Install of Monterey stuck

[brainwave89]

I have 2018 Mac Mini and the install of Monterey is stuck. The bar graph of its progress is over 90% finished but stays there for over five hours.
I entered Safe Mode, try re-installing it (command+option+r) but I get the same results. When trying to get into Safe Mode and I click on an existing user it brings me to a new user setup. When I set this user up none of the existing users appear in User & Groups in System Preferences.

Any suggestions on finishing the install is appreciated.

 

[Fishrrman]

Are you trying to install "over" an existing OS?

If nothing else works, you could do this:
1. Create a bootable cloned backup of your existing OS install (and data) onto an external drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper
2. TEST the backup to be sure that it will boot. (you have to reboot to the recovery partition first, and disable "startup security" in order to boot from an external drive)
3. Now, boot to internet reocovery
Command-OPTION-R
at boot
4. Use disk utility to ERASE the ENTIRE drive. You MUST go to the view menu and choose "show all devices", and then choose the top line on the left that represents the internal drive.
5. Now open the OS installer and try again.
6. If the install is successful, you can use setup assistant to bring over your accounts/data/apps from the cloned backup.

 

[brainwave89]

Thank you, Fishrrman. If I could get to a place to install either CCC or SuperDuper I would be happy to format the drive and start over. Since I can't, I need to figure out something else.

I booted to a Catalina OS boot drive but I couldn't get the internal disk to mount. When it asked for an admin username and password it wouldn't accept any of my admin passwords. Yes, I know the passwords.

 

[flatiswhereitsat]

Very same scenario with MBP 2017, with lots of disk space, upgrading from 10.14.8. The install brings over the OS does the low level install and when it tries to boot Monterey the first time for final setup it hangs. I've left it overnight...no progress. I then did the 10 second power button shutdown, restarted...same hang. A bit different. SO shut it off again, and boot in verbose mode, lots of text scrolls by and then the screen switches to the Apple logo/progress bar. There is a weird flash of the screen and the progress bar resets to only about 3 mm of progress...and then...stall.. Left that overnight. Power button off for 10 secs again and tried booting in Safe Mode...it gets there but immediately picks up the Monterey install script and is horribly, horribly slow, 30 seconds for any type character to appear, any mouse click may take up to 90 seconds, perhaps more....but fight my way through that and finish install. Only have new account in Monterey (no Mojave accounts show up). But new account is admin. I enabled the 'root' account so I can check out things: checked for kexts (not supported in Monterey), other startup items... nothing.

At this point I SHOULD HAVE: added a second admin account. Read on...

So shutdown and restart ...same hang. So try to restart into Safe mode again. It does, without the same painful setup experience...however the user id that was created in Monterey now a 'Standard' user and there is no way to promote it to Admin, root user is disabled.

So boot to Apple Recovery and re-installed Monterey overnight ... hangs again. Boot into Safe mode and finish setup again. Everything is very slow but knowing what to expect manage to get through it much quicker. Try PRAM zap, tried SMC reset. No Joy ...still hangs at startup. Try booting, and same hang, 10 second power button then hold Shift and press power button ...into Safe Mode...back to Standard user again. SO no joy.

I don't want to erase the HD and do a clean install...turns out I have a bit of a backup issue.

So now trying the hail-mary four finger startup: shift-option-command-R to reinstall macOS version the MBP 2017 came with: Mojave.

I will have to take another run at the upgrade at some point...does anyone know of any log file that documents the steps executed (and results) during a system boot? It would be nice to find that to get some/any idea of where a system is hanging.

This isn't my first rodeo with macOS...but it is now my wurst (yes as in sausage).

 

[reinrag1a]

My daughter has had a very similar experience with this. Still stuck, not quite ready to erase. (In her case, its a 2016 MacBook 12). Let us know how it goes. (We didn't get the shift-option-command-R to work, safe boot afterwards gave an old gray screen which was still stuck).

 

[flatiswhereitsat]

Update: the internet re-install option appears to run, it downloads 10.14.6 over about 4 hours, and begins to install but ends up with a big NO-sign on the screen. Tried twice...

My current theory is that the Monterey installer uses a newer apfs (filesystem) and that the installer has somehow added some meta data to the file system and the DiskUtility that is used on my MacBook pro 2017 is not compatible with. The errors I am seeing in Disk Utility are documented without solution in the Apple community.

 

[flatiswhereitsat]

So yes, Apple does change the file system to create a System data container and a User data container. In this case that conversion seems to have failed and has created soft corruption of the file system that DiskUtility can't repair.
The only way forward appears to be Erase and build a new blank, apfs based, file system.

I was able to use Terminal in the Recovery environment to copy all of the files that I wanted from my user account using my knowledge of BSD/Linux as well as Apple's hdiutil to a USB attached drive via a Thunderbolt 3 hub( was happy that worked!).

I used disk utility to erase the drive which left a "Macintosh HD" volume format as APFS. The internet MacOS Recovery then ran and whilst claiming up to 32 hours in the future completed within 12 hrs. Now I have to manually move my files back....a good Time Machine backup would have been a good thing.

 

[neilw]

I'm dealing with this problem right now on my wife's 2018 Macbook Air. Trying to install Monterey coming from Mojave. Currently on my second go-round with the installation, and it's stuck with the boot progress bar at about 95%.

I am hoping there's some way to get through this without erasing. We have a backup but it's old enough that I would prefer not to rely upon it.