Screen freezes, when restart or shut down

[Chesko1904]

Good day, everyone,

I have a 27 inch iMac 2017 running Catalina.

recently, I’ve been having problems when restarting or shutting down my system.
The screen freezes on the home screen, but cannot see any folders or options. Just the cursor.

every time this happens, I’m forced to do a hard reset by holding the on off button.

i’ve tried resetting the SMG in the NV ram, but nothing has changed.

i’ve also made sure that all my programs are shut down, and that any external devices are unplugged. Still no luck!

Anybody else having this problem?

 

[ferrarr]

Start up in safe boot mode.

Start up your Mac in safe mode

Starting up your Mac in safe mode may help you diagnose problems with your Mac.

support.apple.com

See if the issue persists?

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum.

How long are you waiting for it to finish? Some things take a while to close out. Using the power button is a very, vary bad idea and should be an absolute last resort. Brute forcing it down is going to make the problem worse, not better.

What did you do right before the problem started? What changed?

 

[Chesko1904]

I know you’re right!

i’ve only been shutting it down this way to see if the problem was fixed after I did the various resets.

No I’m hoping to find a solution through this post.

I’ve been leaving my computer on since.

The only thing different that I’ve done recently is added clean my Mac X to my list of applications and I’m wondering if that’s the problem but it seems strange.

i’m considering updating my OS X.

what do you think?

 

[MacInWin]

Get rid of CMM. It has caused problems in the past with strange things happening. There are advocates for it here, but I think the majority of us will say that it is not needed and may do harmful things. Make sure you do a full uninstall, if you decide to do so, it does leave debris all over the system.

 

[Rod]

Last things first, upgrading your macOS is highly unlikely to fix any problem. It is advisable that any problems you are having be fixed before upgrading.
Why did you install Clean My Mac X, were you already having a problem you thought it might fix? Have you run CMMX already and if so did you only run Smart Scan and Clean?
How much storage do you have free on your internal drive now?
Have you tried running First Aid on your Macintosh HD from Disk Utility?

 

[krs]

Get rid of CMM. It has caused problems in the past with strange things happening. There are advocates for it here, but I think the majority of us will say that it is not needed and may do harmful things. Make sure you do a full uninstall, if you decide to do so, it does leave debris all over the system.

Couldn't agree more.
Do that before even trying anything else.
And if that doesn't fix the problem, try booting into a clone before you installed CMM (if you have one) to eliminate the possibility that CMM made a change to the software that uninstalling CMM does not reverse.

 

[Chesko1904]

I decided to install clean my Mac because I had it on my MacBook Pro and I found it was an easy way to get rid of some unnecessary cache and files.

didn’t think it could possibly cause a problem though because I haven’t had any problems on my MacBook Pro!

This morning I did a complete uninstall of clean my Mac and then tried restarting my computer. Unfortunately, I have the same issue frozen screen and I can’t do anything.

i’ve decided to leave it and take my dog for a walk to see if giving it some extra time does anything.

When I get home, if I still have a frozen screen, I will hard shut down my iMac again, and try booting up into an olWhen I get home, if I still have a frozen screen, I will hard shut down my iMac again, and try booting up into A time machine back up before I installed clean my Mac.

Still curious to know if anyone else has ever had this issue.

 

[Chesko1904]

Last things first, upgrading your macOS is highly unlikely to fix any problem. It is advisable that any problems you are having be fixed before upgrading.
Why did you install Clean My Mac X, were you already having a problem you thought it might fix? Have you run CMMX already and if so did you only run Smart Scan and Clean?
How much storage do you have free on your internal drive now?
Have you tried running First Aid on your Macintosh HD from Disk Utility?

I have a 1 tb hard drive and it’s only half full.
I did try running first aid on my internal disk.

 

[Chesko1904]

I figured out the problem!!!

I had recently upgraded my ram in the iMac, adding two extra sticks of crucial 16 GB RAM. Bringing it to 40 GB

I never thought it could have been a hardware issue!
Also, because on the crucial website, this ram indicates compatible with my iMac!

