Diagnosing issues with mac

Hi i am trying to diagnose some crashing/freezing problems on my computer, get an idea of how common/acceptable/expected this is or if there is something wrong with my computer, and what the next steps to take are. Could you please offer advice?

Here's whats happening:

I worked for about 6 hours yesterday in final cut pro x on a big project (4 minute music video with many layers of video). During this time, the mac completely froze three times (in each case, i waited for 20 minutes to see if it would start working again, but then i had to hold the power button to turn it off each time). There were also three instances when it crashed suddenly and restarted quickly automatically.

It does seem to happen most often when doing heavy cpu tasks like big projects in final cut pro x, time machine backups, or big data transfers. But it also crashed at times when i wasn't doing an edit on a very layered part of the video. Also, I worked on a much simpler project today for about two hours ( a 5 minutes video with just one layer of 1080 video) and the mac froze and then completely crashed once.

It's a bit wierd, because the mac rarely slows down before freezing/crashing- its usually a sudden thing.


I have been having this issue for a while (ever since i bought the computer), so yesterday i wiped the mac clean and reinstalled the OS X (and i didn't migrate old data/settings, and only installed essential apps). I also have third party ram chips from MacSales in, so i'm thinking that the next step may be to remove these (if these crashing isssues are not normal).



My computer stats/model:

www.dropbox.com/s/7fpmht1tbwfwx42/Screen...%2021.17.16.png?dl=0 [img]http://https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fpmht1tbwfwx42/Screenshot%202017-05-04%2021.17.16.png?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fpmht1tbwfwx42/Screenshot%202017-05-04%2021.17.16.png?dl=0[/img]
[img]http://https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fpmht1tbwfwx42/Screenshot%202017-05-04%2021.17.16.png?dl=0[/img]

Purchased in Oct 2016





A few questions:

Do you have crashing problems with your mac? I felt like a new mac should not be having problems like this- but is it to be expected?
(ALSO of note- i purchased and returned 5 imacs of the same model before this one because all of them had various issues with crashing/freezing. So i'm not sure if its just bad luck, bad manufacturing, something else, or maybe this all ties back into my RAM chips - which i've used in all imacs, but several i removed the RAM chips from several of the imacs that i returned and still had issues after testing them too)

What do you advise that i do? What is the next best steps?

Should i remove the RAM first and retest working in final cut pro x? (if/when i remove the ram, should i wipe the mac clean re-install the mac os x again (to remove possible problems the software could have picked up since re-installing the OS x)?

Should i take it to the apple store? (The mac still has 6 month apple care left so i want to make sure i get it 100% working as good as possible before then (or exchange for a different one if necessary.)

Thanks, Dan

danny klim wrote: ....crashing/freezing problems on my computer, get an idea of how common/acceptable/expected this is or if there is something wrong with my computer, and what the next steps to take are....Should i remove the RAM first and retest working in final cut pro x? (if/when i remove the ram, should i wipe the mac clean re-install the mac os x again (to remove possible problems the software could have picked up since re-installing the OS x)?...

While all software and all computers will crash occasionally, what you describe is not normal. Yes I'd suggest removing the RAM and test by running FCPX. You've already reinstalled macOS so that's probably not needed again.

There is a difference between an app crash/hang and an OS crash/hang. Normally if the app crashes or hangs you can do OPT+CMD+Esc to bring up the Force Quit window and terminate the hung app. In general an app should never be able to crash or hang the entire OS. If you cannot do a Force Quit on the app, maybe it's a hardware problem since you already reinstalled the OS.

Run Disk Utility First Aid to make sure your hard drives don't have filesystem corruption. Then run Apple hardware diagnostics: support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

If you are using any external drives, try to reproduce the problem without those being connected.

If that doesn't find anything and if it still crashes when running FCPX without the extra memory, you can take it to the Apple Genius Bar and they can run overnight bench diagnostics. These are much more rigorous than the Apple Diagnostics we have access to.

I vote for getting it to an Apple store to be checked out ASAP. MacSales has top quality RAM. Remove it to see if that's the issue. They do ship a bad card on very RARE occasion. But I doubt that's it. I could be wrong. Get it to an Apple Store ASAP. If it shuts itself down, or reboots on its own, most likely a hardware issue.

Hi Danny
I sincerely doubt that it is a hardware problem unless it relates to some attached device. I say this because you state you have had this problem with at least 5 different iMacs with and without the 3rd party RAM.
You can test the RAM using Terminal Memtest, or a GUI like Remember and Apple Diagnostics.
You have also had multiple macOS installs including factory installs and your re-install (clean).
After you disconnect any external device and still have this problem I would suspect some type of software issue. You don't say what programs you are using other than FCPX.

