I have a MacBook running OS X 10.9.5, and in the last half year or so was experiencing slowdowns caused by Boinc (v 7.6.22) upon waking or after some time where Boinc was running at maximum CPU/memory. After the 2016-003 security upgrade a week or so ago, I began experiencing crashes that would freeze up the entire machine. The mouse/cursor would still be active but everything else was frozen, requiring a hard reboot of the MacBook. After disabling BOINC everything is fine again.

I've been running Seti@home since 1999 and never had this type of problem. Alas, I can't anymore due to these crashes. I'm not sure if the problem is on the OS X or Boinc side, but in any case I can't run it if I don't want to be spending all my time rebooting. Too bad.

Have you ever cleaned out that system, opened it up and taken the dust-bunnies out? What you describe sounds to me a lot like a heat problem, where the fans may be so dust-caked that they have trouble moving enough air around when the system heats up.

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Ordinarily I'd say that could be an issue, but in February I had the entire motherboard replaced due to a long-standing GPU kernel panic issue, and at that time the fan was also replaced.

lol, OKay, not it then. :)

Do you know what changed in the 2016-003 security upgrade?
I will forward this to the developer for the Mac, but he may also want to know what was in the upgrade. Is there a link with explanation as to what changed, any kernel changes?

Thanks.
(P.S: I don't know Charlie's working schedules anymore, so it can take a while before he answers. But usually he does so within 24 hours.)

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I found this on the Apple website, I'm not a developer, so I can't really provide an explanation of the changes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206567

The developer has told me he cannot find anyone else with crashes and hangs of their Mac after that security update and that it therefore may be something unique to your machine.

Now, I forgot to ask, are the hangs when you use the CPU, or do you also use a GPU to do calculations? If so, what if you try without running work on the GPU?

Also, is there a way to uninstall and reinstall the security update? Might be something went wrong, or didn't get fully updated perhaps? (I have no knowledge of the Mac...)

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There's no way of uninstalling the update that I know of, and I certainly don't want to spend time searching for one. In any case, the last thing I need is to have my machine out of commission because of a botched uninstall.

As far as the GPU is concerned, I see no option in the BOINC preferences to switch GPU usage off. The only GPU-related preferences I see are:

Suspend GPU computing when computer is in use (checked)

Leave non-GPU tasks in memory while suspended (unchecked).

You can also use:

Activity menu: Suspend GPU

Project web-based preferences: Use GPU (unchecked) - prevents new tasks being downloaded, but allows you to finish off existing ones.