monterey 12.2.1 login problem

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Level 1

4 points

monterey 12.2.1 login problem

After upgrading to 12.2.1 this morning, login is broken.

I get a spinning wheel after entering the password, and none of the workarounds I've tried over the past 7 hours have worked.

I finally had to reformat the drive and reinstall High Sierra, which fixed the login issue, but as soon as 12.2.1 finished installing, same problem.

Anyone else having the same trouble? As of now my only recourse is to try a downgrade to Big Sur and hope I can login again. If I can get it working I still have to re-install all my apps and recover the data from backup.

Extremely frustrating to say the least. If I can't trust the OS upgrades not to bork my system, how am I supposed to keep up to date?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Feb 10, 2022 10:54 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

lllaass

Level 10

210,417 points

Feb 11, 2022 1:00 AM in response to bwg168

I have not seen this problem before in this forum

What specific model and year Mac?

Does it have a Fusion drive?

When you wiped the drive and reinstall HIgh Sierra did you repair/First Aid the startup disk?

Some users have problem skipping a ac OS version.

I would again wipe disk and install the macOS version offered in Recovery and then upgrade one step at a time. To get the older macOS version see:

How to get old versions of macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

85,039 points

Feb 11, 2022 2:29 AM in response to bwg168

Have updated a M1 Laptop Thursday and not issues with Monterey 12.2.1

In the process of updating M1 Mac Mini and so far no issues,

Use About this Mac from the Apple Icon on Desktop - the required Information will be there.

What are the details of this problematic computer

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Answer 3

bwg168 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 13, 2022 3:17 PM in response to lllaass

Late 2015 27" iMac, SSD. My other 2019 iMac is running 12.2.1 with no issues.

The system was running Monterey 12.2 before I tried 12.2.1 - and now that I think about it, I did have the spinning wheel login issue on the same account then as well, but after a restart it seemed to go away (I did not upgrade to Monterey when it was first released).

I was forced to repair and reformat the drive before reinstalling High Sierra as I had no choice; I was unable to reinstall the OS through recovery (attempts to reinstall failed with cryptic errors like -5101F). And Safe Mode would not boot, the system always restarted to the normal login screen.

In the end I reformatted the drive again in recovery, but rather than go through the tedious process of upgrading one OS at a time, I did an Option Boot clean install of Big Sur via USB drive, then restored my apps and data. Everything is running well, as it did before I upgraded to Monterey 12.2 in the first place.

But now I'm loathe to attempt another Monterey upgrade because I don't want to have to go through all this again.

The only other option I can think of is at some point wiping the drive and using a USB installer to make a clean install of Monterey, confirming the login screen actually works, then restoring data from Time Machine, but if that fails then I would have to go back to Big Sur again - it's a lot of wasted time.

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Answer 4

lllaass

Level 10

210,417 points

Feb 14, 2022 1:13 AM in response to bwg168

I would opt to the USB bootable install media.

I would only migrate your Users (that includes your data) for Time Machine. Not apps or system settings.

You have to reinstall any apps you need. This way you minimize the chance of migrating things that likely ar causing your problems.

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monterey 12.2.1 login problem

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