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MacBook Air M1 not moving past log in screen

Hello all,


today we tried to set up my sister a new MacBook Air with M1 chip from an older iMac to send over all pictures etc.


iMac is using El Capitan, 10.11.6 if I remember correctly. We did the restore from a time machine back up. All seemed to go well. only one program seemed to give us an error saying that it was not compatible with the new computer.


New MacBook then rebooted, prompted us to the log in screen, and when we typed in the password it would not move on from that screen after about 25.


we are baffled as to what could have gone wrong. Only thing I can think of that as she was going through the steps, she accidentally hit the continue butting too quickly on the file vault encryption page and didn’t un check it, as I did not see it at all during this process and I thought that was a screen as part of the process.


what could we do to get into the MacBook now?

Posted on Feb 28, 2021 6:25 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 2, 2021 6:36 PM

Hello jgarcia1925.


Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand that your MacBook Air is unresponsive on the login screen. We’re happy to help.


Not all apps are compatible with the M1 Macs. For more information on apps availability, please see the section titled “Universal apps here”: Apple M1 Chip - Apple


We recommend pressing and holding the power button until it restarts. Here’s more information on restarting your Mac: Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac - Apple Support


If you’re still unable to login to your Mac, we recommend the steps here: How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support


Let us know if you have further questions.


Take care.

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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 2, 2021 6:36 PM in response to jgarcia1925

Hello jgarcia1925.


Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We understand that your MacBook Air is unresponsive on the login screen. We’re happy to help.


Not all apps are compatible with the M1 Macs. For more information on apps availability, please see the section titled “Universal apps here”: Apple M1 Chip - Apple


We recommend pressing and holding the power button until it restarts. Here’s more information on restarting your Mac: Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac - Apple Support


If you’re still unable to login to your Mac, we recommend the steps here: How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support


Let us know if you have further questions.


Take care.

Mar 3, 2021 1:41 PM in response to jgarcia1925

Hello jgarcia1925.


We want your wife to be able to access her content on her new Mac. We recommend determining which apps are compatible with your new Mac. If you choose to do that at another time and transfer her files and photos at this time, then we recommend doing what works best for you.


Unless there’s only one profile on your previous Mac, we’d recommend making both yours and her profile admin accounts.


Here’s more information on restoring a backup: Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support


You can use the steps here to restore specific files from your Time Machine backup: Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support


Let us know if you have further questions.


Take care.

Mar 2, 2021 7:17 PM in response to Eric--F

Thank you for your reply Eric~F.


i had a fear that maybe some apps could have been the culprit. We have have yet to migrate data into this computer again.


we did however restore it to a new state and re installed Big Sur per the recommendation of an apple tech. Now, what he told us to do is to restore it to new, set it up as a new computer, and then migrate the data.


My question now is, should we do a data transfer from the time machine back up, but this time exclude the apps? There aren’t many apps on that old Mac to Begin with. Off the top of my head we only really had Microsoft office, Spotify, go pro, and a couple others I cannot recall. The rest should be whatever the computer came with.


i really only care at this point that her pictures, videos, desktop folders and documents transfer over. This is my biggest concern at the moment as those extremely precious to her.


and one last question, I was the admin on that computer, will that have any adverse side effects now that she is the admin on her new one? We both used that old computer once upon a time to do back ups of our phones, but for long time she was the was the only one really using it.


thanks again for all the help.


-Jesus.

Mar 3, 2021 4:35 PM in response to Eric--F

Hello eric. Sounds good. I will try and just transfer over data and not any of the old apps etc.


the old computer was set up under my name. So when I transfer over the information I may just set myself up as an admin as well. I just hope by not transferring over those old apps, we won’t have this same issue of not being able to log in at all. Last time we started with a set up from the back up, and it then would not let us get back in. Thanks for your advice. I will try that.


aince this is my sisters computer I would rather it have just one user account and we can be don’t with it. Thanks!

Mar 9, 2021 10:43 AM in response to jgarcia1925

Hi all,


bumping this thread up again. Sorry to keep bugging but I am still having issues. We restored the computer, set her up as new computer (she is admin), then tried the migration from time machine again. This time around I excluded the apps from being transferred over. Just the main files and pictures. Now, the mistake that I think I did was that I left the old user information to transfer over. . . I am not sure if this is the issue why I still can’t log in to her new computer using my old admin issue. She can log in and see what has been transferred over via iCloud. The rest of the pictures from the time machine back up are not there. We just got off the phone with another tech support agent, and this time she was saying I can’t log in to my admin account because the old iMac under my name if uploading things still to iCloud. Could this really be possible?


i am a loss and beginning to worry that the M1 Mac will not work with the old one as far sending over information for some odd reason.

MacBook Air M1 not moving past log in screen

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