First I suggest you access the built-in diagnostic logs in your User>Library>DiagnosticReports and see what is causing the cause. Do these logs always point to one app or function causing the crash?
While we are at it, go to your System Preferences>Security&Privacy>Diagnostics & Privacy and uncheck the "Send Diagnostic and Usage Data to Apple" box. When your computer crashes it will pop-up a dialogue box allowing you to see the report. You can always then send to Apple after reading, but if the box is checked you will not see the pop-up crash report.
Inside these crash reports it will point to what is crashing the program or system. This is always my first stop in trying to locate the issue and it will be what Apple checks first too. You do have the option of getting phone support from Apple and they will most likely want to see these reports.
There are a couple of other tools you can use.
The first is EtreCheck. etrecheck.com/ EC looks at your system and attempts to explain in plain language what it finds including any incompatible apps and looks at last crash log. Free and pretty decent.
Next is Onyx for Mac. www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html Onyx puts a GUI face on lots of Terminal commands and lets you do many actions from one single app with a pretty good interface. Great for the Terminal shy, and a program I have been using for many years, even though I am OK in Terminal. Free download the version for your OS.

As Joema says, there are important differences for a system wide crash (panic) and an App crash, so be good to know.
What software are you using? Is it up to date and compatible with Sierra? Are you using any plug-ins and are they up to date? What type of codecs/framerates/resolution/effects are you using?

I think using the diagnostics reports and apps will give you a much better indictor of the problem.
Finally you can take it in, but really don't think it is hardware.

Hope this helps, Greg

Thanks everybody for so much thoughtful response!! I can’t say how much I appreciate your help

joema wrote: There is a difference between an app crash/hang and an OS crash/hang. Normally if the app crashes or hangs you can do OPT+CMD+Esc to bring up the Force Quit window and terminate the hung app. In general an app should never be able to crash or hang the entire OS. If you cannot do a Force Quit on the app, maybe it's a hardware problem since you already reinstalled the OS.

I am unable to force quit the app when it happens. There are also situations when final cut pro x crashes by itself (happens once every few days), while the rest of the Mac continues working and I just need to restart final cut pro x.- but this is not what I was talking about. In the situations I described earlier, the Mac will either a) freeze so that hitting opt+cmd+esc doesn’t nothing or b) just entirely turn off immediately.

joema wrote: Run Disk Utility First Aid to make sure your hard drives don't have filesystem corruption. Then run Apple hardware diagnostics: support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

Do you mean run First aid on my internal fusion drive or my external hard drive? Or both?

joema wrote: If you are using any external drives, try to reproduce the problem without those being connected.

If that doesn't find anything and if it still crashes when running FCPX without the extra memory, you can take it to the Apple Genius Bar and they can run overnight bench diagnostics. These are much more rigorous than the Apple Diagnostics we have access to.

Ok, I believe that I have seen the Mac crash without any external hard drives connected (and I know it has crashed with 2 different external hard drives connected at different times. To make sure, I will try to reproduce it without the external hard drive connected. I didn’t think of that - is it possible that the external hard drive could be causing the Mac to crash?

Note:

it is also possible that there is a problem with my external hard drive. There never seemed to be any problems at all with it in the past, but just today when I turned the Mac on I received this message:

www.dropbox.com/s/mk5xlon9h1bdn20/Image%...209.50%20AM.png?dl=0

After seeing that message, I tried backing up the folder with my most recent final cut pro x projects to a second external hard drive using CCC and received this message:

www.dropbox.com/s/cplt6gisaol69o4/PastedGraphic-1.png?dl=0


I followed the instructions in the last sentence of the message and it showed me this screen (not sure where the read error statistics are):

www.dropbox.com/s/idcjri2ivsfpbcs/PastedGraphic-2.png?dl=0




I have emailed both MacSales (who are also the manufacturer of the RAID hard drive I use) and CCC about this. Not sure how relevant it is to this discussion, because it hasn’t happened before today and the crashing has been going on for a long time.

Also- I don’t know if this is relevant at all so you might want to skip it- but in the email to MacSales I described a possible cause for todays issue of the RAID Drive messing up today. You can read it here (if you think it might be relevant):

"about 4 days ago, I started a time machine backup to the raid drive but then I cancelled it because the computer kept crashing during the backup and I decided that I didn’t really need to use time machine. After stopping time machine, I tried to delete the backup that it had started from the RAID because it was taking up 500GB. After I sent it to the trash from the finder, I was unable to remove it from the trash (it kept saying that it had system integrity files that it wouldn’t let it be delete or something. I tried a few different troubleshooting methods on the internet to delete it, but nothing worked. I tried using terminal to delete the file in the trash (but terminal wouldn’t accept my password), going into disk utility after turning computer on while holding command C and hitting first aid (but I got some sort of error message saying it couldn’t be done), and turning System integrity protection off to delete the file (this didn’t work either, and I turned it back on after it stopped working). Could any of this be related to this message today? I can’t understand how, because none of them worked and it was 4 days ago and the message just came today- but what do you think?"


