Unbootable new M1 Mac Pro

[docderwood]

Pretty frustrating situation,

Got my son a new M1 MacBook (16GB/1TB) for college. He was using migration assistant, somewhere along the way things crashed.

Now all I have is the exclamation point support.apple.com/mac/restore.

I've got an M1 MacBook Air, love it.....used it to fire up Apple Configurator 2 per the instructions.

Then get the "system cannot be restored" error.

Called tech support @ Apple. Was told this was a Big Sur M1 issue. All they could offer was to return it an order a new one (Which takes four weeks).

This strikes me as insane, no? I'm trying to create an external USB installer just to try (I doubt it works)

Any other things to try?

Thx!

 

[Apple_Robert]

Wipe the troubled install and then Log into iCloud where the M1 is that you need to restore, and delete the M1 from the account and try the install again. Hopefully, that will work for you. Many others have had the same type problem and that was one of the solutions.

Installing Big Sur Clean on M1 Macs "Computer account creation failed"

I have just gone through this this afternoon. I wanted to perform a clean install to fix my issues with iCloud Drive and Safari tab syncing. Unfortunately, it is not an easy process on M1 Macs yet. If I had known I would have just put it off. But, thanks to the posts on here, I was able to...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Quackers]

That's very disappointing.
Probably not the case but could the MacBook Pro have lost power or run out of battery?

 

[docderwood]

All,

Thanks for the suggestions. Was able to get it up and running by getting it into DFU mode and using Configurator2.

Turns out doing the key sequence was critical. Just because the dead laptop shows up in configrator doesn't mean it is in DFU mode (and ours wouldn't reload). The video linked above in other discussion helped tremendously.

 

[hugodrax]

I wonder if the best way to go about the whole thing is don't migrate anything, let the computer boot up and do its updates first etc.. then restore from backup.