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I have a 2012 Macbook Pro, running MacOS Catalina 10.15.7.

A few days ago, my laptop had a kernel panic and restarted. I was only using safari and a note taking app (Bear) when this happened. The kernel panics haven’t stopped. Sometimes my laptop will load and run for an hour at the longest but usually less, and then kernel panics and restarts again. There is no particular app that I’ve used each time that seems to be causing it. It will happen when I’m only using Finder, when I’m using only Safari, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the panics. I don’t have any external monitors or drives attached, and didn’t when the first kernel panic happened. The computer runs incredibly slowly.

Things I have tried:

  1. Turning the computer off and letting it sit for 30 secs before restarting.

  2. Resetting the NVRAM

  3. Resetting the SMC

  4. Booting in safe mode (it crashes even in safe mode) Of note, I got an error log report that identified a userspace watchdog timeout. I can post the whole error log report if that would help.

  5. Removing potentially problematic antivirus software.

  6. Trying to install updates. The updates don’t show up in the App Store even when I reload the page. They show up in System Preferences, but when I hit “Update Now” or “more info” and then “Install”, nothing happens. I tried downloading the June 2021 Catalina security update that the computer is due for from the internet, and it doesn’t work. The first time the computer crashed and restarted part way through install, the second time it wouldn’t even start, giving me an error that the “image couldn’t be recognized.”

  7. I ran Diagnostics, which found no issues.

  8. Trying to reinstall the OS. I booted in recovery mode and tried to reinstall the OS from there, but I keep getting the following error: “macOS could not be installed on your computer, storage system verify or repair failed (-69716)”. I tried running first aid in disk utility first, and then tried resetting the NVRAM again, running first aid, and reinstalling. Same error.

It’s been three days, does anyone have a possible solution? I’ve read that erasing the hard drive and reinstalling the OS from scratch helped some people, but others said it didn’t work for them, and I’d rather not do that.

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It might be useful to see one or two of the Panic reports, however, the fact it still happens in Safe Boot makes me think it's more likely to be hardware.

Test for failing drive or failing SATA cable. Get a freeware SMART monitor & check the health of the drive. If it reports as healthy, then suspect the SATA cable needs replacing.

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