Software Update stuck at "Checking for updates" (but click Advanced and it displays something different)

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Software Update stuck at "Checking for updates" (but click Advanced and it displays something different)

After 11.6.7 to 11.6.8 and new Safari update, Software Update seems stuck at "Checking for updates". Interestingly, click the Advanced button (potentially turning updates off/on) you see behind the advanced panel part of a display that seems to give the correct info: your system is up to date at 11.6.8.

So, it seems the system isn't actually checking for updates at all, it is just displaying the view that it is. Seems like a simple programmer error (of which Apple makes many these days, the quality has gone down considerably over the last years)

Is there a way to get this sorted?

And please don't tell me the only fix is reinstalling macOS (and thus everything else that has been installed on and configured at it. I'm looking for a better fix than that.

MacBook, macOS 11.6

Posted on Aug 19, 2022 7:25 AM

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Answer 1

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Gerben Wierda Author

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Aug 19, 2022 7:42 AM in response to Gerben Wierda

Clearing NVRAM solved it for me.

Possibly my conclusion above was wrong. After the NVRAM reset, it showed "Checking etc...." and softwareupdated was using CPU. But then softwareupdated stopped using CPU and the display was back to what it should be. So, it might have been that it actually was checking. Anyway. Solved.

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Answer 2

Gerben Wierda Author

Level 2

285 points

Aug 21, 2022 2:31 PM in response to ypinon

NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM, RAM = Random Access Memory) is a little bit of separate permanent machine memory that stores settings, such as your sound volume, that have to survive a restart of your Mac. When you stop or restart your Mac the contents of RAM is lost. What survives the stop or restart must be either on disk or in NVRAM. The contents of NVRAM are thus available during startup (=boot). So, if you turn the volume to zero, during startup the startups sound will not be heard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-volatile_random-access_memory

Another part that keeps settings is the SMC chip (SMC = Systems Management Chip) also contains some data and it runs stuff such as wake from sleep and so on.

The CPU is the processor in your computer which executes all the algorithms running on your computer (so all the apps and the operating system). If you open the Activity Monitor application, you can see which apps/processes are using how much of the available processing power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit

Mac startup key combinations - Apple Support contains the instructions to clear either SMC or NVRAM.

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