Countless issues with Catalina

shifty_uk · 2 Jun 2020 at 18:34

How has everyone else found Catalina to date?

I have a 27inch iMac and Macbook Pro, both circa 2016/17 and a few weeks ago finally decided to upgrade. I've had an abundance of issues since...

Issues I've still not been able to diagnose:

iMac:
- I cannot connect my external monitor at all. I've followed all the tutorials, nothing works (HDMI display port), it simply will not recognise displays anymore.
- My computer crashes due to lack of external display(this existed pre-upgrade) but is made worse as I now have no external display.
- 90%+ CPU usage on processes like photoanalysisid, accountsd , nsurlsessionid etc etc. I force quit but they come back before long.
- Emails with attachments sit in my outbox (using mac mail with office 365)

MBP
- The fan keeps going nuts.
- 90%+ CPU usage on processes like photoanalysisid, accountsd , nsurlsessionid etc etc. I force quit but they come back before long.
- accountsd etc using an insane amount of ram

Anyone else has these or have any tips for fixing? I've followed tutorials, deleting some log files via command line, enabling screen recording for the displays(there's nothing for me to toggle on and off!) and installing drivers but nothing works!

Feek · 2 Jun 2020 at 21:29

I've got the 2017 iMac and 2016 MacBook and haven't experienced any of that, I do use an external monitor, the connection type is Thunderbolt/DisplayPort and I'm looking at that screen right now.

EyeDot · 3 Jun 2020 at 09:54

Feek said:
I've got the 2017 iMac and 2016 MacBook and haven't experienced any of that, I do use an external monitor, the connection type is Thunderbolt/DisplayPort and I'm looking at that screen right now.

This, all perfect here.. hell since the last update my external monitor even worked without me having to lift the lid to login (as i used to have to following every reboot)

visibleman · 3 Jun 2020 at 12:34

shifty_uk said:
How has everyone else found Catalina to date?

Like every other major MacOS version - typical Apple half-baked software that's initially problematic but the first/second minor update usually fixes the a lot of the issues and bugs.

I'd try and NVRAM (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204063) and SMC (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201295) first. It's the typical go-to for Mac's and it's 50/50 whether or not it corrects the problem(s).

But personally, backup, reinstall MacOS (nuke the drive using Disk Utility at the start of installation) and make sure the Mac is fully up-to-date before setup/installing additional software and hardware.

shifty_uk said:
...(using mac mail with office 365)...

If you have access to (desktop) Outlook through your O365 licence, then i would switch. It's vastly superior (still missing features compared to Windows variant though) to Mac Mail and on the whole it just works. Mac Mail with Exchange/O365 has caused me no end of issues over the years dealing with it in SMB environments.

Ninco! · 4 Jun 2020 at 21:16

iMac late 2012 model, sat mothballed for 3 years. Converted to an external SSD last year and updated to Mojave. I thought my Mac was obsolete for Catalina. I inadvertently updated to Catalina (thought it was a Mojave update) but it worked and still updates come through. A bit worried about bricking at some stage - only to date it has been running fine, lost some old legacy apps which I have removed. Do miss my old copy of Macromedia Director but still have a copy for my PC.

Fans are fine, downloaded a fan app to blow out the dust which lingers in the lower corners of the screen (worked well to disperse).

Dust was caused when my ex liked decorating the place with candles (years ago I asked Macrumours forum, whether candles could be a source for dust patches but it got poo-poohed; now lots of people are moaning about dust in the lower edges). Its cleared now (pretty much). Don't have any candles near your iMac as I think it will hoover up the soot (well that's my theory)!

Office 2011 dead, other than that, dual screen works fine, slows a bit with Adobe 2020 but still manageable. I can't tell the difference when running earlier versions of OSX now its running off an SSD, minimal beachball. Undoubtably a newer model will be quicker but for an 8 year old model - I am gobsmacked, thought my iMac was a write off, so now using daily until it calls it a day.

MacRS4 · 4 Jun 2020 at 23:15

I finally got the OS rage yesterday and downgraded my iMac Pro and the Mac Mini it works with both to Mojave. The issues with Catalina were doing my head in. The large set copying was a known issue but the work-arounds seem furiously unreliable.

10.15.5 beta seemed to sort it for a while, then it came out of beta, and here I am in a world of copying pain again.

Copying large-ish data sets between the two units whether over 1GBe, 10GBe, or Thunderbolt 3. it would often just hang and fail in the copy. Infuriating.

Fresh install on Mojave and all those little snags like that have gone.

Feek · 5 Jun 2020 at 22:46

MacRS4 said:
Copying large-ish data sets between the two units whether over 1GBe, 10GBe, or Thunderbolt 3. it would often just hang and fail in the copy. Infuriating.

This is quite intriguing as over the last couple of months, I've completely rebuilt a large Plex library involving many terabytes of copying/moving between internal, external and network devices without a blip. No issues whatsoever.

MacRS4 · 6 Jun 2020 at 11:05

I'm not talking about just my two main machines sat next to each other (an iMac Pro/Mac Mini), we have several of them with similar setups - and ALL of them display this issue in one way or another.

I suspect we're not talking about the same thing. I'm guessing you'll have multiple smaller files. I/we don't - we'll often have single 100GB+ disk images or libraries. Internal fine, across 10GB or TB3 regularly fails.

It's a well documented issue by several peeople.

For example: https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...a-10154-from-hanging-when-copying-large-files

//Edit to add non-competitor version of the link

Seemed to go away in the 10.15.5 betas, came back strong with the 10.15.5 release.

And as a quick side-note, not a single issue with my two (Two imac pros, two Mac Minis, in two different offices on two different networks) since I downgraded them to Mojave. Different kit too. My home one is an 8 Core 'pro with a 6 core mini, on an OWC Thunderbay 4 TB3 drive connected to the mini. Network I can connect either via a TB3 connection or a 10GBe connection - same issue on both connections.

Office is over 10GBe Cisco something or other, to a QNAP NAS. The QNAP NAS also has a thunderbolt connection - and I've tried to connecting directly to it from the 10 core 'pro I have there. Exactly the same issue.

Mojave - both sets work fine.

Feek · 6 Jun 2020 at 14:34

Understood, it’s a different usage case.

MacRS4 · 6 Jun 2020 at 16:49

Could you feel my frustration and rage when I was writing that - at Apple, not you,obvs

Honestly, I've lost hours of time to it. I was even resorting to copying stuff to an SSD and then to the server from the SSD, which is utterly bonkers.

Weirdly, my MBP on Catalina with a 10Gbe TB3 adapter copies stuff just fine, whereas my iMac Pro / Mini if either are on Catalina (I can dual boot them), they fail 1 in 3 times.