I would really like to have more than the stock 8 GB due to the work flow that I have going through my machine.

What should I do try with another Make and model of ram?

 

[ferrarr]

Did you buy the RAM from Crucial? Contact them and see what they suggest.

 

[krs]

I figured out the problem!!!

I had recently upgraded my ram in the iMac, adding two extra sticks of crucial 16 GB RAM. Bringing it to 40 GB

I never thought it could have been a hardware issue!
Also, because on the crucial website, this ram indicates compatible with my iMac!

I would really like to have more than the stock 8 GB due to the work flow that I have going through my machine.

What should I do try with another Make and model of ram?

Have you tried eqch of the new 16 GB Crucial RAM sticks individually?
And even tried the various RAM sticks in different slots?

 

[Chesko1904]

Did you buy the RAM from Crucial? Contact them and see what they suggest.

It is crucial ram. I’m going to try a couple different variations before I contact crucial for a refund.

 

[Chesko1904]

Have you tried eqch of the new 16 GB Crucial RAM sticks individually?
And even tried the various RAM sticks in different slots?

Initially what I did was moved the stock, Mac ram to slots two and four, and put the crucial ram into slots one and three. That’s when the freezing started.

now all I’ve done is put the stock ram back in slots, one and three and the freezing has stopped.

next, I was thinking of taking out the stock ram and trying to run just the crucial ram in slots one and three to verify if the problem is the third-party ram or the compatibility with Mac’s stock ram.

 

[krs]

Initially what I did was moved the stock, Mac ram to slots two and four, and put the crucial ram into slots one and three. That’s when the freezing started.

Why did you move the stock RAM to different slots?
I would have just added the new RAM to the empty slots.

now all I’ve done is put the stock ram back in slots, one and three and the freezing has stopped.

To be clear......do you only have the stock RAM installed or also the Crucial RAM?
And why in slots 1 & 3? The requirement to install RAM in specific slots disappeared years ago afaik.

next, I was thinking of taking out the stock ram and trying to run just the crucial ram in slots one and three to verify if the problem is the third-party ram or the compatibility with Mac’s stock ram.

With my suggestion I was trying to determine if perhaps one of the Crucial RAM sticks is defective or possible one of the RAM slots is.
I'm not familiar with this iMac, but I think it should run just fine with one RAM stick so you could try each RAM in each slot first to see if a particular Crucial RAM or slot positions causes the issue.

 

[Rod]

Yes, its the old process of eleimination. If you were to sat try each of the RAM sticks in slot 1 and they all worked then you could pretty much assume it was a slot. If not then it's the stick/s that is/are faulty.

Either way ay least it appears your problem is not software which is a releife in a way because it's much harder to troubleshoot.

 

[Chesko1904]

When I first got the extra RAM, what I did was open up the ramp port, and just add the third-party ram to the empty slots. when my computer wouldn’t turn on, I looked up a few different tutorials online. I found one that said that I should move stock rams to slot two and four and new third-party RAM to slot one and three.

when I did that, my computer turned on, and I thought everything was fine. Then the problem with the shut down began.

then, when I took the third-party, ran out and left stock ram in slots, two and four again my computer would not turn on, so I moved them back to one and three.

I’m not too familiar with it having for ram slots. It’s my first iMac and up until now I’ve always had MacBook pros with two slots.

anyway, this morning I have a bit of time and I’m going to try some different variations to see what happens!

In the meantime, thanks for all the info and I will keep posting

 

[Chesko1904]

I’ve tried different variations of stock in third-party RAM, and now that I’m back to just the stock ram my computer is having the same issues as before, not shutting down or restarting, even with just the stock RAM installed.

i’m back to thinking it might be a software issue

 

[Chesko1904]

Now I’ve tried booting up in safe mode and shutting down that way.

it seems to be shutting down with no issues in safe mode.

Not sure what I should do next!

 

[ferrarr]

Create a new user account for testing. See if the issue occurs on that account as well. You can make it a Standard account.