Forced upgrade to Sonoma: can it be stopped?

Nice to know one is not alone in this. I sent my sob story to Apple in complaint. What was weird for me was that I was failing to get the Ventura installer to work off a USB, and as others have mentioned the recovery wasn't allowing me to reinstall from a TM backup, which I had. After two hours I gave up and contacted support. The person on that chat asked me why I wanted to downgrade so I explained. Then she asked me to do some checks which I did and then went silent for a while, then asked me to shut down and boot into recovery and select the USB which I had already tried, and it hadn't shown up as a volume for me to select. I said I had already tried that and there was no reply and then the chat got terminated. What the **** I thought I've nothing to lose now by shutting down. So I tried it and this time the installer volume appeared so eventually I was able to get back to Ventura.

frankybigguns wrote:

Thanks a lot Apple!

This is why we have Time Machine, and spare computers. Even so, I had to create a bootable USB to recover. The morning after, I'm still cleaning up the mess.

Ah, I only use Clones, TM has only let me down when I needed it.

That /tmp trick is really neat, 2nd time I've read ahout it working when nothing else would! :)

BDAqua wrote:

I think I'd uncheck download new updates when available.

Unchecked long ago. This setting was most definitely ignored.

BDAqua wrote:

I think I'd uncheck download new updates when available.

People (including me) did that and yet it happened anyway.

Hence the anger.

It gives the slogan "Apple! Think Different" a whole new meaning...

Have seen over in Sonoma the same

Suggested to this User and maybe to yourself to download the Full Version of Sonoma manually - Terminal

Keep it in the Applications folder and never actual launch Sonoma

Only meant as a possible workaround while Apple Investigates this issue

PS - Major Winter Storm with bitterly cold 70 kmp winds coming

i.tom wrote:

Same today, 13 Jan 2023, after a system restart I had the forced upgrade from Monterey to Sonoma despite my settings being not to allow automatic updates. I'd been swithering about updating to Ventura too. Ha ha. Well done Apple.

Well, now's your chance. An easier option is to just erase the hard drive and restore the OS from recovery. But if you do that, your only restore option is Ventura. 😄 In all fairness, I have been using Ventura on my 2023 Air for several months now. It's not awful. It does fix the Finder Airdrop lockup bug. And the Finder-based UI for a USB-connected device is much improved. Those are the only two noticeable improvements from Monterey.

However, I am disappointed in the Time Machine restore. It wasn't 100% successful. iCloud is confused. I had to re-download all of my e-mail. Spotlight is broken. I'm going to have to redo it all as it it was a new machine. Hopefully Recovery will allow me to restore Monterey this time. How ironic that this is the only time I've really needed to use Time Machine.

In Recovery, after erasing your primary SSD drive, (re)connect to a WiFi network, then insert your bootable Monterey USB stick. Then wait a moment or two until Monterey appears as a device, select it, and proceed with the installation. It took about an hour to install from my ancient USB flash drive.

Then I selected the latest Time Machine backup device (a USB-connected 7200rpm HDD), and it restored about 275GB in about 90 minutes.

kostby wrote:

In Recovery, after erasing your primary SSD drive, (re)connect to a WiFi network, then insert your bootable Monterey USB stick. Then wait a moment or two until Monterey appears as a device, select it, and proceed with the installation. It took about an hour to install from my ancient USB flash drive.

Yeah. That all worked fine. Not quite as fast as the Sonoma install, however. 😄

Then I selected the latest Time Machine backup device (a USB-connected 7200rpm HDD), and it restored about 275GB in about 90 minutes.

That would be nice. I have a 1 TB and it took overnight to restore. I'm going to have to redo it though. Spotlight isn't working. Last time I had this kind of Spotlight problem was when I tried to install an additional OS version. I had to wipe the hard drive to fix it.

If still need be…

Open Terminal and run each of these one at a time

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

killall Dock

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.

BDAqua wrote:

If still need be…

Open Terminal and run each of these one at a time

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

killall Dock

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo mdutil -i on /

Rebuilding a drive index can take a long time, so be prepared to wait whether you do it through the System Preference panel or the command line.

Thanks for the list. I'll try all of that. But I'm not hopeful. I did all of that on my new computer after I had tried to install both Ventura and Sonoma. The only thing that worked was a wipe and reinstall. At least now I'm ready for it and I have the Air to use. The other day I only had the 2017 Intel. That was painful.

Bryan Mac, this reminds me that when it happened to me, I restarted because I was trying to copy files to an external hard drive via USB. They wouldn't copy and it kept hanging so I restarted to try and resolve the issue. It did resolve the file copy issue but lo and behold Sonoma appeared.

I'm not sure if dumping the USB like that is part of the install process, but it's something that happened to me too.

I had exactly the same issue yesterday.

The Sonoma notification appeared and I dismissed it, but at the next reboot it upgraded to Sonoma without ever ask for permission.

Apple must stop this immediately. Whether by bug or by design it must stop now.