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When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
Attempted to do update and when trying to log back on, I chose disk utility.
then got message of unlocking. Computer will not allow me to unlock disk.
tells me “ there are no users on this volume to recover”.
Is this a 2018+ Mac? If so, then there is probably nothing you can do unless you can boot normally or into Safe Mode & successfully log into a macOS admin user account. The only way to access data on the internal SSD for a 2018+ Mac is to be able to successfully authenticate to the security enclave chip. I have seen several cases with our organizations 2018+ Macs where authentication to the T2 security chip was not possible....the data provided may become corrupted so it is impossible to authenticate. I had the T2 security chip get mixed up with the user account name & password...used a password for a different user and was accepted. Other times only one user out of several is available to be selected. Other times no user names are shown, just a UUID for the user account.
If you have an older 2015-2017 Mac running Monterey, then I'm not sure how it is authenticating or whether there is any way to access the data on the internal SSD. I do know that Monterey does want to authenticate when booting to anything other than the default internal SSD. I've never had to worry about any authentication issues under that scenario.
FYI, it is usually advisable to provide the exact model of your Mac and version of macOS involved since there are so many variations & unique issues for various setups & configurations. If you cannot boot into macOS, then you can get the exact model by entering the system serial number here:
Check Your Service and Support Coverage - Apple Support
It also helps to know how you got to this point since you are booting into recovery mode for some reason. History can help us advise you on the options available to move forward and to understand why there may be an authentication issue.
If the internal SSD has been erased or macOS or file system is damaged/corrupted, then you will not have anything to authenticate against. You will need to reinstall macOS either through recovery mode or through a firmware "Restore".
Is this a 2018+ Mac? If so, then there is probably nothing you can do unless you can boot normally or into Safe Mode & successfully log into a macOS admin user account. The only way to access data on the internal SSD for a 2018+ Mac is to be able to successfully authenticate to the security enclave chip. I have seen several cases with our organizations 2018+ Macs where authentication to the T2 security chip was not possible....the data provided may become corrupted so it is impossible to authenticate. I had the T2 security chip get mixed up with the user account name & password...used a password for a different user and was accepted. Other times only one user out of several is available to be selected. Other times no user names are shown, just a UUID for the user account.
If you have an older 2015-2017 Mac running Monterey, then I'm not sure how it is authenticating or whether there is any way to access the data on the internal SSD. I do know that Monterey does want to authenticate when booting to anything other than the default internal SSD. I've never had to worry about any authentication issues under that scenario.
FYI, it is usually advisable to provide the exact model of your Mac and version of macOS involved since there are so many variations & unique issues for various setups & configurations. If you cannot boot into macOS, then you can get the exact model by entering the system serial number here:
Check Your Service and Support Coverage - Apple Support
It also helps to know how you got to this point since you are booting into recovery mode for some reason. History can help us advise you on the options available to move forward and to understand why there may be an authentication issue.
If the internal SSD has been erased or macOS or file system is damaged/corrupted, then you will not have anything to authenticate against. You will need to reinstall macOS either through recovery mode or through a firmware "Restore".
Is it an Apple Silicon Mac and did you erase it completely? That's not good. If so, Revive or restore a Mac with Apple silicon using Apple Configurator
Thank you so much for your detailed response. I found your response to be very helpful, as well as your suggestions of needed information to pin point my problem. I have contacted Apple support and was told to take to the store. Again, Thank you !
What happens if I choose disk utility and it does not identify me
