Repeated kernel panics. Nothing fixes it!

[Elrich]

I'm really frustrated with my MacBook Air. 13" screen. Running Ventura 13.0.1. Bought in June 2020.

For at least a year now, I've had a problem with kernel panics. I've talked with Apple Support about this repeatedly. The harddrive has been wiped and OS reinstalled at least 3 times. The third time, I restored only my data from TimeMachine and then manually re-installed each app. This approach works for 2 or 3 months, and then the panics start again. That's the point I'm at now, after the last reinstall solved the problem for exactly 3 months.

I talked to Apple again yesterday. They had me run a diagnostic to make sure it's not a hardware problem, and they said if these reinstalls temporarily solve the problem, that also shows that it's a software problem, not hardware. But beyond that they're clueless. The latest suggestion is to take it to an Apple Store and have them "inspect" it, but when I asked what the store could do that they didn't do the other two times I took it in, they couldn't answer.

Has anyone else had this problem with repeated kernel panics? What did you do? (If I could afford it, I'd just buy a new machine and refurbish and sell this one...)

Could this problem be at all related to a mysterious 275GB chunk of system data on my hard drive? Apple says no, it's just from constant saving by apps, but that makes no sense to me... If that's true, everyone's hard drive should be full of system data.

 

[TonyAguila]

I'm really frustrated with my MacBook Air. 13" screen. Running Ventura 13.0.1. Bought in June 2020.

For at least a year now, I've had a problem with kernel panics. I've talked with Apple Support about this repeatedly. The harddrive has been wiped and OS reinstalled at least 3 times. The third time, I restored only my data from TimeMachine and then manually re-installed each app. This approach works for 2 or 3 months, and then the panics start again. That's the point I'm at now, after the last reinstall solved the problem for exactly 3 months.

I talked to Apple again yesterday. They had me run a diagnostic to make sure it's not a hardware problem, and they said if these reinstalls temporarily solve the problem, that also shows that it's a software problem, not hardware. But beyond that they're clueless. The latest suggestion is to take it to an Apple Store and have them "inspect" it, but when I asked what the store could do that they didn't do the other two times I took it in, they couldn't answer.

Has anyone else had this problem with repeated kernel panics? What did you do? (If I could afford it, I'd just buy a new machine and refurbish and sell this one...)

Could this problem be at all related to a mysterious 275GB chunk of system data on my hard drive? Apple says no, it's just from constant saving by apps, but that makes no sense to me... If that's true, everyone's hard drive should be full of system data.

The current version of Ventura is 13.1. Aside from staying up-to-date, there’s a chance that the update will fix your problems.

How much memory does the MacBook Air have, and what is the size of the internal drive?

 

[mccoytest]

It is my opinion that some of the software you have installed, is causing the problem. Do you only install software from the App Store or elsewhere? You didn't mention what you were doing when the Kernel panic happened. Is it always the same thing?

I haven't had to look in system logs for many years now, but have you checked them? That might help reveal the problem.

 

[Elrich]

Thanks for your responses.

I did do some research online today and figured out how to find the logs. Talked to Apple support and sent them the 44-page file of log info, so they're going to dig into it and see if we can figure out anything.

It's hard to identify any particular pattern to when they happen. Sometimes, like today, it even happens when I'm not even sitting at my desk!

Multiple OS updates have not fixed the problem.

8 GB of memory. 500 GB internal hard drive, 273 GB of which is filled with mysterious "system data." Apple says this is from -- what did they call it? -- microsaves by applications. That seems ridiculous to me -- if this is normal, then everyone's hard drive should be full of system data. I thought it might be related to the kernel panic problem, but Apple said no.

 

[TonyAguila]

Thanks for your responses.

I did do some research online today and figured out how to find the logs. Talked to Apple support and sent them the 44-page file of log info, so they're going to dig into it and see if we can figure out anything.

It's hard to identify any particular pattern to when they happen. Sometimes, like today, it even happens when I'm not even sitting at my desk!

Multiple OS updates have not fixed the problem.

8 GB of memory. 500 GB internal hard drive, 273 GB of which is filled with mysterious "system data." Apple says this is from -- what did they call it? -- microsaves by applications. That seems ridiculous to me -- if this is normal, then everyone's hard drive should be full of system data. I thought it might be related to the kernel panic problem, but Apple said no.

Try first doing a restart into Safe Boot. On your Silicon Mac, you need to shut down, press and hold the power button until the drive/options screen comes up. Press the Shift key and click on your startup drive (Macintosh HD) and it should indicate that you are starting in Safe mode. This will take a bit more time than a regular startup and things will appear slower than usual.

Once you’re logged in, start Disk Utility (in Applications\Utilities). In my example, the “system data” portion of the SSD is the volume “Macintosh HD snapshot,” corresponding to the first portion of the status bar, second arrow. The third arrow refers to the visible portion of the drive. If your system is properly purging itself of the “mysterious” data, consisting of temporary swap files, that portion should normally be quite small. Somehow those temporary cache files are not being released. The reason for Safe Boot is to try and purge those files from the drive. Hopefully they will be gone after you reboot normally.

There is a reason I asked about the size of your RAM and SSD. 8 GB is low, but 500 GB storage is okay. If you normally run multiple apps and don’t quit out of them after use, they will remain in memory and as you run other tasks, that portion of the RAM is temporarily written to your drive to free active memory. Try running as few apps as possible at the same time.

To see the status of your memory usage and swaps, you can use Activity Monitor. Select the Memory tab and at the bottom of the screen, the graph for memory usage should show the memory pressure and other data. To avoid memory swaps, memory pressure should be low and green. Orange and red mean you are running out of free memory.

