Update to Catalina from Mojave - App Store causes Hard Freeze

[CAPTBobJ]

Updated my very stable Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H/i5-4690K Hack running the latest Mojave (10.14.6) to Catalina (10.15.3) today using the "Update Directly to macOS Catalina" instructions. I'd say it took about 45 minutes to do the upgrade. After it started up into Catalina I had a couple of concerning freezes. First when I was in the Setup Assistant. I forced the machine to shutdown and then restarted it. This time it did not go back into the Setup Assistant but it did freeze again after Chrome had started and the App Store icon on the dock started bouncing. After waiting a bit I forced a shutdown again and restarted. Then it seemed to run fine. I did not, however, have any sound. No sound output device was available to choose in System Preferences. Since the MultiBeast for Catalina is not out yet, I ran the Mojave MultiBeast, just selecting the Apple ALC option in Audio. It installed and then I restarted the machine. Still no available sound output device. Luckily I had a brand new Sabrent USB External Stereo Sound Adapter (the one recommended on the TonyMac component lists) and plugged that in. It was recognized and now I have sound. I would like to go back to the motherboard sound but for the moment I'm fine where I am on sound. The continuing problem that I have is that when I open up the App Store I get a hard freeze when the App Store opens and a dialog box pops up about the Arcade section of the App Store. So, any ideas on the App Store and sound issues? Thanks in advance.

 

[CAPTBobJ]

Update: I followed the guidance on the thread in this forum: "Catalina easy update and sound fix" and restored my "Line Out" motherboard sound. However, the machine still does a hard freeze when the App Store is opened. Any thoughts?

 

[CAPTBobJ]

Update #2: I poked around in various forums and found these two threads:

1. "Opening App Store freezes Catalina" in the Post Installation General Help forum
2. "Mojave freezes after opening App Store application" in the Mojave Desktop Support forum

I followed the guidance to install the "WhateverGreen.kext" in the System/Library/Extensions and Library/Extensions folders with KextBeast and then used Clover Configurator to add "-wegbeta" to my Clover boot flags. Bingo, opening the App Store did not freeze my Hack! We're hoping it sticks but for the moment all is well.