Big Sur installation problems Setup Assistant hung

Question

Big Sur installation problems Setup Assistant hung

iMac late 2015... upgraded from Catalina, which ran fine.

Just installed Big Sur. After reboot, I log in and I'm automatically in Setup Assistant.

Setup Assistant seems stuck... I get the spinning color wheel, and it's been like that for over an hour. I cannot exit out of it, and I cannot click any menu item, including the Apple menu.

I cannot verify if the installation was successful as I am taken here right after log in. Not sure what to look for if I reboot in safe mode.

Posted on Dec 24, 2020 4:49 PM

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Answer 1

jdo_apple

Community Specialist

Dec 26, 2020 3:26 PM in response to Community User

Hi Vxiansheng,

Thanks for being a part of Apple Support Communities. We see that you've been stuck in the Setup Assistant after upgrading your iMac to Big Sur. No worries, we've got your back.

Depending on what's happening, is the progress bar moving at all? Given it's been longer than 2 hours, we'd try to restart the Mac by holding down the power button until it powers off. If you have the same issue when it boots back up, then you'd want to Contact Apple Support

If it progresses through the Setup Assistant after restarting, give it 2 hours to complete the process. If you need it, try booting holding down the power button until you see Options, select your disc, then try to install the previous version of macOS, if possible.

Let us know how it goes for more help, cheers!

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Answer 2

Dec 26, 2020 3:54 PM in response to jdo_apple

Thanks.

I had to hold down the power button to turn off the computer. Hitting Command Control + Media Eject button did not restart the computer.

Upon restart, I logged in again but was immediately back in Setup Assistant and still hung with the spinning color wheel.

I repeated the above sequence, turning off the computer by holding down the power button then restarting via the power button. This time, upon reboot and logging in again, the Setup Assistant was no longer running.

It took a long time to restart my applications, around 20 minutes. I had had a shell terminal open prior to installing Big Sur, and it appeared again. I ran "top -s5" and did not see any high CPU usage. So I cannot explain why the system took about 20 minutes to restart the applications that were open prior to the OS installation.

But everything seems to running nominally as far as I can tell so far.

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Big Sur installation problems Setup Assistant hung

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