Mac Studio won't reliably shut down, but restarts with error

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 12:23 pm

This has been going on for some time now. When I shut down my Mac Studio, it often doesn't work the first time. It starts to shut down and it appears it's doing it, then the screen pops back on and it's done a restart and puts up an dialog that it restarted due to some error or being improperly shut down when it wasn't. I often have to then choose shut down again for it to actually properly shut down.

I've wondered if there's some sort of sequence... perhaps shutting off peripherals first like the 828es, or UA Satellite, or even USB MIDI keyboard. All things perhaps not likely to work, but something seems to cause my machine to require two shut down attempts to shut down properly. I've just been ignoring this as it doesn't seem harmful in anyway and when my system is up and running everything is working just fine. Maybe some weird OS issue. It's just strange. I'm really not in the mood to try anything drastic to solve it as it isn't that big a deal. I suppose I could boot in Recovery and reinstall the OS, but that seems kind of a hassle. It's not something I can't live with, but it is weird. Maybe next OS update will do something about it? Who knows?

cuttime · Post by **cuttime** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 1:05 pm

I haven't encountered this. See if ejecting your disks first helps? I'd be willing to bet it's related to your drive enclosure spontaneously dismounting, if I recall the situation correctly.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 1:14 pm

cuttime wrote: ↑Sat Oct 08, 2022 1:05 pm I haven't encountered this. See if ejecting your disks first helps? I'd be willing to bet it's related to your drive enclosure spontaneously dismounting, if I recall the situation correctly.

You may be right. The enclosure doesn't ever dismount while the computer is running. I sometimes have to replug it when I boot for it to be recognized. But that's a good idea to try that.

Seems like I should try two things:

1) Unmount the external enclosure with Disk Utility before shutting down.

2) If #1 doesn't work, unmount with disk utility and then physically disconnect the enclosure and see if that fixes it.

Either way, I guess it's something I can live with for now. I love the speed of that enclosure. I could also try daisy-chaining it off my UAD TB3 Satellite (even though from my tests it slowed my read times from about 2700 MB/s to 2500 MB/s) and see if maybe not being connected directly to the Mac Studio might have an effect.

Thanks for the suggestions! I think you're probably onto something!

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 6:54 pm

Make certain it isn’t hung up on syncing an iOS or iPadOS device over Wi-Fi. When it hangs up for that, I force a shut down.

If that’s not it, try rebuilding the Launch Services. I’ve posted that a few times recently. With all the installation you’ve done, not a bad idea anyway.

stubbsonic · Post by **stubbsonic** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 7:36 pm

Probably not related, but my new M1 MBP fails to shut down because RME's TotalMix becomes unresponsive. I have to force-quit that first. Seems to be working normally now. It's annoying because my interface is causing me to have to shut-down (rather than sleep).

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Fri Oct 21, 2022 11:20 pm

I haven't troubleshooted extensively, but I do believe the issue is related to a peripheral attached to my Mac Studio. Last few times I've shut down, I've powered down anything attached to the Mac Studio: my audio interfaces (828es and 24Ai), UAD-2 TB3 Satellite, MC Control & MC Mix, Komplete Kontrol 61.

It would be an easy thing to try to pinpoint exactly which device might be causing it... just haven't done it yet. Seems to me it would either be the interfaces or the UAD-2. I'll need to investigate further.

Sergievsky · Post by **Sergievsky** » Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:05 am

Do you have an external drive attached? I’ve had that, and it was due to a particular drive hooked up externally….sort of. It does it on my desktop, but not on my laptop. Never really solved it, except have the drive disconnected. & it’s the drive, not the enclosure. It’s happened on both an nvme ssd as well a regular hd. I’ve read some other people experience it and solved with an os update, and some caused by an os update. Very frustrating issue with no clearcut solution.

nk_e · Post by **nk_e** » Wed Nov 02, 2022 4:51 am

Following.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Dec 27, 2022 2:24 am

Just another data point here. I recently started turning off ALL peripherals before shutting down the Mac Studio and it seems that I have no more restarts and it shuts down reliably. I can only surmise that there's a peripheral that when it's connected and powered up, is causing this.

I have the following peripherals connected:

• MC Control & MC Mix (connected to Ethernet port via powered Ethernet switch)
• UAD-2 Satellite OCTO (connected to TB3 port)
• MOTU 828es (connected to TB3 port)
• MOTU 24Ai (connected to AVB network connector on 828es)
• MOTU MIDI Express XT (USB)
• Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk2 (USB)

I think it's definitely ONE of these causing it. Don't have time to trouble shoot it now, but I figure I can experiment and locate the troublemaker. My *guess* is it's either the Satellite or the 828es. I'll experiment with it in the morning.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Jan 24, 2023 11:38 pm

I think I posted on another thread, but I found out that what causes it is a MOTU TB audio interface powered up when the Mac Studio is shut down. If I power off my 828es BEFORE shutting off the Mac Studio, the restart problem goes away. Another user here also verified this with his MOTU 16A and Mac Studio. I just checked and the latest Monterey 12.6.3 makes no difference. Waiting on a fix from MOTU.

EMRR · Post by **EMRR** » Wed Jan 25, 2023 5:52 am

100% with shutting off the 16A first, so far.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:59 am

EMRR wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 5:52 am 100% with shutting off the 16A first, so far.

Same here with 828es

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Wed Jan 25, 2023 12:53 pm

I’ve reported this twice to MOTU and sent them a link to another topic here discussing this issue. Seems to me that there’s enough corroboration by different users that there’s an issue either with the MOTU audio driver or there’s a firmware upgrade necessary. Just a guess, but I’d suspect it might take a firmware update to fix this. In the meantime, powering down my 828es before shutting down the Mac Studio is not a very burdensome workaround for now.

ronjams · Post by **ronjams** » Thu Jan 26, 2023 9:31 am

I got my Mac Studio back on November 15, 2022 the first time I did a transfer from my Mac Pro so now I found out that was a big mistake and on the advice of Apple care I reinstalled all of the software from scratch. That was hell at that point it took roughly three weeks of nothing but installing plugins( I have a lot of plugins)and contacting the manufacturers because their current installer didn’t work notably native access, but it works now let’s get to the point try to make sure that you turn off every program that you have running before you shut down. That seems to eliminate that issue on the advice of a YouTuber that does a lot of heavy composing recommends using clean my Mac and Apple seems to endorse this as well so I bought it and I run it personally i’m a tech tools person but this program is thorough in the tools that it offers and the way it catches conflicts is impressive I know that I don’t really need to say this, but keep up with the updates. They are a changing daily.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:28 am

Yep. I did a clean install as well. There was no way I wanted to use migration assistant and copy over years and years worth of old prefs and outdated residual files.

FYI, the ONLY thing that is causing the shutdown problem for me is the powered-on status of my MOTU interface. No other factors appear to play a role. Turn off the MOTU 828es before shutting down and it works reliably. 100%.

MOTUnation.com