Also, when I checked SoftRAID (the MacSales software to test the health of the device), it said the RAID drive has no errors. So I’m a bit confused- not sure if this is related to the Mac issues or a different thing entirely. I’ve attached screenshot here:
www.dropbox.com/s/mzny73twon8svl5/Screen...%2012.26.14.png?dl=0

VidGreg wrote: Hi Danny
I sincerely doubt that it is a hardware problem unless it relates to some attached device. I say this because you state you have had this problem with at least 5 different iMacs with and without the 3rd party RAM.
You can test the RAM using Terminal Memtest, or a GUI like Remember and Apple Diagnostics.
You have also had multiple macOS installs including factory installs and your re-install (clean).
After you disconnect any external device and still have this problem I would suspect some type of software issue. You don't say what programs you are using other than FCPX.

Hi VidGreg,
That makes sense.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the RAM tests you mentioned, but I have tried using an app that MacSales recommended called Rember. Is that what you meant by Remember or is that a different app?

I used Rember back in Sept/Oct 2016 when I had the issues with the computers and also tried it again last month. As far as I can remember, it came back showing that there was a failure of the RAM chips both times. But when I asked MacSales about this, they told me that it is common for the app to show a failure even when the RAM chips work totally fine. So I’m kind of confused- a failure makes me think thats where the issue is, but MacSales said that it wasn’t reliable.

Should I rethink this? Should I re-test using Rember or one of the other apps?

Also, are Rember and Terminal Memtest basically the same thing as Apple Diagnostics? I mean, should I do all 3 of those tests? Or should I just test it with one of them? And if so, which one(s)?

VidGreg wrote: First I suggest you access the built-in diagnostic logs in your User>Library>DiagnosticReports and see what is causing the cause. Do these logs always point to one app or function causing the crash?

While we are at it, go to your System Preferences>Security&Privacy>Diagnostics & Privacy and uncheck the "Send Diagnostic and Usage Data to Apple" box. When your computer crashes it will pop-up a dialogue box allowing you to see the report. You can always then send to Apple after reading, but if the box is checked you will not see the pop-up crash report.

Inside these crash reports it will point to what is crashing the program or system. This is always my first stop in trying to locate the issue and it will be what Apple checks first too. You do have the option of getting phone support from Apple and they will most likely want to see these reports.

1. I just tried to find diagnostic reports but I can’t find them in my user library folder. I’ve attached this screenshot of my finder window to be clear what I’m seeing:

www.dropbox.com/s/7h85fqos4h5hqv3/Screen...%2013.23.05.png?dl=0

Am I looking in the wrong place? Or do I need to have hidden folders shown or something like that? If so, what do I need to do to see it?


2. That option to send crash reports is and has been unchecked.

VidGreg wrote: There are a couple of other tools you can use.
The first is EtreCheck. etrecheck.com/ EC looks at your system and attempts to explain in plain language what it finds including any incompatible apps and looks at last crash log. Free and pretty decent.
Next is Onyx for Mac. www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html Onyx puts a GUI face on lots of Terminal commands and lets you do many actions from one single app with a pretty good interface. Great for the Terminal shy, and a program I have been using for many years, even though I am OK in Terminal. Free download the version for your OS.

Ok great, I had never heard of these (and seems helpful for somebody like me who isn’t very knowledgeable about terminal and programming in general).

Do you recommend using these tools in addition to the others you mentioned earlier?

And should I use both of them or just one? If just one, is there any advantage to using one over the other?

VidGreg wrote: As Joema says, there are important differences for a system wide crash (panic) and an App crash, so be good to know.
What software are you using? Is it up to date and compatible with Sierra?

1. I’ve just double checked, and it looks like all of my software is up to date and compatible with Sierra. Most of the applications are from the app store and everything has been downloaded in the past 2 days.I checked the applications that were not downloaded from the App Store and they all said compatible with Sierra.

2. A couple months ago, I uninstalled most of my applications and kept a log of all applications installed and uninstalled in an effort to troubleshoot which app could be causing issues. I can share that here if that would be helpful.

