Bricked MBA M1

[Perico Fava]

I think I just bricked my Macbook Air M1

Last week I installed the damn Spanish national digital certificate to get my COVID certificate. It gave me a thousand problems asking me for the Mac OS admin password to administer many times. In the end I got with it, but I wish I didn’t. Today Mail was not working properly and it has gone crazy asking me every second for the admin opassword, then the iCloud password, I have tried to restart the keychain and it happened to be even worse. So I have tried to restore the OS without erasing the disk contents, but it has not helped me at all. In the end I have had enough and I have decided to format 100% ... but after trying to erase MacHD, I tried to reinstall Mac OS but it didn’t let me even start with a warning that “there is no valid user” or something like that. And if I give it to boot the computer, the apple remains in a loop doing nothing.

Any suggestion? I do not know if it will help me to create a bootable pendrive from my old Pro from 2012 since it is Intel…. Going to an Apple Store right now is not the best idea (the closest I have is two hours away by car).

THANK YOU

 

[lclev]

Try reading this article. Restoring the M1 is very different than what was done on an Intel Mac.

There's a New Way to Factory Reset M1 and M2 Macs. Here's How

Apple updated the process to complete wipe the files and settings from Apple Silicon-based MacBooks and desktop Macs. We tell you how to do it.

www.cnet.com

 

[Perico Fava]

Super-thanx Iclev! I followed the instructions explained in your link and erasing the data disk helped to reinstall Mac OS. now I’m waiting for it to finnish

 

[Perico Fava]

@Iclev it happened to me exactly what's related in your link. After managing to restore Big Sur, as soon as I tried to create a new user / password for admin the screen was frozen and after rebooting it even did not recognise ny iCloud account. So I was afraid that I had to do the tricky part explained over there, but I was very lucky to see in the comments someone erased his Mac from his iPhone with Find My app so I tried the same and.... it worked!! After that, I renamed the main disk from Untitled to Macintosh HD again (just in case!) and everything went fine. I'm writing now from my MBA. Thanks again.

If someone is reading this from Spain, please be extremely careful with official Digital Certificates. I lost almost a full night of sleep!

 

[lclev]

So glad to hear it is working now! Enjoy your MBA.

 

[Quackers]

In disk utility you will only see Macintosh HD as the main drive if you haven't been to the VIEW menu and pre-selected "show all devices".
If you do that then you will see that the main drive is listed as Apple SSD xxxxxxxxxxx with other volumes named below that.
That SSD is the drive that needs wiping (or erase volume group).
Following those steps should negate all of the problems you had.
The Cnet article forgets to mention that iirc.

 

[Perico Fava]

Thanx @Quackers , no doubt I will remember your words just in case (I hope not!) it happens again.