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Don’t quit on me now
To me, it seems that the only option you have is to reinstall the OS and wipe the hard drive and start over.

Try these steps:
1671913008225.png
 
Honestly, I feel the sheer volume of data viewers are sharing with you, your responses to things tried and being specific with your responses, is paramount.

Help them, to help you...
 
What the hell does that mean???
I can only post what i see.
 
If all that still doesn't get you to a point where you can erase the drive - boot to a bootable USB installer.
Do you have that for Monterey (or whatever system you want to have when done)?
If not, you will need to get one, or make it yourself. (Only takes a few minutes on a Mac.)
 
If all that still doesn't get you to a point where you can erase the drive - boot to a bootable USB installer.
Do you have that for Monterey (or whatever system you want to have when done)?
If not, you will need to get one, or make it yourself. (Only takes a few minutes on a Mac.)

On an M1 machine, using a USB installer still uses the Recovery volume on the machine. You don't need one to wipe the machine.

@420benz - when you go into Options, and you're in Recovery, take a picture of the whole screen please including the Menus at the top.
 
OP:

How about answering a few questions:
- Which Mac do you have (MacBook Pro, MacBook, something else?)?
- What year made (it's "new"?)?
- Where did you buy this? (Apple Store, some other store, directly from Apple, etc.?)?
- Do they have brick n mortar Apple Stores where you are?

If they have REAL Apple Stores where you are, I suggest you make an appt at the genius bar, take it in, and have them "clear it" for you (put it back into an "out of the box" state).

Then... start over.

And some advice for the future:
DO NOT put a "firmware password" onto it
DO NOT encrypt the internal SSD

Why not?
Look at "where you are" right now.
 
I will have my Grandson look at it after the holidays.Thanks for all your help.
 
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OK Im back. This is where i am now and i don’t know the password Trying to renstall Ventura.
 

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Quit the installer (from the File menu), then go into Disk Utility and you should be able to wipe the drive there.
 
Now what?
 

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Click on the View icon, and make sure that "Show All Devices" is selected, then click on the top-most item in the list. That will show the model number of the drive, not just the name of the volume. Selecting that model number line will allow you to erase the drive, not just a volume. When you do the erase, you can give the newly erased volume a name of your choosing. Otherwise, it will use the default: Untitled
 
It’s been doing this for 10 min
 

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OK One more question. How can i set this up so i do not need a password to open it just in case i loose power again ?
 
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