3. Here is a picture of my current applications folder:
www.dropbox.com/s/nr61v1ywk7laj8e/Screen...%2012.03.33.png?dl=0

I’ll break it down in more detail here:

These are the applications I have installed and regularly use (on all iMacs that have had issues):

Final cut pro x

Logic

Launchbar

Google Chrome

Evernote


I also have installed and regularly use these apps, but did not install them or start using them until the past few months (after all the of issues with first 5 Macs):

Keyboard Maestro

Just Press Record

Omnifocus

Scrivener

HoudahSpot

1Password

Pixelmator

Carbon Copy Cloner

Final Cut Manager

Dropbox

Copied



4. Another note: I also have owned a MacBook Pro for 3 years and have never had any crashing/freezing issues similar to the iMacs (It slows down more often then the iMac so I can’t work on big projects in final cut pro x, but it only completely crashes maybe once per year). I run all of the same software on the MacBook.

VidGreg wrote: Are you using any plug-ins and are they up to date? What type of codecs/framerates/resolution/effects are you using?

I think using the diagnostics reports and apps will give you a much better indictor of the problem.
Finally you can take it in, but really don't think it is hardware.

Hope this helps, Greg

1. I have no plug-ins installed.

2. I don’t know how to find out what codecs the camera files are. All the videos I’m using have been either:

A) shot with iphone

Shot with Nikon Coolpix s6900

C) Shot with lumix fz300

D) mp4 public domain videos downloaded from pixabay or youtube with videograbby.com



3. Framerates that I shot with are all 30

4. Mostly 1080 HD resolution. A couple 4k videos here and there from the Lumix or public domain.

5. A lot of green screen effects and shape mask. Some transparency/transform with key framing, stock effects like raindrops, and adjusting video speed on the complex projects. A little bit of color/looks effects. On the simple videos, nothing but some transparency/transform with key framing and transitions.



6. Helps sooo much!!






Another note:


Since I have purchased this new Mac, I have also been having an issue with external devices disconnecting from my mac during sleep. I’m not sure if this is related to these issues described here, but I think it could be (and maybe it could point towards a hardware or software issues?).

I have just described these problems here:
www.mac-forums.com/switcher-hangout/3408...eep.html#post1756664

FCPX.guru wrote: I vote for getting it to an Apple store to be checked out ASAP. MacSales has top quality RAM. Remove it to see if that's the issue. They do ship a bad card on very RARE occasion. But I doubt that's it. I could be wrong. Get it to an Apple Store ASAP. If it shuts itself down, or reboots on its own, most likely a hardware issue.

Ok, that’s what I was leaning towards. After reading through everybody’s suggestions, I think that my next steps are :

1. Run Disk utility first aid to make sure my hard drives don't have filesystem corruption.
2. Run Apple hardware diagnostics
3. Run Rember and/or Terminal Memtest
4. Run Etrecheck and/or Onyx
5. Disconnect all external hard drives, then test a big final cut pro x project with everything on the iMac
6. Remove the RAM and test final cut pro x again (without restoring the OS X again)
7. If that doesn’t fix it, take it to the Apple Store for overnight diagnostics

Does that plan make the most sense?

Or should I take it to the Apple Store earlier?

Or does the other information I’ve described suggest that I should change that plan?

Also, should I switch any of these steps into a different order?


Wow lol, thats a short book I just wrote! Thanks again so much for your help everybody!! Its so great that people like you are here and offer advice/help people like me with these kinds of issues

Boy Danny you just laid out a lot of missing data!!
Would really want to know if you can crash your system if your RAID is not connected!
Think I'll let MacSales deal with that one. IMHO if you are having issues with media I/O streaming to the RAM and not able to write, really think tis is a major FUBAR.
Also can't say I like seeing the WD MyBook as an attached drive as the stupid encryption on that drive and the WD Unlocker is FUBAR YMMV
Yes faulty external drives, cables, and disconnects can cause a crash. Important to see if removing external devices stops crashes.

Of some things I can answer
Your are looking in the wrong library. You are in System Library not User Library. Open a new Finder Window go to the "Go" Menu and click on that then press the "Option" key and a hidden Library folder will appear/disappear with the Option key. Click on the Library folder. This is much easier if you switch the view to "Columns" the third over at top of View icon window.
Now you can navigate as I wrote.
EtreCheck is really checking your apps and files mostly for compatibility and some other checks. Good to run.
Onyx is different in that it is a GUI for Terminal functions. Great for cleaning out temp files, viewing logs and changing Preference Settings including some Apple does not give you access too unless you use Terminal. Different App, different functions.
Apple Diagnostics Test runs many routines for system health beyond just RAM so run it too, but as mentioned this is the slimmed down version.
Yep, meant Rember not Remember (Damn You Autocorrect) AFAIK It is just a GUI for Memtest that you can run in Terminal. It only tests the RAM by running loops and stressing the RAM. I just might disagree with OWC on this because if RAM is faulty it can really cause havoc with system. Panic and App crashes are just some of the possibilities. They have always replaced RAM chips no questions asked if I found errors with Memtest or Rember. Don't like their answer at all, but what do I know?

