MacBook Pro (2015) bootloops during Monterey installation

Question

Level 1

12 points

MacBook Pro (2015) bootloops during Monterey installation

Hi All--I'm getting stuck in the dreaded bootloop installing Monterey on a MacBook Pro Retina early 2015.

I first tried a Monterey installer downloaded from Apple, but that would not even start, so I installed Catalina from a USB installer. That has been working great BUT Safari is now hopelessly outdated.

I created a new APFS target file with plenty of memory space and tried a Monterey USB installer from macosdesign on Etsy. The computer was connected to internet so date&time were probably correct.

I am keeping Catalina intact for dual boot capability.

The Monterey Installation partially completes, restarts, and after a few seconds enters the bootloop. The Installation log indicates "reading plist" and other non-fatal errors.

Finder shows applications and a bunch of other stuff are installed on the Monterey drive, BUT it refuses to boot.

Catalina still boots up OK.

I still have the Catalina USB installer and a time machine data backup BUT am wary of completely erasing the hard drive for a clean install.

Any suggestions?

THANKS!

Posted on Feb 19, 2026 3:12 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Feb 20, 2026 8:21 PM in response to BxxxFR

BxxxFR wrote:

I agree that a clean Monterey install might be the only option, BUT I would still like some insight into the installation log error messages "ERROR READING PLIST" and XPC "ERROR CONNECTION INVALID"

Without the full log entry there is no way we can tell what may be involved. And it can be difficult to even locate the actual start of the failure in those logs since the logs may contain lots of entries indicating "errors", but were not fatal errors....perhaps only errors because some installation step did not apply to that particular model Mac.

In your first post you indicated acquiring an installer from some third party. We definitely cannot help if you are using an installer acquired outside of Apple's own CDNs since who knows how those unknown installers may have been modified by someone else.

FYI, most issues will be due to third party software that is installed on the system. Perhaps booting into Safe Mode and running the installer will help as it will disable most third party software.

How much Free storage space do you have on this internal SSD? Ignore the very misleading "Available" storage value shown every where in macOS since it is not synonymous with Free. The only place the Free storage value is shown is in Disk Utility.

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 19, 2026 4:11 PM in response to BxxxFR

The preferred method of upgrading macOS is to use System Settings > General > Software Update.

An alternative method is to download the macOS installer directly from the App Store and then launch it manually.

Open the App Store app. Type macOS into the search field and press the return key, then scroll to find and click Download macOS Versions in the results. (It may be helpful to apply the filter “Free” to the search results.) Scroll the right side of that panel to locate the link for the OS download you want. You will be presented with the download page where you will click “Get” to initiate the download.

Once downloaded, double-click the “Install macOS…” app now found in the Applications folder to begin the upgrade.

This is Apple's guidance for the alternative option: How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

This guidance also includes info on installing macOS from macOS Recovery.

At this point, if you cannot install the macOS upgrade, you may have to revert to erasing the hard drive and starting over. Hopefully you have backup of your own data.

Reply

Answer 3

BxxxFR Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 20, 2026 3:30 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

D.I.--Thanks for the response.

I had already tried upgrading from Mojave to Monterey with Software Update and got an error message that something (I forget just now) could not be found so I had to resort to a USB installer instead. The installer I had at the time was Catalina, and now I am trying a Monterey USB installer.

I agree that a clean Monterey install might be the only option, BUT I would still like some insight into the installation log error messages "ERROR READING PLIST" and XPC "ERROR CONNECTION INVALID"

Reply

Answer 4

BxxxFR Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 26, 2026 1:15 PM in response to BxxxFR

Hi again

Thanks for your insights.

If it would help and you were willing to look through them, I could send you the recovery and install logs.

Yes, I checked the free storage in the disk utility. I did not set a minimum allocation when creating the volume since there was so much free space indicated - over 400GB.

FYI--over time, I have had better luck with third party installers than just using the automated Apple update, BUT I have not tried running it in safe mode yet. Perhaps my free version of AVG is causing an issue, so that is a good suggestion. I used the third party installer (this one with good reviews) because the Apple link did not work.

The first time I tried it (in Mojave), the Apple installer would not even start; it couldn't find something it needed -according to the community, a common error. Maybe it will work in Catalina.

Best regards..

Reply

Answer 5

BxxxFR Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 19, 2026 2:29 PM in response to BxxxFR

Hi D.I.

A lot has happend since our last interaction. I have tried pretty much everything, as outlined in my other post (user BxxxFR).

Currently, I have a bootable Big Sur OS volume which loads half way and the gets stuck in a "too many corpses loop". As seen in Verbose Mode, the process hangs at " apfs_get_firmlink_target_vnode:2013:disk1s1:0

vnode lookupat(library) failed with error 2" which shows a few times and repeats continuously.

I don't expect erasing the drive and starting over, as most suggest, will produce a different result with either Big Sur or Monterey.

Someone online said clearing the boot cache might fix this type of problem. I will try that now. Any other thoughts?

Thanks

Reply

Answer 6

Mar 19, 2026 6:35 PM in response to BxxxFR

BxxxFR wrote:

Hi D.I.

A lot has happend since our last interaction. I have tried pretty much everything, as outlined in my other post (user BxxxFR).

Currently, I have a bootable Big Sur OS volume which loads half way and the gets stuck in a "too many corpses loop". As seen in Verbose Mode, the process hangs at " apfs_get_firmlink_target_vnode:2013:disk1s1:0

vnode lookupat(library) failed with error 2" which shows a few times and repeats continuously.

I don't expect erasing the drive and starting over, as most suggest, will produce a different result with either Big Sur or Monterey.

Someone online said clearing the boot cache might fix this type of problem. I will try that now. Any other thoughts?

Thanks

Since you created another new thread for the same basic issue, please provide updates in the new thread where others are currently assisting.

Unfortunately looking through an install log is a royal pain especially when we have don't know at what point in the installation the failure occurred. I've gone through a few of them before for systems I was repairing and it was not easy to locate the initial failure. It would be even more difficult when I am unable to observe the installation process & failure. The install log is likely to have a lot of unimportant error entries because some installation items may be different depending on each exact model of computer. Sifting through that is a lot of work and I'm not up for that at the moment, besides I don't think it really matters due to new ideas in the new thread.

Erasing the drive is meant to create a fresh new partition table and file system. Other methods may not change these items. I just thought of another option which I will present in your newest thread here:

Newer Thread -->> MacBook (2015) update bootloop, 'too many…- Apple Community

Reply

MacBook Pro (2015) bootloops during Monterey installation

Similar questions