Boot failure after High Sierra Update

Thanks P. Philipps! That is what I feared. So I will have to try to reinstall the “oldest” macOS available for my device. Or wait an update of High Sierra that solves the problem (my Time Machine is about 15 days old... no big deal but I keep that as the really last option).

But let me say... Seems Apple did a remarkable bug into High Sierra! I wouldn’t have believed it possible. The machine became unusable!

Anyway thanks

Best regards

Cla

Just to save you some time...

You can’t install any older software over High Sierra. You will have to delete everything on the drive first and install fresh.

I got tired of dealing with it, so I bought a new MacBook, pulled the hard drive out of the old one, got a $5 sata cable and tansferred everything over. I deleted the old drive and reinstalled High Sierra... old computer works perfectly.

Hi TracyJr

thanks for answering!

may I ask a precision?

I plan to start in recovery mode and use the key combination

Shift + alt +command + R

supposedly this should revert to the original macOS or to the oldest available for that specific machine (I imagine it downloads from Apple servers).

Are you telling me that High Sierra crippled my Mac AND prevents me from going back to just the previous macOS!?

thanks and best regards

Claudio

I think High Sierra uses a new filing system for data on your computer. I went to the Apple Store to have original Sierra (which worked) reinstalled. The computer will not let anyone downgrade to older versions of the OS if you have High Sierra installed because the filing systems are not compatible. Basically, old Sierra was not built to move High Sierra files because High Sierra had not been created, yet. The ONLY way to go back to an older version is to erase the data on the disk and do a new installation.

To keep your data, you will need to either: 1) pull the hard drive out and use a Drive Converter with a Sata adapter to save your files to another computer (my laptop was a 2010 MacBook Pro, and the drive was easily removable with just a 00 Phillips screwdriver), or 2) take your computer to a professional to save your files.

If you can pull the hard drive yourself, you can use the Setup Utility on another mac to move your data AND your programs using the Sata adapter. It will set the computer up just like you had the old one and you'll never know the difference. The other option is to connect the new computer to the old hard drive with the Sata adapter and move your files manually. You will have to re-download your programs, but you will also have to manually move their associated files from the old computer drive to their correct places on the new computer. Some people say this is easy, but it takes a LONG time. I didn't trust myself to do it correctly.

If you take your computer to a professional, they can only move your data (like pics, Word or Pages documents, music files) to a CD. They will not be able to salvage your programs and move any license keys you have for them.

If you don't have access to another mac that is compatible with High Sierra, you will either have to wait for an updated version to fix the issue or settle for moving only your files and figuring out how to get your programs back.

Hi TracyJr

I can confirm you are right :-(

I am sitting in front of a recovery screen asking me if I want to install Mavericks and asking to choose a volume... and no volume is shown!!!!

So I think I will go for the Time Machine backup of 15 days ago. I do not use my Mac professionally so that is not a big deal. But what an issue!! It’s really not worth of Apple.

Best regards and thanks again

Cla

Since upgrading to High Sierra 10.13.1 I have had this same problem with my Mac.

At start up the screen just hangs there, forever!! going no further than the white bar.

My work around has been to make a "hard close down" by holding down the "Power On" button, after which the computer will start normally.

However I would like to have a proper solution

Anglogeezer.

In my case, after the restore from Time Machine, I finally shut down and restarted (now two times) with no problems for the moment. I wish to underline that the restore was to High Sierra (I chose the last backup I did, and I did it a few days after "successfully" ;-) migrating to High Sierra.

If it happens again, I'll try your "workaround"... actually I would say I already tried it, thinking about it. Because to shut down the iMac when it was stuck I did press and hold the Power On. But the only thing that happened was that the iMac shut down. To restart I had to press Power On again, and it would take again forever to reach the end of the progress bar, and then stay there.

Best regards

Claudio

Same issue here. Attempted a High Sierra install on the latest gen of Mac Mini. Install seemed to go OK, but on the first boot-up, I get the white Apple logo over black background... the white bar completes... then the screen goes white, with graphic corruption across the bottom half of the display... then it goes back to black, and hangs there, with graphic corruption.

I've tried resetting SMC, PRAM, and going into Safe Mode. Safe Mode still has the graphic corruption across the bottom of the screen, and none of the Disk Utility first aid options work.

I do use this Mini for work so I'm a little frustrated here. Would love to see if anyone has a fix. Thanks.

I have the same problem in my late 2011 MacBook Pro! Apple support also refused to help me effectively because the support for my computer ended some time ago.

Luckily I’ve found this topic, because I couldn’t understand what happened. Now I know my laptop is not turning on because of this update.

Managed to save my files into an external hard drive, using Linux in a pendrive. Now I’ll try to install some previous version of Mac OS.

Really disappointed with Apple!

Sadly, their are doing .... nothing! :-(

As others too, I’m really disappointed with such s poor behavior from Apple. I switched from Windows about 3 years ago. It is definitely *not* the “brave new world” that I naively expected.

Well, lesson learned everyone!

Happy holidays and new year nevertheless!

Claudio

Well, wait a minute: I *did* solve the problem just restoring from Time Machine. And since then, everything is fine. I’ve just learned the lesson (confirmed also by other longtime Apple users): never never never install a new OS, no matter how good are the praises in the web and in print (by me this was actually the case: I was encouraged by a article in a computer magazine). Just wait at least 6+ months after first availability.

And if I can dare a suggestion: I also store my photos and films on the Mac (in the standard Photos app, since 2017). But since they are invaluable to me, I have a normal “copy” of them (before importing in Photos) on an external disk formatted for both Windows and Apple OS. And the disk is disconnected after every copy and stored away from the Mac.

Best wishes

Claudio

After spending 6+ hours attempting all sorts of fixes, I gave up on High Sierra and restored from Time Machine.

As lousy as their new OS has been, Apple's Time Machine is still the best backup solution I have seen for consumer and prosumer environments.

TM Restore had to be done from the Safe Boot menu, which was complicated because the bottom half of the screen was corrupted and unreadable. Thankfully I found a guide online with screen shots, so I was able to guess where to click even tho I couldn't see the buttons (gee, thanks Apple, for not allowing the restore windows to be re-positioned).

Now that it's been restored, the Mini is working fine. But there is no way I will attempt a High Sierra install again. I'll wait until the next major release, and hope that Apple's software quality control improves. Who knows? By then, they might actually release a new Mac Mini!

Does the new version of High Sierra, 10.13.3 solves this problem..?

I have the same problem with my MacMini and the only solution found was reinstall an old version of MacOS 10.12.1.

MacOS High Sierra works up to version 10.13.1...!

For my situation, the machine that had the problem was already on High Sierra. 10.13.2 I believe, and it had been running on that for some time. I saw the same error in verbose boot as posted above by Olaf re: "...too many corpses created..." (Gotta love that error message!) I looked for a solution to repair it and get it to boot again and found nothing out there. I assume something in the OS got corrupted that kept it from booting completely (safe mode didn't work for me either). I threw in the towel on fixing it and looked for a way to recover data.

For me it was as simple as using recovery mode to boot, restoring the internal hard drive (source) to an external drive (target) with disk utility (see my Jan 4, 2018 post above for a link to more detailed instructions from another post), then erasing the local disk and reinstalling High Sierra on it. I chose not to migrate as I liked the idea of a fresh install in this case.

Afterward, the user was able to recover her Lightroom catalog and I was also able to recover her Windows 10 VM Fusion machine from the external drive, which saved time not having to rebuild her Windows environment. All files were accessible on the external hard drive backup and could therefore be recovered.