One suggestion is to open Activity Monitor and use the X icon(top left) and you can Quit or Force Quit an app from there. Sometimes this works when just the keyboard shortcut won't.
When you have a system crash, do you still have curser control or is it a total lockup?

Ok looks like you can have a pretty complicated Projects. This will stress your system.
You can see lots of clip info in the Inspector pane. You may need to change the amount of info displayed, there is a pop up to for what gets shown.
Not sure about some of those camera codecs so can't comment. Remember that the manufacture has control of the data types and must provide code to Apple to translate the files.

I would really suspect your externals, or your RAM as most likely. Unfortunately, AFAK, Apple will only test it's own supplied products not 3rd party ones. They may have started allowing 3rd party RAM tests. Used to be they required you to remove all non Apple chips before they would test.

Good Luck! Something is wrong, just don't think it is the iMac.

Hope this helps, Greg

danny klim wrote: ....the Mac will either a) freeze so that hitting opt+cmd+esc doesn’t nothing or b) just entirely turn off immediately...

This should never happen and often indicates a hardware or device driver problem. This would be consistent with your disk I/O errors. Just because those were only recently reported doesn't mean they weren't happening at a lower level before. E.g, the disk can silently start doing many retries on a failing block and never report an error.

danny klim wrote: ....Do you mean run First aid on my internal fusion drive or my external hard drive? Or both?

Yes run it on each disk both the partition and the volume of each.

danny klim wrote: .....is it possible that the external hard drive could be causing the Mac to crash?

Yes. While this should not ideally happen -- the OS should gracefully handle each failure -- if the drive has I/O errors this can often destabilize the OS.

danny klim wrote: ....when I checked SoftRAID...it said the RAID drive has no errors. So I’m a bit confused...

Don't understand that myself -- I use OWC RAID-5 and SoftRAID with good results, but I've never had a drive fail so far. Normally I'd expect a hard error to show up in the SoftRAID interface. With RAID-5 it should take the failing drive off line and indicate that on the OWC front panel, plus in the SoftRAID software.

Re hardware vs software as problem source, it's possible it started as a hardware problem and all the crashes caused some kind of data corruption which causes FCPX crashes. E.g, the preference file can get corrupted or various other files. You can check for file system integrity with First Aid but this does not check the internal composition of user files. For the FCPX prefs you can reset those, creating a new file using this method: support.apple.com/en-us/HT203477

For possible corruption in the FCPX library or video data files that's harder to test but you can at least discard and rebuild all render and proxy files.

As stated before, in general nothing FCPX (or any other app) does should crash the entire OS -- the design of a protected memory OS usually avoids this. If the OS is crashing or hanging that normally indicates a hardware, driver or disk data corruption problem. If the system is unstable due to intermittent I/O errors behavior can be erratic and unpredictable -- app can crash one time, then the entire OS the next time.

Just ran across an article about a free beta testing app for users of SoftRAID called SmartAlec. Sounds like a good diagnostic app to have on board.
Here's the link of the article I first saw it in… macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20170503_1100-SmartAlec.html
and here is direct link for getting SmartAlec… www.smartalec.biz/index.php

This might be helpful to you Danny

Best of Luck, Greg

VidGreg wrote: Boy Danny you just laid out a lot of missing data!!
Would really want to know if you can crash your system if your RAID is not connected!
Think I'll let MacSales deal with that one. IMHO if you are having issues with media I/O streaming to the RAM and not able to write, really think tis is a major FUBAR.
Also can't say I like seeing the WD MyBook as an attached drive as the stupid encryption on that drive and the WD Unlocker is FUBAR YMMV
Yes faulty external drives, cables, and disconnects can cause a crash. Important to see if removing external devices stops crashes.

- Thanks, I just tried editing a project in final cut pro x without having the RAID connected or any other external hard drive and it just crashed after about 1.5 hrs of working. This time, a black dialogue came on the screen saying something like “you’re computer is restarting because of a problem”. I have received this crashing message about 10-20% of the time that it crashes.

Does that help diagnose it? Can I be sure that there is a problem with the Mac, RAM, or software now (and not [just] the hard drive)?

