Sequoia Issues on 2019 MacPro.

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Level 1

6 points

Sequoia Issues on 2019 MacPro.

I made the huge mistake of updating to Sequoia yesterday. I have trashed most of today trying to correct the error, without success, so I'm now here for guidance.

I have a 2019 MacPro. Ran the update yesterday. The issues were immediate. When the reboot happened all bluetooth devices were disconnected. Troublesome considering that my keyboard and trackpad are bluetooth. All my external drives refused to connect and gave error messages for them being disconnected.

I eventually found wired devices so I could connect to the computer and ran the "fix" for the bluetooth issue - I now sometimes have bluetooth, but it reverses randomly, so I currently have bluetooth and wired devices on my desk. I've run first aid on all of my drives and no issues there, so it's not clear why they're not connecting. They will connect individually but when they're connected through a hub they will not. They are all powered drives, so voltage isn't the issue.

1) booted into recovery mode and it refused to restore from Time machine.

2) I created a bootable Sonoma install (twice on two different USB drives) and I can't get them to be recognized. When I go to startup drive settings they're not in there as an option and when I reboot holding the option key it just reboots, rather than diverting to an option of selecting a boot drive.

This should not be so hard. Any guidance would be very much appreciated.

[Edited by Moderator]

Mac Pro, macOS 15.0

Posted on Sep 19, 2024 12:29 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Wellardmac Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 12, 2024 8:50 AM in response to Scott Finlayson

Scott Finlayson wrote:

Wellardmac wrote:

How did you do it? I tried and couldn't get it to happen - I tried every method I knew and none worked. It was frustrating to haver a Time Machine back up that it wouldn't let me revert to. I even made Sonoma boot drives and they wouldn't work either. I'd love to know how you did it, as I'm sure I'll be in this situation again.

There's an Apple support document that explains how to make a bootable USB installer drive...

Bootable Installer

but you need to also *ALLOW* the ability to boot from a USD drive. This article explains how:

Startup Security Utility

Once you go through those steps and boot from the USB drive, you can do an install pointing to a TimeMachine backup. And then, start a jigsaw puzzle or go for a hike. It's gonna take a while.

It really is amazing that an UPDATE to your OS can take 5-15 minutes... but to restore it to what it was just an hour ago can take (literally) all day.

Yeah, my machine wasn't allowing me to do that - I guess it was even more messed up than what others were experiencing. I spent 2 days working on my mine to get it performing normally. It was a huge waste of time and effort. As you said, 15 mines can cost a lot of time when things go wrong.

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Answer 2

Oct 12, 2024 8:35 AM in response to Wellardmac

Wellardmac wrote:

How did you do it? I tried and couldn't get it to happen - I tried every method I knew and none worked. It was frustrating to haver a Time Machine back up that it wouldn't let me revert to. I even made Sonoma boot drives and they wouldn't work either. I'd love to know how you did it, as I'm sure I'll be in this situation again.

There's an Apple support document that explains how to make a bootable USB installer drive...

Bootable Installer

but you need to also *ALLOW* the ability to boot from a USD drive. This article explains how:

Startup Security Utility

Once you go through those steps and boot from the USB drive, you can do an install pointing to a TimeMachine backup. And then, start a jigsaw puzzle or go for a hike. It's gonna take a while.

It really is amazing that an UPDATE to your OS can take 5-15 minutes... but to restore it to what it was just an hour ago can take (literally) all day.

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Answer 3

bralim

Level 1

8 points

Sep 22, 2024 6:18 AM in response to Wellardmac

I am also having problems after updating to sequoia. It crashes nearly instantly after startup and reboots and goes like that in an endless cycle. This is an abysmal performance, I would have stayed with windows to have this shoddy level of programming.

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Answer 4

Oct 11, 2024 12:05 PM in response to Wellardmac

My 2019 Mac Pro update to Sequoia issue was a different known issue: The external SATA drive enclosures over Thunderbolt. The was/is a driver issue that forced me to go through an entire day of reverting to a TimeMachine backup as well. That particular issues causes the computer to either kernel-panic or just reboot spontaneously every 3-7 minutes. It made it EXTREMELY difficult for me to format a USB drive to boot from because it kept crashing during the process. I am awaiting the next release or two and waiting to read if this particular issue has been addressed. That's actually what I was hoping *this* thread was about. [ shrug ]

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Answer 5

Wellardmac Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 11, 2024 12:44 PM in response to Wellardmac

I never did figure out how to get back to Sonoma. It was very frustrating.

After several days of debugging, I found out that it was linked to a drive error on one of my external drives. After running disk first aid the problem went away. It's crazy that so much harm could be caused by a relatively minor issue. That screams to me of lack of robustness of the OS.

To me there were 2 issues at play here: 1) Apple has made it next to impossible to revert back to prior OS when something goes wrong and 2) lack of robustness of a new release. Both need to be addressed.

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Answer 6

Oct 12, 2024 6:09 AM in response to Wellardmac

Well... "Next to impossible" may not be fully accurate, but... I understand your point and frustration seeing that it took me about 6-8 hours to revert back to Sonoma. In all fairness, MOST of that time was just waiting for the system - booted from a USB memory stick - to restore from a TimeMachine backup from earlier that morning. So yes, it's not exactly *easy* to just revert... especially when (for me) crashes and kernel-panics get in the way of creating a bootable USB drive. In hindsight, I should always do that prior to doing a major OS update... but I am foolish and am at least aware that I will *probably* fall into this self-imposed trap again in the future due to my impatience. :)

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Answer 7

Wellardmac Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 12, 2024 7:19 AM in response to Scott Finlayson

Scott Finlayson wrote:

Well... "Next to impossible" may not be fully accurate, but... I understand your point and frustration seeing that it took me about 6-8 hours to revert back to Sonoma. In all fairness, MOST of that time was just waiting for the system - booted from a USB memory stick - to restore from a TimeMachine backup from earlier that morning. So yes, it's not exactly *easy* to just revert... especially when (for me) crashes and kernel-panics get in the way of creating a bootable USB drive. In hindsight, I should always do that prior to doing a major OS update... but I am foolish and am at least aware that I will *probably* fall into this self-imposed trap again in the future due to my impatience. :)

How did you do it? I tried and couldn't get it to happen - I tried every method I knew and none worked. It was frustrating to haver a Time Machine back up that it wouldn't let me revert to. I even made Sonoma boot drives and they wouldn't work either. I'd love to know how you did it, as I'm sure I'll be in this situation again.

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Answer 8

Wellardmac Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 19, 2024 12:30 PM in response to Wellardmac

BTW, I have checked security settings and booking from an USB drive should be allowed, as the settings are correct.

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