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MBP16 Keeps Crashing

M

MacKey76

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2011
53
7
Not sure if this is hardware or software to be honest, but it is getting VERY annoying.

16" MacBook Pro with 2.4GHz i9 CPU, 32GB RAM and Radeon Pro 5500M Video.

Was running Big Sur 11.1 and upgraded to 11.2.1 in the hope of fixing the issues but they persist across both.

Started the other week when I was doing an Appstore upgrade of Xcode 12.3 to 12.4. Went through the motions and after a very long install (normal in my experience for Xcode) it got right to the end and then the screen froze and there was a loud burst of noise from the system fans and it went to black screen and restarted.

Happened several times exactly the same - always at the end of Xcode install. So assumed it was a dodgy upgrade and ignored it.

However it has happened a few times now when doing other things. Same symptoms - screen freezes, loud fan bust and reboots.

Has happened when system is hot and cold, on battery and on mains power.

Getting a bit worried to do anything that will be screwed up by crashing out mid-way now.

Doing the Big Sur 11.1 to 11.2.1 upgrade had me worried for sure, but went fine. I can replicate it without fail by doing Xcode install/upgrade - always crashes right at the end. But the random ones (few and far between at least) are more worrying as they mean it isn't just isolated to one scenario.

Does this sound hardware or software? Happy to rebuild the laptop if software, but hardware a bigger issue obviously.

And any ideas for how to pinpoint the cause?

Thank you in advance.
 
Had my first Kernel Panic when I woke up the laptop. I am worried as the only thing new I installed was CCC which I hope is not the cause as I just purchased a license. I am on 11.2.1.
 
If it's software then I can live with that and clean build it back up. But I'm worried it may be hardware.

I haven't installed anything new for a while, and when it first started I uninstalled everything I could think of that I had installed which made no difference.

I don't have CCC, but I do have things like Norton and Malwarebytes which I did wonder if they were the cause.
 
Interestingly, a few mins after my last post, it did it again. I have had it turned on and sat there for last 20 mins, read a couple of emails, read a couple of emails, couple of websites, sent a couple of iMessage messages. Nothing taxing at all. Then clicked Apple News to read a story and it froze and crashed.

Noticed the bar above the Touch Bar was very hot after it crashed (there had been no sound of fans apart from the blast when it crashed), then after it booted back up the fans came on and ran for a couple of minutes until it cooled down.
 
This is fast becoming an expensive paperweight. 5 times today it has crashed when doing nothing more strenuous that reading websites. I can't trust it to do anything on it of significance as I can't risk it crashing mid-way and causing corruption etc.

I have removed all AV/security software to test if that was an issue but no change.

I will have to flatten and rebuild next weekend when I have more time, but this is a joke.
 
Thanks for the reply.

I tried the diagnostics by holding D at startup, and all I get is thrown into Internet Recovery, so I gave up. Are there any good 3rd party apps which can test hardware? Or am I doing something wrong getting into the Mac tests?

I hadn't thought of safe mode. Will I be able to update apps from App Store in Safe Mode? As that is the guaranteed way I can test it.
 
So, I gave safe mode a try and it worked fine doing the Xcode update which has been a guaranteed crash previously. So looks like software at least, which is a relief.

Any suggestions on how to pinpoint what might be the cause, short of uninstalling stuff bit by bit? Is there a way to decipher the crash reports to work out what caused it?
 
Easiest way to resolve system issues:

Make backups, one for restoring, 2nd bootable clone

Do a clean install on a "spare" drive. Install apps like Xcode gradually.

You may have been accumulating drivers, extensions, mus-configurations carried over from prior builds and from Catalina and beyond.

Try with a new user account also to rule out anything in ~/user/library
 
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