Install freezes at 1 minute left

[blipstutter]

Anyone have a solution for Big Sur freezing on installation when it says 1 minute left? Should I should be letting it run for hours/days?

I'm attempting to install Big Sur to external drive as a boot drive, and the partition has plenty of room.

I've tried as a clean install, and also tried using CC Cloner to clone over a bootable Mojave system that I could try to update from there. Neither work.

I've tried the troubleshooting like pram, safe mode, etc.
Also downloaded the install from another source, and neither of them worked. Internet recovery wants 14 hours, or gives the same loop.
Hard crashing and starting up again just continues the loop. I can see containers for data, and system installed but they don't mount or boot.
I did get it to the first restart, but then it counted down from 2 hours 19 minutes, and never finished, again at the 1 minute mark.

Apple support told me I needed to go into a Genius Bar, and acted like I'm on an unsupported computer (mid-2014) and wouldn't help. It is of course listed as compatible.

Upgrade system software shouldn't be a project. Would love any help getting this done so I don't have to go into an Apple store just to install Big Sur. I'm not even sure the genius bar will help.

 

[jdw13]

I would let it sit overnight before aborting. I have mid-2014 MacBook Pro running Big Sur very nicely, but have replaced the HDD with an SSD. Is it possible you are running out of space to complete the install? I am traveling until end of this week, in the unlikely event I see anything in my update notes that could help I’ll let you know. Believe I went to Big Sur from Catalina and the update to Catalina was not smooth but unsure if it was using HDD or SSD at the time.

This is likely irrelevant but I found the following from 2018 email in which a colleague was not able to upgrade to Mojave and was able with the following:

My two upgrades to Mojave went well, except for one small glitch on one of the machines. If you have a Mac that's gone through a lot of cycles of updates there may be an old system file that interacts badly with Mojave. Symptoms are slowness with lots of pinwheeling, and no networking interfaces. Here's what to do BEFORE you install Mojave to prevent the problem:

Open a terminal window and type: (xbbn 19Nov18)

cd /etc
ls -l sysctl.conf

If the file doesn't exist, you're all set.

If the file does exist, then delete or rename it:

sudo mv sysctl.conf sysctl.conf.bak

Now you can upgrade to Mojave.

Apple should have deleted the file as a part of the install process, but somehow missed it. Bad Apple! Googling found the issue and the fix.

I would be surprised if this is your issue, but I did run across it before sending my reply. I never had to do this myself. I doubt that I've been of much help but could not let this go without relating the little I know. If you are using HDD, then perhaps someone running Big Sur with original HDD could relate their experience.

 

[jdw13]

I found this on the OpenCore Legacy Patching page, which is probably relevant if you are using HDD. It agrees with my suggestion to wait a long time before aborting or you will need to start all over again.
Link: OpenCore Legacy Troubleshooting

Stuck on "Less than a minute remaining..."​

A common area for systems to get "stuck", namely for units that are missing the AES CPU instruction/older mobile hardware. During this stange a lot of heavy cryptography is performed, which can make systems appear to be stuck when in reality they are working quite hard to finish up the installation.

Because this step can take a few hours or more depending on drive speeds, be patient at this stage and do not manually reboot your machine as this will break the installation and require you to reinstall. If you think your system has stalled, press the Caps Lock key. If the light turns on, your system is busy.

​

 

[blipstutter]

I found this on the OpenCore Legacy Patching page, which is probably relevant if you are using HDD. It agrees with my suggestion to wait a long time before aborting or you will need to start all over again.
Link: OpenCore Legacy Troubleshooting

Thanks for that, I appreciate your suggestions since the Apple store itself couldn't solve this with their M1's on Monterey. The caps lock key trick sounds really helpful to keep me patient. The hard reboot shows most of the install done, without the ability to boot into it.

I was able to install Catalina without any problems. Tried again to make the upgrade and it was the same issue.