FileVault driving me nuts!

[livesimply]

Back Story: my employer gave me her old MBP (late 2011, 500GB) because she cracked the trackpad. I fixed the trackpad, and wiped the MBP clean, reinstalled High Sierra--and must have turned on FileVault while doing so (honestly don't remember).

So, 3 days later and FV is still trying to encrypt. I can't stop it. I have no data on the MBP. At one point I clicked on "Update" in the App Store, and then I kept getting error messages that High Sierra couldn't install:

• macOS cannot be installed because your computer is currently encrypting data
• the path /system/installation/packages/osinstall.mpkg appears to be missing

I tried First Aid in Disk Utility. I made a Bootable Install on a USB Flash, and installed from that in Recovery Mode, and it finally installed High Sierra, but it somehow continued with the previous FileVault encryption.

From other suggestions, I typed in Terminal "diskutil cs info /Volumes/<name>" and it came back:

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token 'newline'​

Then I tried typing "diskutil apfs list" and it came back:

No APFS Containers found​

I *think* that means I am not using APFS, correct?

At this point, if someone can tell me how I can do a clean OS install WITHOUT activating FileVault I would be forever grateful!!!

 

[ActionableMango]

At this point, if someone can tell me how I can do a clean OS install WITHOUT activating FileVault I would be forever grateful!!!

You have to go out of your way to enable FileVault, so there isn't really a trick to it. Just install MacOS and don't activate FileVault.

You could just turn off FileVault. It will take some time to decrypt the stuff that's been encrypted.

 

[livesimply]

I can't turn off File Vault—it's greyed out. And I've tried re-installing MacOS but it picks up where it left off.......

At this point it says in Terminal it's 75% finished, so I'm gonna let it complete the process.

 

[Weaselboy]

I tried First Aid in Disk Utility. I made a Bootable Install on a USB Flash, and installed from that in Recovery Mode, and it finally installed High Sierra, but it somehow continued with the previous FileVault encryption.

I think where you are going wrong here is you are not erasing the disk before the install.

command-r back to recovery then in the Utilities menu up top launch Terminal. Then enter this line to wipe the encrypted core storage volume. Macintosh HD is the default, so change to whatever yours is names. Include the quotes.

diskutil cs delete "Macintosh HD"

Then quit Terminal and open Disk Utility and erase the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then quit Disk Util and reinstall the OS.

 

[NoBoMac]

Before wiping the drive, might want to see how far along the encryption is.

diskutil cs list

One of the lines will be showing percentage complete.

 

[Kingcr]

Can you open Activity Monitor and look at disk activity? If you leave the machine completely alone with Activity Monitor open, does the disk activity drop off drastically after 5 minutes? This is something I’ve seen with FileVault since about Sierra. If this is what’s happening to you, there is a workaround to keep FV encrypting at full speed.

 

[livesimply]

Thanks for all the input. I'm now at 86% encryption so I'm letting it finish. Weaselboy, I think you're correct; I never totally erased the disk before reinstalling.

 

[livesimply]

It FINISHED and is working great! Thanks for everyone's kind advice.