I’m sorry but am getting a bit confused here. What do you mean by FUBAR? And YMMV?

Btw, the WD MyBook drive isn’t usually attached, thats just a secondary backup drive that I backup with (using CCC) occasionally.

VidGreg wrote: Of some things I can answer
Your are looking in the wrong library. You are in System Library not User Library. Open a new Finder Window go to the "Go" Menu and click on that then press the "Option" key and a hidden Library folder will appear/disappear with the Option key. Click on the Library folder. This is much easier if you switch the view to "Columns" the third over at top of View icon window.
Now you can navigate as I wrote.

Are you sure that I’m in the system library? I followed your steps and I’m pretty sure I’m in the user library and still not seeing the diagnostic reports folder. Does this screenshot show that I’m in the user library folder but that diagnostics reports is not there? Or am I missing something?

www.dropbox.com/s/7h85fqos4h5hqv3/Screen...%2013.23.05.png?dl=0

VidGreg wrote: EtreCheck is really checking your apps and files mostly for compatibility and some other checks. Good to run.
Onyx is different in that it is a GUI for Terminal functions. Great for cleaning out temp files, viewing logs and changing Preference Settings including some Apple does not give you access too unless you use Terminal. Different App, different functions.
Apple Diagnostics Test runs many routines for system health beyond just RAM so run it too, but as mentioned this is the slimmed down version.
Yep, meant Rember not Remember (Damn You Autocorrect) AFAIK It is just a GUI for Memtest that you can run in Terminal. It only tests the RAM by running loops and stressing the RAM. I just might disagree with OWC on this because if RAM is faulty it can really cause havoc with system. Panic and App crashes are just some of the possibilities. They have always replaced RAM chips no questions asked if I found errors with Memtest or Rember. Don't like their answer at all, but what do I know?

Ok, it seems like all of these applications have different functions/uses, so I’m thinking that the best option is to run all of these different applications to run all of their tests. That seems like the best way to diagnose the issue, right?

VidGreg wrote: One suggestion is to open Activity Monitor and use the X icon(top left) and you can Quit or Force Quit an app from there. Sometimes this works when just the keyboard shortcut won't.
When you have a system crash, do you still have curser control or is it a total lockup?

In most cases, I lose curser control as well and have a total lockup.

VidGreg wrote: Ok looks like you can have a pretty complicated Projects. This will stress your system.
You can see lots of clip info in the Inspector pane. You may need to change the amount of info displayed, there is a pop up to for what gets shown.
Not sure about some of those camera codecs so can't comment. Remember that the manufacture has control of the data types and must provide code to Apple to translate the files.

I would really suspect your externals, or your RAM as most likely. Unfortunately, AFAK, Apple will only test it's own supplied products not 3rd party ones. They may have started allowing 3rd party RAM tests. Used to be they required you to remove all non Apple chips before they would test.

Good Luck! Something is wrong, just don't think it is the iMac.

Hope this helps, Greg

Thanks Greg, it helps a lot. Thanks so much



I just tried checked the codecs. But I’m thinking that this isn’t a problem with final cut pro x specifically because crashing issues are happening in other applications when final cut pro x is closed. If it matters, the codecs I see are:

AAC , H.264 (iPhone)

‘Avc1’ , AAC (Panasonic Lumix)

iCatch AVCC (Nikon s6900)

joema wrote:

danny klim wrote: ....the Mac will either a) freeze so that hitting opt+cmd+esc doesn’t nothing or b) just entirely turn off immediately...

This should never happen and often indicates a hardware or device driver problem. This would be consistent with your disk I/O errors. Just because those were only recently reported doesn't mean they weren't happening at a lower level before. E.g, the disk can silently start doing many retries on a failing block and never report an error.

I’m a bit confused what this means. First off, what is a device driver problem? Is that something that I should test for or keep in mind, outside of a hardware/software problem?

And what do you mean by recently reported? I have been having this crashing problem basically since I bought the Mac. And there it seems to happen suddenly without any warning.

danny klim wrote: ....when I checked SoftRAID...it said the RAID drive has no errors. So I’m a bit confused...

Don't understand that myself -- I use OWC RAID-5 and SoftRAID with good results, but I've never had a drive fail so far. Normally I'd expect a hard error to show up in the SoftRAID interface. With RAID-5 it should take the failing drive off line and indicate that on the OWC front panel, plus in the SoftRAID software.

