User profile for user: fpuk69
fpuk69 Author
User level: Level 1
72 points

Progress Bar Stuck on 100% on boot High Sierra

I have a Mac Mini (Late 2012).


Last month I upgraded the memory from 4GB to 16GB and installed macOS High Sierra; am currently on version 10.13.1


Yesterday (11th November 2017) I booted up my MAC at 9 am (ish) with no problems, during which time it successfully backed up twice to Time Machine at 9:15 and 9:50.


I shut down not long after this, then booted up again at about 13:10, and noticed the usual progress bar beneath the apple symbol was taking a particularly long time. I did a hard shut down and restarted, and still it took a long time, so I left it, then after about 20 (far longer than usual) minutes, it reaches 100% and stayed there: no log in screen.


I shut down and tried to reboot in Safe Mode (holding shift after the chime) but this made no difference as I never got to the log in screen.


I reset PRAM/NVRAM by rebooting and holding command+option+P+R at the chime. Nothing.


Reset SMC (unplugged, held power button, released, plugged back in) still no log in screen after 100%


I booted into recovery mode, opened Disk Utility and checked my hard disk. It returned ok with no errors found. Rebooted, still stuck at 100% with no log in screen.


This is where it starts to get scary.


I rebooted back into recovery mode, and reinstalled High Sierra (took about 3 hours), and, incredibly, it DIDN'T FIX THE PROBLEM!!(still can't believe this!!!) After installing, it rebooted, and again after half an hour the progress bar reached 100% and stayed there: no log in screen! How can actually reinstalling the entire operating system NOT FIX a start up problem? Does it not overwrite the system files it needs to reboot? I just don't understand how this is possible!?


I then went to bed and left my MAC on overnight. In the morning (about 7 hours later) still apple symbol with progress bar at 100%; no log in screen.


I booted in Verbose mode (command V) and saw lots of crashed processes "producing too many corpses"


I decided at this point to restore from a time machine back up. I didn't chose the ones from the morning before because it was after these back ups that my mac wouldn't restart, so opted for the back up the night before because I successfully restarted after this the following morning.


It took 8 and a half hours.


When it had finished, my MAC started just like it had before the problem occurred and everything was back the way it was before anything had happened.


The point is: I am now absolutely terrified to shut my mac down. I did nothing - install any new software, download anything etc - between booting up yesterday morning and yesterday afternoon which would have caused such a critical error, and I just can't believe that I couldn't boot into safe mode, and reinstalling High Sierra didn't fix it (still can't get over this), and am not going to be able to shut down until I know what caused it because I can't wait 8 and a half hours every time I need to use my MAC!!!


I read some articles about kext files, and booted in Verbose mode and saw some error messages about crashes and "too many corpses". I've also in Terminal compared the current system library with the one from the last back up that I successfully booted from and it's only found very few differences - mainly mobile assist fonts, and only 8 cash files - which is really surprising; are the files needed to start up kept somewhere else other than System/Library? I also read that other people managed to log into their macs after restoring from a back up like I have but after the next restart the problem still occured and they couldn't get back in.


Could all this have been caused because I interrupted it when it was being slow to start the first time? But why would it suddenly take so long to start when I haven't installed anything new, and there hasn't been any updates?


Would it be safe to wait for the next update and shut down then?


Is there any danger in leaving your mac mini on for a long time? (fan, heat etc)


Obviously the longer I leave it, the more data I will lose as I will have to restore from the last back up before the problem occurred which is currently the 10th of November, if it won't start again.


Anyone had the same problem and found a fix? Is it now safe to restart? I head something about Kext files in the Extensions folder and moved them but it didn't fix my problem. I can't think of anything I did between 9am and 1pm that would cause such a slow start up followed but such a fatal error; I installed High Sierra over a month ago, and installed the last update over a week ago.


What could High Sierra have done on it's own in the background between 9am and 1pm that now prevents it from starting up?


HELP!

Mac mini, macOS High Sierra (10.13.1)

Posted on Nov 12, 2017 1:12 PM

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User profile for user: pbromelkamp
pbromelkamp
User level: Level 1
25 points

Posted on Apr 28, 2018 1:42 PM

I'm a very experienced Mac tech support consultant, yet I've been grappling with the "too many corpses" problem since yesterday. I tried a number of approaches, but was confident that a simple solution existed. YOU MAY NOT HAVE TO ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE, or reinstall Mac OS. I found a couple of postings that explain this surprisingly quick solution. If you're able to get into Recovery Mode utilizing CMD-R, and you're not afraid to work in the Terminal program, THIS WORKS! If you follow these steps EXACTLY, a bad file named "mbr_cache" will be rebuilt and your Mac will reboot successfully (slowly the first time as the rebuild happens, then normal speed after that). This solution worked on my 2011-vintage 21-inch iMac (iMac 12,1) with Mac OS High Sierra. Someone should tell the Apple Geniuses and Tech Support Specialists about this. Or, better yet, they should be able to find these types of solutions themselves. Good luck!

The two articles where I found this solution are:

macos - Opendirectoryd too many corpses being created - Ask Different

https://mrsystems.co.uk/blogs/news/too-many-corpses-being-created


Steps from the articles:

  1. Boot and hold CMD-R to start up from macOS Recovery
  2. If Filevault is on, mount the disk with Disk Utility and enter password
  3. Enter these two commands in Terminal
  4. cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/var/db/caches/opendirectory
  5. mv ./mbr_cache ./mbr_cache-old
  6. Exit from Terminal
  7. Restart the computer
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148 replies
User profile for user: as1967a
as1967a
User level: Level 1
4 points

Feb 3, 2018 12:01 PM in response to fpuk69

I have the same behavior with almost all updates since High Sierra came out. I tried a lot, but at least one thing I found out helped a bit: when starting in verbose mode (cmd v) my MacBook Pro (2017) boots into the normal desktop. But it does not heal the problem. It's getting stuck at 100% progress bar on the next normal reboot and after logging in.

