Stuck in Less than a minute remaining

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Level 2

227 points

Stuck in Less than a minute remaining

I'm completing my installation of Catalina on a MacBook Pro. For the past 15 minutes it has been stuck in "Less than a minute remaining . . . ." What shall I do?

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 12:18 PM

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Answer 1

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jimpal Author

Level 2

227 points

Oct 8, 2019 1:45 PM in response to jimpal

I will provide an answer to my own question, since no one else did. After my MacBook Pro was stuck in "Less than a minute remaining. . . . " for about a half hour at the end of the Catalina install process, I just went ahead and forced the computer to quit by holding the OFF button. It did quit and then booted back up in Catalina. I didn't have to do some of the setup steps I had to do previously when I upgraded my iMac with Catalina earlier today, but that may be because they both use the same Apple ID. Anyway, if anyone is interested, it seems to have worked and I was able to proceed from stuck to operation.

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Answer 2

Dec 11, 2019 6:56 PM in response to jimpal

I had the same issue using the home WiFi. I live in the Caribbean and solid WiFi is a wish. I used the data on the phone, then followed the restart above to finish when stuck for the last 2 min.

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Answer 3

Oct 8, 2019 11:55 PM in response to jimpal

Mine is stuck at the beginning. At this stage. It’s been over an hour. Any suggestions?

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Answer 4

jimpal Author

Level 2

227 points

Oct 9, 2019 7:08 AM in response to amitkapila2

After all this time, you probably have found a fix. If not, I'm not able to tell you what to do about this problem, but suggest you start a new thread about "stuck on estimated time remaining during installation," rather than mine where the computer didn't get stuck until the very end. Your problem is a bit different from mine, and a new thread will get more attention from the wizards who know a lot more about this than me.

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Answer 5

SDolha

Level 1

9 points

Oct 10, 2019 12:00 AM in response to jimpal

Happened to me too.

In regard to this part: "I didn't have to do some of the setup steps I had to do previously when I upgraded my iMac with Catalina earlier today, but that may be because they both use the same Apple ID" - I want to say that I haven't upgraded any other macOS devices to Catalina and I still didn't have to finish the setup "normally" when I first signed in with my user account from which I started the process (after forcing turn off and restart), so it's apparently not something related to Apple ID.

I'm still searching to find a way to manually call that "finish setup" part for my user account. I noticed, though, that other user accounts that I did have on the same MacBook are actually passed through those steps when they first sign in.

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Answer 6

dmkahn

Level 1

13 points

Oct 13, 2019 4:06 PM in response to jimpal

I let it sit overnight in "less than a minute remaining" probably > 16 hours total.

Forced a reboot, rebooted right into catalina without any of the welcome/setup stuff. Just had to login to and update iCloud settings.

The other computer, a macbook pro got stuck on "updating settings".

These update issues aren't really new, it's just very sloppy with no way of knowing what is going on, no idea to really know if it's safe to interrupt it with a forced reboot or not.

Thanks for posting your experience, yes, I found it helpful to know I'm not the only one having this issue.

-David

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