Help diagnosing an issue

Hi everyone,

I seem to be having an issue with my MBP (mid-2012, 8GB RAM, i5, 10.10.3) crashing on me. Three times in the last week (twice on the same day last week), I've had my Mac lock up on me and I'm greeted with the "something went wrong, press a key to restart" message. It doesn't appear to be a kernel panic, my first thought, as there's no log when I reboot nor is there anything in the Console app that would signal that it is. All I can tell you before it happens is that my Mac locks up and then catastrophically fails on me.

I keep this machine in tip top shape - I maintain it and I keep the OS nice and clean (as best I can). I was thinking, in light of that fact, that perhaps this is a hardware issue (especially since the "something went wrong, press a key to restart" message is distorted although this may have more to do with the fact that I'm using an external monitor). I ran AHT (I have a pre 2013 Mac) and the quick test came back with the "all clear." I don't have the time right now to run the hour long extended test but I will if I have to.

Quick summary of things done:
- Ran AHT (came back clean on the quick test)
- Ran OnyX a few days ago
- I would check permissions but I very much doubt that this is an issue.

Any thoughts on where to look next? Anything else that I might have missed in my investigation here? Any other info you need?

Bryan. Just to be sure…this is the 2012 13" MBP with the optical drive , replaceable HD, and upgradeable ram right?

If so…is the restart message the one with the multiple languages?

One of the first things I always suspect is the ram. If you have 8gig of ram (2 x 4gig)…maybe try pulling one of the ram sticks (running on 4gig of ram)…and see if you get better stability. If not…then swap & use just the other stick.

If neither way helps…I guess we will have to try something else.

HTH,

- Nick

Thanks Nick for responding.

pigoo3 said:

Bryan. Just to be sure…this is the 2012 13" MBP with the optical drive , replaceable HD, and upgradeable ram right?

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That would indeed be the one (this one specifically with the i5 and upgraded memory and HD).

pigoo3 said:

If so…is the restart message the one with the multiple languages?

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I think it is. The distortion makes it hard to read but it looks similar to a KP message.

pigoo3 said:

One of the first things I always suspect is the ram. If you have 8gig of ram (2 x 4gig)…maybe try pulling one of the ram sticks (running on 4gig of ram)…and see if you get better stability. If not…then swap & use just the other stick.

Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea. I might try that later when I get some downtime from work (maybe in the next week or so). In the meantime, I might run memtest to see if it registers anything. I'll report back with the results.

Update.

I had issues getting memtest to work so I've abandoned that for now. I had something new happen - Finder kept crashing and reloading (the Dock icon indicator kept lighting up and dying on me) which prevented me from opening any sort of app. Had to restart to "fix" my Mac. I'm starting, therefore, to think that perhaps this is a software issue after all that's causing havoc.

Bryan

A fresh install of OS X could be in order. I assume you have backups. If a fresh install does not do the trick then back to hardware it is.

Good luck

Lisa

Like Lisa mentioned. A fresh OS install may be in order. But before that…you could try booting from an external HD with a fresh install of the OS…and see if the issue(s) disappear.

If the issues disappear…then you know for sure something is up on the internal storage.

Of course if you don't mind jumping right to the fresh internal OS install. Go for it!

- Nick

I'd rather do a fresh install as I've got everything working the way I'd like but if need be, I will. That said, I think this could be fixed although it might be hard to pin down. Any other thoughts?

(I do certainly have backups if need be - OneDrive houses my documents, I do weekly SuperDuper backups and TM chugs along in the background so I'm covered there)

vansmith said:

I'd rather do a fresh install as I've got everything working the way I'd like but if need be, I will.

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Do you mean "rather NOT do a fresh install"??

vansmith said:

That said, I think this could be fixed although it might be hard to pin down. Any other thoughts?

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Don't forget to try the booting from an external drive idea. This the least invasive approach…and VERY fast if you've already got something setup.

Otherwise…you could methodically uninstall any non-OS related apps (auto-boot sort of stuff) until you see improvement.

Hopefully at some point of doing this you regain stability. But if not…then maybe the issue is something like a:

- cookie issue
- plist issue
- preference issue
- permissions issue
- etc.

Of course you already mentioned running Onyx…so I won't suggest that.

If after all this problems persist…then you may need to do the fresh OS install.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Do you mean "rather NOT do a fresh install"??

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Haha, yes, yes I do.

pigoo3 said:

Don't forget to try the booting from an external drive idea. This the least invasive approach…and VERY fast if you've already got something setup.

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I've got a spare HD so maybe I'll give that a try.

pigoo3 said:

Otherwise…you could methodically uninstall any non-OS related apps (auto-boot sort of stuff) until you see improvement.

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Great idea. I think I'll keep a list of things running when (if) this happens again so as to minimize the uninstalling. Perhaps there's just one application in particular that isn't doing what it should be.

vansmith said:

Perhaps there's just one application in particular that isn't doing what it should be.

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This is what I was hoping/thinking too. I'm assuming nothing new has been installed since the problem started. Otherwise the last app installed (if recent) would be the first to uninstall.

If this computer has been stable for a while…then like you said…probably a single app. that's "confused" or something.

Of course we WANT this to be a software "thing"…and NOT hardware!

- Nick

The fact that the message you're getting is so distorted you can't read it suggests to me that your graphics chipset may be having issues.

This is what the kernel panic screen looks like in Yosemite:

Bryan,

You may have thought of this but have you tried running it without the external monitor? Just to see if things improve?

Lisa

chas_m said:

The fact that the message you're getting is so distorted you can't read it suggests to me that your graphics chipset may be having issues.

This is what the kernel panic screen looks like in Yosemite:

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That is indeed the message I see but I don't get a log or any sort of message. That said, I did find a panic log in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports which suggests that the active process at the time was umount. I don't remember this being the common thread but perhaps I was un-mounting disks each time this has happened?

lclev said:

Bryan,

You may have thought of this but have you tried running it without the external monitor? Just to see if things improve?

Lisa

Click to expand...

I have but it still happens then. I'm still in full "Inspector Gadget" mode here so I'll add that to the list of possibilities (being, what chas noted, as perhaps a graphics issue more broadly).