The only help for me was to reinstall from scratch and migrate back my user and data from a Time Machine backup.

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User profile for user: M.saeed12
M.saeed12
User level: Level 1
4 points

Mar 16, 2018 5:21 AM in response to fpuk69

i had the same problem and sometimes a disk read error and other times it's stuck with login user photo, i tried somone's steps here it didn't work so i lost hope, however just after doing this, i inserted a bootable usb flash with sierra install files and it automatically chose to boot from it. i unplugged the usb memory while the progress bar wasn't complete. My mac then restarted and i was surprisingly able to login normally. Hope this help anyone

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User profile for user: Vik Rubenfeld
Vik Rubenfeld
User level: Level 1
23 points

Mar 29, 2018 6:25 PM in response to fpuk69

The past week or so there had been days when my iMac (27-inch lated 2013, running High Sierra) got really sluggish. After a reboot and/or just given time, it had seemed to fix itself.


But today my iMac got unusably slow. I reset the SMC and it booted normally. I then reset the PRAM, and I got the progress bar stuck on 100%.


Eventually I was able to fix it (at least it seems fixed for now) by rebooting into recovery mode and using Disk Utility. It took so long booting into recovery mode that I thought it was locked up again. But eventually the screen went black, with a flickering cursor in the upper left. I clicked the mouse and the recovery mode UI was revealed.

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User profile for user: melanniefrom239
melanniefrom239
User level: Level 1
9 points

Apr 8, 2018 2:07 PM in response to Natpeloggia

IDK if you saw my post above but I had the same thought as you do...my iMac was only 3 months old so it was also under warranty. When I took it into the Genius Bar they ran a complete check on my entire system & everything was fine. I was worried the HD was bad & was going to demand a new computer vs. a repair but it was fine. The problem was with High Sierra. All they needed to do was delete High Sierra & reinstall it so it was factory new again. It took less than 30 minutes from start to finish & it's ran fine ever since. I took my external HD with me in case it was needed but everything I had was in the Cloud so it loaded quick. I hope that helps & your unit is fixed as easily.

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User profile for user: Denvil
Denvil
User level: Level 1
4 points

Dec 3, 2017 12:26 AM in response to fpuk69

I have the same problem.


My Mac Mini (Late 2014) was originally unable to upgrade High Sierra because of the "cannot unmount disk" error, brought it to Genius Bar and did a fresh install and it was able to boot for a few times.


I then recovered my data from a Time Machine backup and in turn starts up Docker and Virtual Box, it is where it gets unstable and the VM is crashing. So I went ahead for a soft reboot, it is when it stuck at 100% on boot.


My gut feeling is that APFS is not that HDD friendly and refuse to mount every now and then.

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User profile for user: jeff work
jeff work
User level: Level 1
9 points

Dec 11, 2017 1:05 PM in response to fpuk69

I'm having similar problems. It started happening after beta 4 install (for 10.13.2). After installing beta 4 the next reboot resulting in a continue reboot cycle after entering the password to decrypt the startup disk. It didn't matter if I booted to the recovery partition and ran check disk or reset NVRAM. Same problem with beta 5,6 & the release version. I submitted a bug report ~ several weeks ago I got no response. With the release of 10.13.2 it caused both of my 2013& 2014 rMBP to do the same thing. Even when I used the recovery partition to reinstall 10.13.2 it didn't make any difference. I ended up booting to safe mode to try & track the problem down. I have the sysdiag dumps & trying to track down what is happening. It appears something is loading at the point the disk is being decrypted that crashes the system. Strange that it started after beta 4. Apple changed something.

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User profile for user: hamosity
hamosity
User level: Level 1
14 points

Dec 11, 2017 4:24 PM in response to hamosity

And after a weekend leaving it in sleep mode, I returned to work, was able to type in my password... and nothing, just the password window and nothing happening. Finally re-booted in Safe Mode, ran Disk Utilities and supposedly it found an issue. I restarted normally and so far OK. We'll see. I've never had an upgrade go wrong. 10.13.1 seems to have glitches.

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User profile for user: aussienick22
aussienick22
User level: Level 1
10 points

Jan 14, 2018 4:59 AM in response to fpuk69

I had the same problem I tried everything so the only way I found is to reinstall Mac and delete everything in the HD as I didn’t have any backup. The only I had to solve was how to keep my files. I saw in the recovery mode “more infos” section based on safari and used this to login to my mas storage ( in my case fritzbox mas storage) http interface and I tranfer successfuly all my files to hd I connected on it! Is a way if you don’t have backup . You can always use iCloud or google drive too but with limited space and it’s very slow.

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User profile for user: Jianlang
Jianlang
User level: Level 1
8 points

Jan 22, 2018 6:47 PM in response to fpuk69

I have this problem, too.

After upgrading to High Sierra, I stuck in 100% process bar. But Mac did react to the keyboard or play the sound. The only way to get into systems is to use VoiceOver to guide you click restart in apple menu or just enter single user mode and text reboot... but if you attempt to boot after shut down it must stuck at 100%

reinstalling macos is useless.

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Progress Bar Stuck on 100% on boot High Sierra

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