 6y ago

Same. My freezes seem to be caused only by GPU lockups. Other scenario only a reboot can fix is sometimes menus don't draw and/or video playback doesn't work in any app. But at least Bluetooth is nowadays more stable!

vadarvariu 6y ago

I've had the opposite problem: started getting awful freezes on a MBP 2018 running Mojave on the day this latest Catalina version was released. No immediate explanation: cpu/ram/disk load perfectly normal, machine just incredibly slow (think 10 minutes to start up). Exact same behaviour in Safe Mode and nothing obvious after some common diagnoses. Bit the bullet and finally updated to Catalina, all problems gone. Not sure what to make of this but it definitely resonates with stories of Apple practically forcing updates.

kup0 6y ago

I get 'watchdog timeout' kernel panics. For a while it was daily, since reinstalling OS now it's random. The issue is I use a far different system than most reporting the issue. I see mentions of macbooks, sleep, etc, but I'm running an iMac 2013, a program that keeps it awake 24/7, etc. No idea yet what the underlying cause is, but the panics started with 10.15.1 and got worse with 10.15.4, they were not an issue prior to 10.15.1

MintelIE 6y ago

I had this Watchdog timer issue on OS X and it was causing major slowdowns. My solution was to stop using OS X, Apple support didn't really seem to have any solutions or suggestions other than reinstalling OS X, which I tried, and after a while I ran into the issue again. If I'm going to be my own Applecare at least with a Free OS, I can access the source code.