MacBook M1 cannot sign in to iCloud or update macOS

I have a MacBook M1 that was shelved for some time, and Sequoia 15.2. After charging it and going in to back it up to iCloud, before doing a system upgrade I found two problems that I can not rectify.

First off, I had to turn off automatic date/time and set it manually because it was so far off it would not connect to my wireless. But that was minor, once I saw the date time.

The larger stacking problems.

I can not log into iCloud from this machine, it fails with “Your identity couldn’t be verified. Check your network connection and try again.” I attempted the work around of moving the iCloud Accounts directory from the ~/Library/Application Support/iCloud to the desktop, and that did not help.

So I figured I should probably update the OS to the most recent version, and so the second stacking problem. I can not update, I get the error “Failed to personalize the software update. Please try again.”

So I am stuck not being able to access iCloud, or update to a recent OS or even the last update from Sequoia. The MacBook is hardly used, and I have tried all the hacks recommended including updating in safe mode (Same issue), a cli update with softwareupdate on command line, and a couple more. I can’t turn off find me, because I can’t access iCloud settings. I also can’t log out of iCloud.

Any feedback would be good, as this is a pristine laptop, even if a little dated. Would rather not have to do. hard reset, because I can’t backup to iCloud, and don’t have an active TimeMachine.