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skippermonkey

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 23, 2003
655
1,666
Bath, UK
My new Mac Pro is stuck in a loop of needing to restart, then saying ‘An internet connection is required to verify this startup disc‘. I was connected to the intent (obviosuly) but it doesn’t seem to recognise it, even though WiFi is on and it’s also hardwired to the router. If I force restart, I just get ‘Unable to verify startup disk’. So Big Sur has now effectively rendered my machine unusable. I don’t even seem to be able to boot up in Target Disc mode to use my Time Machine backup. It also says ’Security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk’ but all I have is the main SSD plus disks for storage. So I’m totally screwed.
 
No, I tried Cmd+R and it just comes up with two icons (Thunderbolt and USB) so I assume it’s expecting me to connect to another computer - not sure my partner‘s old laptop will do the job. I was hoping to do a full reinstall via download.

EDIT: just tried again and I’m in to the disk utility. Fingers crossed...
 
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Try OPTION with COMMAND R to get to the newest version of OS through recovery mode. Does that work?
 
Same thing happened to me on two separate tries on a late 2016 15" MacBook Pro. Had to force reboot into recovery mode and re-install Catalina... would love to know if anyone's found a fix. Might just wait for the next version to be released before going Big Sur.
 
Well the Time Machine backup failed - fat lot of good that is - so I’m now doing a new install over the Internet (option-cmd-r). I remember the days when a new Mac OS was painless and fun... so far this has been a friggin’ nightmare
 
Okay, this is painful beyond belief. I finally reinstalled Catalina. I then did a Big Sur upgrade as usual. It is now saying it can’t install because of a security issue and to boot up using cmd-r to access the security utility. So I do that and it says I will need to authenticate it. I click on ‘Enter macOS password‘ and it says ‘Recovery is trying to change system settings. No administrator was found’. So I’m stuck back at the Restore/Reinstall/Safari/Disk Utility menu and round and round and round we go. F@#&ing unbelievable. And this is a less than one year old Mac Pro.

I’m now going to try and install Big Sur on a different drive.
 
So does anyone have any idea what's going on? I can download it and install as usual. But I get to the point where it either says I can't connect to the Internet to okay the install (weird), or there's the security issue I mention above. There's no point simply trying it again as the name thing will happen, and it takes forever to get back to Catalina.
 
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