Sonoma bricked my '19 iMac. What do?

[seggy]

Dug out a '19 iMac that I hadn't used for a couple of years that was on Monterey.

- Fully updated it, then checked some app compatiblity before I made the move to Sonoma.

- It now comes up in Recovery Mode.

- I do have a Time Machine backup as of earlier today (still on Monterey) but it won't let me restore that directly, telling me I have to do a Migration.

With it failing, in that case I just want the Mac to be like it was earlier today and working, and worry about a Sonoma upgrade later - I wasn't expecting this to be a time sink.

Any suggestions?

 

[kitKAC]

If you reinstall Monterey, you'll still have to do a migration to get the Time Machine backup restored anyway.

 

[seggy]

So that's basically my only option either way - reinstall and migrate?

Any idea why this happens consistently when I leave a system for more than one upgrade year? I've had work systems on which this exact thing has happened as well.

 

[seggy]

Update: I reinstalled Sonoma from Recovery, and after a 90 minute wait, it's failed again.

What are my options? I've ragequit for today but whatever the options are I'll try again tomorrow.

 

[DeltaMac]

"... it's failed again."
Do you mean that you tried to boot, but get recovery mode only (same as after you first upgraded to Sonoma?)
Or, some other type of failure (?)
If you boot holding Option, does that boot screen show your expected boot drive, as a choice?
If yes, try selecting that drive, then press enter to boot from the drive.
Does it still boot only to Recovery Mode, despite choosing your actual boot system?

Do you have a bootable installer, allowing you to boot to a Sonoma installer. You could then erase the internal drive, then move on to a clean install of Sonoma?

 

[seggy]

"... it's failed again."
Do you mean that you tried to boot, but get recovery mode only (same as after you first upgraded to Sonoma?)

Yes

If you boot holding Option, does that boot screen show your expected boot drive, as a choice?

There's the boot disc or the (non bootable) TM disc, no other choices available to the Mac.

If yes, try selecting that drive, then press enter to boot from the drive.
Does it still boot only to Recovery Mode, despite choosing your actual boot system?

Do you have a bootable installer, allowing you to boot to a Sonoma installer. You could then erase the internal drive, then move on to a clean install of Sonoma?

Since I'm now clearly resigned to a Time Machine Restore I decided to stick it in Internet Recovery and let it run to see what it does. We'll see tomorrow.

 

[seggy]

OK - tomorrow's update:

- CMD-OPT-R resulted in exactly the same problem, OS takes ages to install, goes right back into Recovery Mode.

- So, I decided to do a CMD-OPT-SHIFT-R and installed Mojave into the Macintosh HD - DATA partition (I didn't add the DATA, it appears this is part of the failed Sonoma upgrade process).

- Reinstalling Mojave took a lot less time.

- However, it now only boots into the Boot Camp partition, and MacOS appears on the surface to have skedaddled.

- I guess I need to actually format the drive/partition at this point, but I REALLY don't want to lose the Boot Camp partition in the process since I don't have a backup of that and it would be a giant pain to install again.

EDIT:

Update of update:

Formatted partition, reinstalled Sonoma (which appears to be successful), and now transferring Time Machine info. Hopefully everything is fine after but we'll see.

 

[seggy]

Seems OK now.

TWELVE attended hours + a bare metal restore for an incremental OS upgrade that's nothing more than a Windows Service Pack 🙄🙄🙄

What the heck would someone who didn't have a minutes-old backup at hand do?!?

EDIT:
Definitely not OK, as it turns out. But that is in another thread.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Seems OK now.

TWELVE attended hours + a bare metal restore for an incremental OS upgrade that's nothing more than a Windows Service Pack 🙄🙄🙄

What the heck would someone who didn't have a minutes-old backup at hand do?!?

Simple. I did a clean install and use only Mac OS. No Windows.

 

[seggy]

Simple. I did a clean install and use only Mac OS. No Windows.

I think the post got lost in translation.