System Preferences freezes when I go to “Security & Privacy”

Question

I'm in the process of migrating from Mojave (on the internal HDD) to Catalina (on an external SSD).

Under Catalina, if I try to go to "Security & Privacy" in System Preferences, it hangs, and becomes unresponsive until I Force-Quit it.

I've seen suggestions specific to other System Preferences panes hanging, under different macOS releases, but not specific to Catalina or to "Security & Privacy."

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NEW 4/28/2020

I finally found the time to try a "safe mode" boot on the Catalina side today. At least, I think it was a safe mode boot -- it didn't say anything about safe mode, the way it does for recovery mode. I held the shift key while the switchover was in progress, up to the point where it asked for my password (both load-source drives, i.e., both the internal HDD and the external SSD, are encrypted), and then held it for quite a while after giving it my password.

It asked for my password a second time, just before the desktop came up, and the secondary screen did not come up (thereby dumping a s---load of icons onto the main screen desktop).

Attempting to go to "security and privacy" in System Preferences still threw up a pinwheel mouse-pointer. While it was doing that, I tried Disk First Aid. It was then that I realized that whatever was locking up System Preferences was also eating up lots of CPU time: performance was extremely sluggish just navigating to Disk Utilities. Once Disk Utilities came up, it showed both "SanDisk SSD" and "SanDisk SSD - Data"; I ran Disk First Aid on both of them. It appears to have found nothing.

A symptom I failed to mention before, but which may be related

When shutting down on the Catalina side (and this has been happening for about as long as the System Preferences lockup, again only on the Catalina side), Firefox will refuse to shut down unless forced. In fact, as I recall, if I'm on the Catalina side, Firefox will come up without my explicitly launching it. Even if I explicitly closed it before shutting down. Could this be a piece of the puzzle?

Answer 1

Bottom line, I am abandoning this whole experiment. This Mac will remain on its internal HDD forever, and it will remain on Mojave forever. Period.

I never should have trusted an external device as a load-source. This Mac is too mission-critical. If it were up to me, the INTERNAL load-source would be a mirrored pair of drives that are individually rated for use in human life support applications.

This week, I finally had a chance to try formatting the SSD again, from scratch, and this time doing the OS installation (Mojave, from Recovery Mode) and the migration in one swell foop. And it seemed to work.

At first.

Then, following the migration, and the re-establishment of FileVault on the SSD, it crashed three times in under an hour, and the third time, it refused to reboot until I physically unplugged the SSD, in order to force it back to the internal HDD.

Answer 2

First, try booting Safe Mode. This allows your Mac to check itself for issues. The way to do this is reboot and press Shift.

If that doesn't work, try running First Aid in Disk Utility.

If that doesn't work, try reinstalling macOS from the Recovery partition.

What do you mean by migrating? You can just install macOS Catalina on the USB drive and then use Migration Assistant to transfer data from your Mac to the USB with macOS Catalina. Since you are running macOS Mojave, you will need to first install macOS Mojave on the USB. Then, you can update to Catalina.

Good luck!

Answer 3

The Catalina updater runs a critical firmware update. The install method you describe has bypassed the firmware update. As suggested elsewhere, install Mojave on external drive, boot from the drive ( holding Option at boot time is my preferred method), and run updater.

There was also a critical firmware update with High Sierra that Apple requires for Mojave. If you managed to bypass that upgrade and went directly from Sierra to Mojave, you may want to ask a new question how to accomplish that. (One would hope the Catalina upgrade will supersede the old firmware, I can't say.)