Monkey_Demon
Explorer
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2016
- Messages
- 85
About a month ago, my late 2012 iMac running macOS Mojave (10.14.6) started crashing at seemingly random times. By "crashing" I mean it simply turned off. Everything stopped. To restart, I'd have to reset the SMC by unplugging the computer and letting it sit a few minutes. Upon restarting, various softwares would give messages saying they'd not been shut down properly. This was the only way I knew the system had crashed rather than just shut down. There were no warnings, error messages, etc. And the crash would happen up to several times per day, including overnight while the computer was just not being used.
I took the iMac into my local authorized Apple repair shop, and they found nothing wrong. In fact, they kept the computer up and running for several days over a long weekend without a single crash.
Upon bringing the computer home, the problem immediately cropped up again. I then disconnected all peripherals except a USB keyboard, second monitor, and CAT5 cable. The problem persisted. Finally, for an entirely different purpose, I shut off the FreeNAS server on my network. Suddenly the iMac stopped crashing. It's been over a week with the server turned off and no crashes.
One of the techs at the repair shop said he's seen this before when Apple Time Machine was backing up to a customer's NAS. But in my case, I didn't configure TM to use the NAS until the iMac was already acting up. So although I think the problem is definitely related to the NAS, I doubt it's specifically due to TM.
I took the iMac into my local authorized Apple repair shop, and they found nothing wrong. In fact, they kept the computer up and running for several days over a long weekend without a single crash.
Upon bringing the computer home, the problem immediately cropped up again. I then disconnected all peripherals except a USB keyboard, second monitor, and CAT5 cable. The problem persisted. Finally, for an entirely different purpose, I shut off the FreeNAS server on my network. Suddenly the iMac stopped crashing. It's been over a week with the server turned off and no crashes.
One of the techs at the repair shop said he's seen this before when Apple Time Machine was backing up to a customer's NAS. But in my case, I didn't configure TM to use the NAS until the iMac was already acting up. So although I think the problem is definitely related to the NAS, I doubt it's specifically due to TM.
- Have you experienced something like this?
- What might be causing the problem?
- What's the best way to troubleshoot this problem?
