Mac Freezes on Launch
Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination and does require patience, so you'll need to keep that in mind as you proceed.
The first thing I would do now is test your Mac in Safe Mode.
Boot into Safe Mode
Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:
- Fully shut down your Mac
- Restart your Mac
- Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
- Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window
- Now log into your Mac and see if it still freezes in Safe Mode (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice)
- Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
- Once again, test to see if your Mac still freezes when logging in normally
If you find that your Mac logs in fine while in Safe Mode, but not when booted normally, then it's likely to be a login item, corrupted font, or kernel extension.
If you find that your Mac still freezes in Safe Mode, then it's most likely a hardware problem.
Investigating login items, fonts, and kernel extensions
Let's start with Login Items:
- Startup normally
- Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups
- Select the Login Items tab
- Take a note of your Login Items
- Now remove all of them by highlighting them and clicking on the - button below
- Restart your Mac
Now your Mac will boot up without those login items loading. Test to see if you can use your Mac without it freezing:
- If you can, 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.