Can only boot up in SafeMode, files inaccessible
During the update to Monterey, the progress bar froze in place for several hours and the "Time remaining" text disappeared. I restarted my MacBook, and got a login screen like usual.
After login and a brief loading screen, I get a black loading screen with a white Apple logo and white progress bar, stuck at about 5%, that does not move even over the course of hours. I tried restarting & waiting multiple times.
Then I tried to start in safe mode. It was extremely laggy. The cursor acted normally but all the wizard buttons and text fields would take 10 to 30 seconds to update on screen in response mouse clicks or any keyboard input. The Safe Mode wizard asked me to set up a new user, timezone, etc.
In Safe Mode I realized none of my files were visible in Finder, even though the MacBook acknowledges that the hard drive is mostly occupied. "About my MacBook" identifies it as 170 GB of System Data. I used third party software "Disk Drill" to check that my files were still on the hard drive.
In Safe Mode my MacBook is laggy, especially when trying to pull up launchpad, but it identifies itself as fully up to date with Monterey.
I restarted my MacBook several times but encountered the same login -> stalled progress bar loading screen. I've even left the MacBook on the loading screen overnight in hopes that it would somehow finish, but no success.
Now when I start my MacBook in Safe Mode, I'm no longer able to use Disk Drill. The user I set up the first time I started Safe Mode no longer has the admin access it did the first time. My normal/original user login also does not work when administrator credentials are asked for.
I'm not sure what to do now. I'm typing this on my phone.
2015 MacBook Pro
Thanks for your time
