MacOS – MacBook Pro freeze and goes off by kernel panic

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience, so keep that in mind as I'm going to offer you quite a few troubleshooting steps below.

The first thing I would do is to test whether this behaviour is replicated in Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your MacBook Pro into Safe Mode:

1. Fully shut down your MacBook Pro
2. Restart your MacBook Pro
3. Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
4. Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
5. Take a note of what happens (i.e. is the issue still present when using Chrom and/or Photoshop)
6. Now exit Safe Mode by restarting your MacBook Pro as normal
7. Once logged in again, test to see whether the behaviour continues

Now, depending on the above testing, we can narrow down how to proceed:

• If the problem is still present during Safe Mode and afterwards, proceed to 1. Run Apple Diagnostics (see below).
• If the problem is not present during Safe Mode then it's time to investigate login items, fonts, and kernel extensions. If that's the case, proceed to 2. Investigating login items, fonts, and kernel extensions (see below).

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

1. Fully shut down your MacBook Pro
2. Restart your MacBook Pro
3. Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
4. Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
5. Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:
   • a No issues found message
   • a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions
6. If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

If you get an error let me know the results. If you get no error, skip to 3. Some suggestions re Google Chrome, Photoshop and macOS Sierra.

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Let's start with Login Items:

1. Startup normally
2. Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups
3. Select the Login Items tab
4. Take a note of your Login Items
5. Now remove all of them by highlighting them and clicking on the - button below
6. Restart your computer

Now your Mac will boot up without those login items loading. Test this and see if the problem persists:

• If the problem goes away you know one (or more) of the Login items were causing the problem. You can then add them back in one by one until you've identified the culprit. Problem solved.
• If the problem does persist, it's either a problem with fonts you've installed yourself or with a 3rd party kernel extension. A little more info below:

Fonts:- You can remove any of the fonts you've installed yourself to see if this makes a difference.

Kernel Extensions:- You can open Terminal (found within your Utilites folder) and enter the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

The above command will list 3rd party kernel extensions (you may need to stretch the Terminal window so it's easier to read). Look for anything you don't remember installing, or something that belongs to software you've removed, or just anything that looks out of place. Remember though, this is a list of 3rd party kernel extensions and therefore any of them could be causing the problem.

I would try the following suggestions to see if they have any impact on what's going on.

Google Chrome

I would strongly consider not using Chrome for a few days as a test. However, if you need to, there’s actually a setting in Google Chrome that may help you:

1. Go to Chrome > Preferences
2. Scroll down to the bottom
3. Click on Show advanced settings…
4. Scroll down to the System heading
5. Uncheck the Use hardware acceleration when available option

Adobe Photoshop

Likewise, you may be able to tinker with Photoshop’s settings as well. Depending on the version you use, if you go to Photoshop’s Preferences and look under the Performance category, there should be a section for GPU Settings. By going into its Advanced Settings you may be able to try different options for the mode of use. It will probably default to Normal, but you could change it to Basic and see whether Photoshop plays more nicely with your MBP. Under GPU settings you could also switch off OpenGL Drawing altogether, but that may limit some functionality.

macOS Sierra

There are a couple of things you can do within Sierra:

• You’re probably already aware of this one – but for your MBP you should have an additional setting under System Preferences > Energy Saver for Automatic graphics switching. Playing with this and the other Graphics option (for better battery life) may be useful.

• Now this one is not so obvious:

  1. Go to System Preferences
  2. Click on Accessibility
  3. Select Display (in the left-hand column)
  4. Tick the Reduce transparency box (on the right-hand side)
  5. Exit System Preferences

After making these changes, use your Mac long enough to see what difference, if any, they make. This is basically a troubleshooting step to help narrow down the possible cause of your problem, so let me know how you go.