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msaaddev Author

Level 1

4 points

macOS big Sur is not installing

So, I have a MBP 2019 16 inches and I had Catalina on it. I wanted to clean install macOS big Sur on it. And for that, I formatted my entire hard drive from disk utilities. Now I am running into a strange problem. My hard drive is not showing up in the Startup Disk Pane, maybe because it is entirely formatted. But the problem is the macOS is also not installing.

I have a bootable USB of big Sur. And when I click on it from the startup disk pane, a globe comes up, asks for my internet password, then shows up a bar, takes some time, and then the laptop restarts, and it gives me a blinking ? mark.

When I try to look up the internal SSD on the startup disk pane, it is still not there. I tried to do internet recovery but it is also not working. Here is a log of internet recovery installation:

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Aug 1, 2021 2:59 AM

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,542 points

Posted on Aug 1, 2021 10:25 AM

Did you first enable booting from USB drives using the Startup Security Utility found in Recovery Mode/Internet Recovery Mode? Otherwise you will get the behavior described. If USB booting was not enabled, then you will need to boot into Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R) to boot into the Big Sur online installer.

When erasing the drive make sure to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Select the whole physical drive and erase it as GUID partition and APFS (top option). The physical drive should be the top most item on the left pane which will be identified something like "Apple SSD ....".

If you still have problems, then you may need to "Revive" or even "Restore" the T2 firmware:

Revive or restore an Intel-based Mac with Apple Configurator 2 - Apple Support

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macOS big Sur is not installing

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