Let’s hope that the Safe Mode boot cleared up the temporary files, and that being aware of how temporary caches and swap files gives you better control of your Mac.

 

[Elrich]

Thanks. Unfortunately, it didn't help.

 

[TonyAguila]

Thanks. Unfortunately, it didn't help.

That’s a ridiculously large amount of system data. I see that you are running Ventura. macOS 13.2 (22D49) was just released today so an update would be the first thing I would do. In fact I just updated less than half an hour ago and everything seems to be running fine.

If I were in your place, I would do a complete wipe of the drive: erase the drive and reinstall Ventura from Recovery, and restore your user data from Time Machine backup(s) or from a clone. A complete restore will not restore your system data partition.

Edit: I just realized that macOS 13.2 (22D49) released this morning is a Release Candidate, so you may not have access to it yet. Sorry.

 

[Elrich]

Well, the thing is, I just did that four months ago in an attempt to fix the kernel panic problem. If I can find time, I'll try it again, but I'm not optimistic.

 

[Elrich]

I've been working with a Senior Advisor at Apple, and we used Capture Data to get some log info. It appears that the kernel panics are being caused by some kind of interaction between one of my peripherals and the Mac's motherboard. I suspect it has to do with the external CD/DVD drive -- about 50% of the panics have occurred while playing a DVD.

I now have my three external hard drives disconnected, so only the CD/DVD drive is connected. So we'll see if a panic occurs.

 

[Stella]

I'm having the same problems with my MacBook Pro Max M1, bought new November last year
I've erased and reinstalled several times, then it went back to Apple who replaced the logic board (motherboard?). And it's all happening all over again a couple of months on.
Numerous faults appear at random, including the purple screen of death. One of the reports it produced had 985 pages!!
I've had three previous Macs (2 iMacs and one MBP), all second hand and no problems like this.
I was given this as a present and I had such great expectations of it with its new Apple processor. It cost nearly £3000 and is totally unreliable. I could cry.
My OS is up to date and so is my Adobe subscription (I'm a photographer).
Has any one ever found out what causes these kernel panics and been able to overcome the problem?

 

[Elrich]

See if you can get a licensed Apple repair center to run a diagnostic on your computer. If that doesn't turn up any problems with your hardware, then, based on my own experience, I'd say it simply has to do with the processor becoming overwhelmed.

I never proved definitively what was causing my kernel panics, but I found that if I had fewer peripherals connected to the Mac, the panics stopped happening. Well, mostly. It still occasionally happens when one application works the processor too hard. GarageBand can sometimes do that, for example, especially in combination with something else.

Hope you can solve your issue!

 

[MacsBug]

I have a friend that had a 14" M1 Max that was having constant beachballs and occasional kernel panics. Apple was no help.

What I ended up doing to resolve this was to use Apple Configurator to reinstall the firmware on the M1 Max, and that solved the issues for him.

You need to have Find My Mac disabled in order to do this. There are 2 Options in configurator, 1 is to Restore, and 1 is to revive. I would recommend that you back up your Mac. 1st try a revive, and then if that doesn’t help, do a restore and then migrate your data back.

You can read about it at https://support.apple.com/guide/app...ore-a-mac-with-apple-silicon-apdd5f3c75ad/mac

 

[Stella]

Thank you both
It is going back to JLP next week, and they will return it to Apple again.
Attached to my MBP are the same things I had attached to my 2014 iMac and my 2015 MBP and I never saw any problems like I'm having now. Attached to it is a BenQ sw270C monitor (by HDMI) a RSHTech powered USB hub which has 4 SSDs attached. I assume these sit quietly doing nothing until accessed? Occasionally a Wacom tablet and on a couple of occasions an Apple USB SuperDrive.
I have MS Office, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Nik add-on. And that's about it, besides accessing Netflix and BritBox. All software is legitimate and up to date, as is the OS Ventura 13.4.1
So nothing out of the ordinary.
Before its first trip back to Apple, I erased/reinstated twice. And after the new motherboard they installed, I had to reload all my stuff again.
I've read loads of stuff online and it seems the kernel crash mainly affects M1 and M2 Macs.
Does Apple ever look at the crash reports? If yes, are there any particular peripherals or software that are known to be causing these problems?
When I got this MBP as a present (I could never have afforded nearly £3K to spend on a computer myself) I was over the moon - my first ever new bit of Apple kit.
It is similar spec to my old Mac - 1 Tb storage/32Gb RAM. I expected it to be faster (it's not) and more reliable (it's definitely not).
Until I retired I taught IT at college on PCs and got my first Mac about ten years ago, so I'm not inexperienced or stupid (at least, I don't think I am).
Sorry for the rant, but it seems my MBP is just a glorified word processor and for watching Netflix

 

[Stella]

See if you can get a licensed Apple repair center to run a diagnostic on your computer. If that doesn't turn up any problems with your hardware, then, based on my own experience, I'd say it simply has to do with the processor becoming overwhelmed.

I never proved definitively what was causing my kernel panics, but I found that if I had fewer peripherals connected to the Mac, the panics stopped happening. Well, mostly. It still occasionally happens when one application works the processor too hard. GarageBand can sometimes do that, for example, especially in combination with something else.

Hope you can solve your issue!

Thank you. My MBP has been returned to JLP (Apple reseller) and it is due back any day.
I will see how it goes when I get it back, but I am not too optimistic. If Apple can't sort out problems with their kit, how can we?
The MBP is similarly specced as my 2014 iMac 1Gb drive and 32Gb RAM. I used to use the same software on that, and was disappointed that it didn't seem any faster using the new MBP>
Will keep you posted when I get it back. Fingers crossed.