New Exciting Crash to Mac Login screen

FierceSam · March 2020

Hey all,

I have just upgraded to OS Catalina. I am getting an occasional, but very weird crash (3 times so far)

I will be logging in from the character screen and will be shunted straight to the Mac's login screen (not the desktop). I can still hear the game playing in the background. When I log on to my Mac, I can still hear the game, but the application does not appear to be running, there is no active icon for it and no way to either access it or quit it.

Essentially I have to quit everything and restart the computer.

Any ideas why this is happening? Because I have never had a programme running without being able to access it before. Ever.

TheBunny · March 2020

Being booted to the login screen is a really weird bug. I have no idea why thats can even happen on OSX.
Anyhow... after you log back in and the games / sound seems to be running have you brought up your Activity Monitor app and checked if it is still listed as a running process?

If you can find it in there you should be able to use Activity Monitor app to force quit it.

FierceSam · March 2020

Same crash, different day...

Yes it does show up in the Activity Monitor, but not in the Application Switcher, so I guess it's running but not displaying. And yes, I was able to quit/force quit it.

But this is the ONLY application I have ever had that throws me out to the Mac's login screen.

Anyone else on Catalina 10.15.3 having a similar issue?

TheBunny · March 2020

Other people have mentioned this issue.

I wrote the original client years ago and I have no real idea why this is happening here...

Mac app should not be able to cause a boot back to log in screen.
My only guess is that some kind of low level OS system / driver might be crashing in such a way that it triggers this.
I can't guess at what. Normally when a graphics drives crashes I believe they just reboot and you never seen anything.

Good luck

BlueRaven · March 2020

Yup. Happening to me as well. The original forum posts was in this thread.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/497668/spontaneous-logging-out-of-computer-user-in-macos-catalina

If you are hearing the game in the background you can use the “Activity Monitor” utility to close out the application. Other then restarting it’s really the only way.

I contacted customer support, and after they gave me some cut and paste suggestions, they had me report it as a bug.

Basically they punted me to a group that will not send me a response. /shrug

The problem for me is most prevalent in southern elsweyr but it can happen in other locations. I am just hoping it is fixed in greymoor.

If you get it figured out please post it!

FierceSam · March 2020

Hey Dude,

Yup, it sounds like exactly the same issue. I’m assuming that it’s relative rarity ( it only happened to me what 3 times yesterday) means ZOS probably aren’t even taking it seriously, let alone working to resolve it.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the application, which hasn’t been able to quit gracefully for years.

Will update if I ever get past the cut n paste support ticket drivel.

BlueRaven · March 2020

@FierceSam I would suggest going through the motions with customer support anyway. The more people report the issue the more they may take actual steps to figure out a solution.

I did an online chat with an apple representative to see if the issue was on my end, but since it is ONLY happening with ESO, they feel it is the ESO client that is at fault.

One of the things I wish the ZOS customer support team would understand is that the game will NOT run in safe mode. It appears Vulkan turns off in Safe mode, and that is needed to run ESO.