Upgrade from High Sierra to Monterey hangs

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Level 1

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Upgrade from High Sierra to Monterey hangs

I was having some issues with a Macbook air 2013 High Sierra, it seemed to not recognize the hard drive at some times and did not boot (folder with question mark). Made some unnecessary drive permission fixing, that seemed to solve it. Now tried to upgrade to Catalina but Apple Store sent me directly to Monterey. I have enough free space (around 150 GB). I also had a 140'ish MBPS internet connection. The mac rebooted and began upgrading, but the progress bar advanced very slowly, more or less until 40%. I had to move the mac to another wifi connection (another city), but the progress bar just does not advance. I already did a first reboot to no avail. What do you recommend I do next?

I'm thinking there must be some key strokes or maybe rebooting several times so the OS knows it has to fix something.

Posted on Feb 19, 2022 3:50 PM

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Answer 1

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Johnb-one

Level 6

9,180 points

Feb 19, 2022 4:26 PM in response to HermesXXVII

Hi, HermesXXVII, maybe I can help you.... that folder with the question mark means the Mac OS cannot find a system folder to boot from.... I'd suggest you run Disk Utility first and then Disk First Aid.... before that, maybe zap the pram about 4 times on startup, seeing as how you have an Intel MacBook, just restart and hold down the following Keys together : Apple (cloverleaf/command)+Option+P+R, hold them down for 4 chimes then release them and let your Mac startup as usual, then run Disk Utility.... Your Mac supports Internet Recovery, (Option+Apple+R) so you could give that a try then re-install the Mac OS. you'll get the most compatible OS that it can find.... Oh, and forget about Monterey, your MacBook Air cannot run it. Anyways, before trying to upgrade from High Sierra, you need to get your hard drive problem sorted out first... and where possible, you should use an Ethernet connection and not wifi which would be way, way slower, and the upgrade is about 8 Gigs in size... If You hold down the "D" key on startup, it'll run Apple Diagnostics on your MacBook Air. Maybe you could go for El Capitan first....

john B

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