"Your computer was restarted because of a problem"

[Silly John Fatty]

I've had this a couple of times now. It's a Mac Mini I bought last year from Apple and I have barely installed things on it. So it should be "clean" and not have any issues.

I have saved the report I received.

Can I find out what the problem was from this report? Is there anything specific information to look out for?

 

[bogdanw]

You can post the report without the information about your Mac.

You can "Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

If the message is displayed after every restart, you can try OnyX - maintenance https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
(Similar problem https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/your-computer-restarted-because-of-a-problem.2410152/)

 

[Silly John Fatty]

You can post the report without the information about your Mac.

You can "Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

If the message is displayed after every restart, you can try OnyX - maintenance https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
(Similar problem https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/your-computer-restarted-because-of-a-problem.2410152/)

I don't get it when I restart the computer, but it happened twice now I think while the computer was on sleep and I was gone. I wonder why it would restart without me doing anything and then showing this error.

I prefer not to post the report here, but I was wondering if there's a code or something to look out for that indicates the reason for the restart?

I'll run Apple Diagnostics too, thanks for the idea!

 

[JR17358]

I don't get it when I restart the computer, but it happened twice now I think while the computer was on sleep and I was gone. I wonder why it would restart without me doing anything and then showing this error.

I prefer not to post the report here, but I was wondering if there's a code or something to look out for that indicates the reason for the restart?

I'll run Apple Diagnostics too, thanks for the idea!

I've had the same problem under virtually the same circumstance - in the middle of the night when I was not doing anything - BUT I did have Firefox open and checking a webmail page - at least all but one time. It seems to me it started with MacOS 14.4 but it MAY have stopped with 14.4.1 - at least it hasn't happened since March 24 and 14.4.1 released on March 26. I did run the Apple diagnostic and came up with no hardware issues on the Mac Mini. I have my fingers crossed that 14.4.1 fixed a software / firmware issue.

 

[JR17358]

Well, since posting this I've had two more incidents of a kernel panic and restart. I have done some more digging and found some other things. One is that the Mac Mini (which is what I have) is more susceptible to this panic and it seems to be related to display (reference to displayRelease in the panic log) and is a problem with the M series and how it goes to sleep (and is slow to wake up which causes the panic). 14.4 and 14.4.1 have not fixed the problem. But it MAY have a workaround. Go to Energy Saver and toggle on the option "Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off". If I understand it correctly this prevents sleep mode from shutting down RAM which speeds up wake up and could prevent the panic. I just made this change last night so time will tell ...

 

[JR17358]

It's been just over a month since I toggled on the Energy Saver option to "Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off" and the results have been 100% positive - no kernel panics since I made the change and I was getting one every couple of days - sometimes a couple a day. I think that powering down RAM (and writing contents to internal storage when sleep mode activates) makes sense for battery powered Macs (ie the Macbook family) but less sense for a Mac Mini (which always gets power from AC) so I feel like I lost nothing significant and fixed an annoying problem.