I have a 2011 iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6. When performing this security update my computer freezes in the middle of the restart. Are there any known fixes.

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I have a 2011 iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6. When performing this security update my computer freezes in the middle of the restart. Are there any known fixes.

When attempting to perform Security updates (both 2020-003 and 2020-004) my iMac freezes in the middle of the restart process.

2011 iMac

High Sierra 10.13.6

1) I attempted to perform the update and when the update restarted the computer, the iMac restart froze.

2) The freeze acts like the following: Once the computer has shut down all the apps the screen goes black for approx. 3 seconds; then the cursor shows up and can move but the computer was frozen - black screen only. Also, the Apple timer that is normally present during shutdown is never seen.

3) I now needed to remove power and restart the computer.

4) Once restarted the iMac functions normally, however when I attempt to shut it down again the iMac it again freezes requiring me to remove power.

5) On one attempt to installed the Security Update I left the computer in this frozen condition for 2 hours with no change, thinking the update may take a while.

6) I can get the iMac to stop freezing on shut down by using the following commands in Terminal:

sudo rm -f /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

sudo rm -f /private/var/db/.AppleUpgrade

sudo rm -f /private/var/db/.SoftwareUpdateAtLogout

sudo reboot

However Security Update 2020-004 still shows it needs to be performed.

Anyone else seeing this? I have seen this issue on other boards with no resolution.

Posted on Sep 19, 2020 5:40 PM

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steve626

Level 6

10,013 points

Sep 19, 2020 8:56 PM in response to RAJCO20

There is a brute force way to get past this, it takes an hour or two, but that is often less than the time required to troubleshoot such an anomaly.

(1) When your computer is running, make two complete backups, preferably one Time Machine and the second a "bootable clone." If you prefer, you can make two Time Machine backups, on two separate external drives. Do some spot checks to make sure you can restore some files so you know the backups are good.

(2) Boot into safe mode. It make take 10-20 minutes, be patient. Restart and try to do the security update.

(3) If it does not work, then boot into recovery mode and erase the disk and reinstall the High Sierra OS.

(4) On first boot up, create ONE new user, an administrator user, call it ADMIN. Then apply all updates, including the problem security update. It will work because you have a plain vanilla 10.13.6 and nothing else installed that can interfere with the update.

(5) Restart, and then log in as ADMIN. Run Migration Assistant and migrate over your files from a Time Machine backup, including user files, applications, settings etc.

The above steps, all combined, will take an hour or two, maybe more if you have a lot to migrate over.

As an alternate more careful version of step (5) you can do this:

(5 - alt) Restart and log in an ADMIN. Run Migration Assistant and migrate over (from one of your backups) ONLY user files, but no applications and no settings and no misc. files. Then reinstall your applications, but only the ones you still use and need..

What is happening to you happened to me with a 2011 Macbook Air last year and I did all these things with (5 - alt) and never had a problem with any subsequent security updates. One thing that can cause this sort of thing is something that was installed sometime in the past that prevents the update from working. By forcing yourself to reinstall fresh only the things you currently need, hopefully the old problematic extension is never even reinstalled and the problem is gone with future updates.

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I have a 2011 iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6. When performing this security update my computer freezes in the middle of the restart. Are there any known fixes.

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