Re hardware vs software as problem source, it's possible it started as a hardware problem and all the crashes caused some kind of data corruption which causes FCPX crashes. E.g, the preference file can get corrupted or various other files. You can check for file system integrity with First Aid but this does not check the internal composition of user files. For the FCPX prefs you can reset those, creating a new file using this method: support.apple.com/en-us/HT203477


For possible corruption in the FCPX library or video data files that's harder to test but you can at least discard and rebuild all render and proxy files.

As stated before, in general nothing FCPX (or any other app) does should crash the entire OS -- the design of a protected memory OS usually avoids this. If the OS is crashing or hanging that normally indicates a hardware, driver or disk data corruption problem. If the system is unstable due to intermittent I/O errors behavior can be erratic and unpredictable -- app can crash one time, then the entire OS the next time.[/quote]



The crashing isn’t just happening when using final cut pro x, it also happens when final cut pro x is completely closed but I am doing large file transfers, using time machine, or even sometimes recording in logic.

I feel like its less likely that fixing final cut pro x prefs and files will fix the overall issues happening with all of the apps. Or do you think that it is definitely a good idea take these steps as well?


Also, there are many applications which crash rather frequently and don’t shut down the Mac. Omnifocus and google chrome, for example, both crash suddenly about once per week on average- but I get similar behavior on my old MacBook so I always thought that this kind of crashing was to be expected.

Thanks for all of the input joema!

VidGreg wrote: Just ran across an article about a free beta testing app for users of SoftRAID called SmartAlec. Sounds like a good diagnostic app to have on board.
Here's the link of the article I first saw it in… macperformanceguide.com/blog/2017/20170503_1100-SmartAlec.html
and here is direct link for getting SmartAlec… www.smartalec.biz/index.php

This might be helpful to you Danny

Best of Luck, Greg

Thanks for thinking of me. I will download the beta and run this as well.







My updated plan of diagnosing/fixing these issues is now:




(I should run all of the following steps 1-5 with the external hard drives connected, right?)

1. Run Disk utility first aid to make sure my hard drives don't have filesystem corruption.
2. Run Apple hardware diagnostics
3. Run Rember and/or Terminal Memtest
4. Run Etrecheck and/or Onyx
5. Run Smart Alec
6. Remove the RAM and test final cut pro x again (without restoring the OS X again)

(Should I run steps 1-5 again here?)

7. If that doesn’t fix it, take it to the Apple Store for overnight diagnostics



Does that plan make the most sense? Or should I change/add any of these steps?


Thanks again everybody

-dan

danny klim wrote: ....I’m a bit confused what this means. First off, what is a device driver problem? Is that something that I should test for or keep in mind, outside of a hardware/software problem?

Applications exist in "user mode" of a protected address space and cannot generally crash the OS. Device drivers can be in "kernel mode" and can crash the system, but they are normally heavily tested. That was just a general statement, since people think the app is at fault when the entire OS crashes. There is nothing you can test for in this regard.

danny klim wrote: .....The crashing isn’t just happening when using final cut pro x, it also happens when final cut pro x is completely closed but I am doing large file transfers, using time machine, or even sometimes recording in logic....

This shows it's not a FCPX problem, and doing things like trashing prefs, etc. will not fix it. The entire system is unstable, whether due to hardware or OS software issues. The first thing Apple will tell you is reinstall macOS, which you've already done. The next thing they'll tell you is back up your user content, erase the entire hard drive, then re-install the OS, and all apps from scratch. Then copy your user files (video files, library files, etc) back and try it again. This can be a huge effort if you have many utilities and plug-ins, since they must all be individually re-authenticated unless they were purchased from the Mac App store or FxFactory. However you don't really have a choice.

If that doesn't work you should probably have the Genius Bar run multi-day bench diagnostics on the hardware.

Danny,

First thing you could try is take the 2 x 16GB RAM sticks (with are from an external vendor) out of your iMac and see if your system still crashes with the native 8 GB Apple RAM. Why? Because your iMac only support 32GB RAM, and I have seen people with 40GB RAM configurations having exactly the same issues.

Once you are sure the RAM is not the culprit, follow the steps described above or take your computer to a certified Apple tech. There is something really wrong with this.

- Ronny

Hi Dan
Ronny's advise is good, remove the 2 X 16 OWC RAM and see if you can crash the system. You might also fire up Rember and let run for awhile. If you have no issues, then I would remove the Apple RAM and install the OWC RAM and test those sticks the same way. See if there is any report of bad RAM.

Good call Ronny, didn't think about the 32 limit, but know of folks running more without issues, but good to eliminate that possibility.

Dan the fact that your system is still crashing even when the external RAID and other devices are disconnected pretty much eliminates that as a issue. I would leave them disconnected until you work out where the issue is from. Just one less possible problem to not have. Once you eliminate the crashing, then reconnect and make sure it doesn't start crashing again.

