MBP (15-inch, 2018) completely freezes, forced to restart with power button

lorikku wrote:

Lately my MBP has been having this weird issue where it just completely freezes, and there's nothing I can do with it anymore. The only thing that still works is my cursor, which I'm able to move everywhere, but that's it. No sound, no visual feedback, my desktop just completely freezes, forcing me to restart it by holding down the power button.

Occasionally, it has happened that my MBP just immediately crashes instead of freezing, which according to the crash report was caused by a kernel panic caused by the WindowServer being unresponsive.

Crash report can be found here: https://pastebin.com/PfnWgAap•

So according to my current diagnostics, it seems that the WindowServer keeps getting unresponsive, which I think is the cause of the freezes as well... The freeze happens anywhere from 0 to 10 times a day, it's very random.

I don't know how to tackle the issue, or what to do to fix it. I don't know what causes the WindowServer to stop working either.

What I've tried so far:

Upgraded to the latest MacOS version

• Done a thorough clean-up of my mac

• Reset the NVRAM/PRAM

• Reset the SMC

• Done a Disk Util first aid (no faults detected)

• Ran my MBP in diagnostic mode (no faults detected)

I hope someone can help me out here, as it's really annoying and I do need it to do my job properly. Thanks in advance!

Kernel Panics are predominately caused by hardware faults or faulty third-party kernel extensions

Learn what to do if your computer restarts or shuts down unexpectedly, or you get a message that your computer restarted or shut down because of a problem.

If your Mac spontaneously restarts or displays a ... - Apple Support

If your Mac restarted because of a problem - Apple Support

To trouble shoot further you can:

—SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomaliess

Takes a bit longer to get to the login screen, does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, font cache, etc.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

In Safe mode third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled, it removes malware, etc impacting the smooth operation, however a reboot will put it back to normal mode.

This test will tell you if third party interference; extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account. 

Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus

all known to cause issues on the macOS