Take Ronny's advice and let's see if that is the issue.

Hope this helps, Greg

Hi i'm back to follow up on the issue

Also Thanks again everybody for your help! And thanks joema, Ronny, and Vidgreg for your most recent posts in the thread.

I removed the RAM from the imac one week ago and the problems seem to be mostly fixed. There have been no crashes/freezes since removing the ram. I just did a very big project in final cut pro x yesterday/today for 10 hrs and, while the applicaiton of final cut pro x has crashed many times, the system has not crashed once.


There is one issue that has occurred twice in the past week. After the imac has not been touched for a while and the display goes to sleep, it did not turn back on. I tried moving the mouse and using the keyboard, but the computer screen stayed black (the only exception to this- when i hit the media play/pause/next/previous buttons, itunes did still play songs and i could hear them in the system speakers no problem). I tried opt+command+esc and other keyboard shortcuts, but the only way i could successfully turn my computer back on was to hold the power button and then turn it back on from scratch. I think this issue also happened occasionally before i removed the ram.

Now i'm trying to figure out what was going on with this and how i should respond.

I believe that my mac is set to not go into sleep, so i think it was just that the mac wouldn't wake from display being powered off.. If it helps, here are my sleep settings:
www.dropbox.com/s/v98xd8kd82ar03s/Screen...%2021.37.11.png?dl=0

Should i be concerned about this issue? Is this acceptable behavior for the mac? Or might it be a sign of a deeper problem?

Anybody have any input about what this issue could be? Does it sound like hardware problem with the mac or something else?

Any way to trouble shoot it?
I've been using the mac without any external hard drive attached since uninstalling the RAM to limit variables. I'm wondering if i should try to limit more variables by unplugging my usb hub, audio interface, or uninstalling more applications (although i'm still running with a minimum of only essential apps).

Or is there anything else i should try/test? Is this a good reason to still take it to the apple store or run more tests?


Also, as a sidenote- I expected that the computer would be running slower without the extra RAM installed, but its not very noticable and I am not sure if it is running slower at all. Should the speed difference be noticable without the 32gb RAM in there? Or maybe it wasn't speeding it up like it should have?


Also- Should i still try taking out the apple ram and putting in just the OWC ram?


PS
I also ran Rember, first Aid, Onyx and Etrecheck on both the day before and the day after i removed the RAM. I can share these results if its helpful.

Hey could anybody please offer some input about this?

The issue with the mac display not turning on happened again this morning. I'm feeling great about the improvements after taking out the RAM, but am not sure if i should be concerned about this issue and what i should do about it. Would really appreciate to hear some outside opinions

BTW I'd be glad to clarify or explain any part of the last post if there's something that doesnt make sense.

RAM won't make your computer "faster" all that much, just more responsive, more efficient, more stable.

You could put the OWC RAM back in, remove the Apple RAM, just to see what happens. If you find the OWC RAM is bad, send it back to them for replacement. They have great customer service. Or just call their tech support about it.

Monitor not waking up, check your Energy settings in System Preferences, what are they set to? Also be sure you have the Screen Saver turned off. If none of those settings help, I'd take your iMac into an Apple Store to get checked out.

FCPX.guru wrote: RAM won't make your computer "faster" all that much, just more responsive, more efficient, more stable.

You could put the OWC RAM back in, remove the Apple RAM, just to see what happens. If you find the OWC RAM is bad, send it back to them for replacement. They have great customer service. Or just call their tech support about it.

Monitor not waking up, check your Energy settings in System Preferences, what are they set to? Also be sure you have the Screen Saver turned off. If none of those settings help, I'd take your iMac into an Apple Store to get checked out.

Thanks for the quick response!

-What do you mean by more responsive and efficient, but not faster? I was thinking faster was synonymous with those terms.

-Ok, ill try that with the OWC RAM.

-Here's the energy saver preferences:
www.dropbox.com/s/v98xd8kd82ar03s/Screen...%2021.37.11.png?dl=0
Is there anything that i should change here that might help solve the issue?

- My screensaver was on at 20 minutes and i just set it to never, so maybe that was contributing to the issue. I'll monitor it to see if it fixes it

Rule Of Thumb from back in the day was that you should turn off the ability for drives to sleep. Maybe left-over from legacy days, when the OS would put drives to sleep during timeline renders and other background tasks. Not sure that's true today. I keep it off out of habit.

I also turn off Power Nap. Again, but much more recently Power Nap was an issue. I keep it off, usually, not always, depends on what Mac I'm on at the time. And my mood that day.