Progress Bar Stuck on 100% on boot High Sierra

I somehow got my macbook back to Sierra. I quadrupled the ram. I think I got to it hard internet wired, via recovery. Sierra is fine. If you google the difference there's barely any between Sierra and High Sierra from a users standpoint. They improved siri which I never use on the laptop. And there's a new file system but the advantage is only seen on a fixed hard drive.

it's working great now and I ain't changing to High Sierra! why?

Am still having this problem after going into recovery mode and reinstalling High Sierra have to shutdown when it freezes takes 2 times to start my imac up whats going on? beyond a joke now this has been going on for weeks

Issue solved.

After upgrading to MacOS to High Sierra in early December 2017, the MBP (13'; early 2011) worked well for a few weeks before it freeze. High Sierra can not be clean-installed internally for the SSD drive. But installation can be done externally. The drive with the clean-installed High Sierra runs smoothly externally but can not boot (progress bar stuck) or run internally. Then, I replaced drive cable, but still could not get any improvement. Confusing enough, another SSD with Mac OS X (10.7.5) works fine internally, which could indicate the drive cable still function. I also tried with a cloned copy of MacOS 10.11.6 which is bootable externally but not inside.

I still suspected that the drive cable could be problematic. As a last try before throwing away the MBP, I re-ordered another cable, and replaced the one I input last weekend. With this 2nd cable replacement, the computer resumes to the normal status: internal installation, booting and runs are all functioning well. Phew ....

It seems that both the old cable and the 1st replacement are actually faulty. It still can handle old OS (10.7.5) data traffic, but can not deal with the new OS (I tried MacOS 10.11.6; 10.12.1 and 10.13.2; all not woking inside).

Hopefully, this issue-solving can offer some clues for some trouble cases.

I have a MacBook Pro (2011) and that happened to me twice before and after I used time machine. What I noticed is that if you have something plugged into any of the ports besides the adapter it will delay the boot. I think this is the case because sometimes when I plug in my external drive and my phone a message comes up saying that too much power is being used. Also what I did to resolve the boot issue is used first aid on the mac OS X and the macintosh HD drive and that did the trick .

I don't think it's a problem of old macs: yesterday I got my iMac Pro with High Siera pre-installed (10.13.12) and after the update to 10.13.13 I started having same boot issues...My brand new mac got stuck for 2 hours and it wouldn't boot in any way...I tried to reset SNC, VRAM, PRAM, boot into recovery and repair permissions with disk utility and nothing worked out.

What did the trick at the end was when in recovery mode for the 100th time, I decided to reboot choosing the start up disk rather than the usual restart the computer option...and it worked. But I don't know for how long will that last. I'm tempted to format everything again.

In any event, i you have an older unit look at the specs on High Sierra. The upgraded items, at least to me, are not close to worth the trouble I went through. The new file system? When you're in lock screen it hardly matters.

What is interesting to me is that even though the progress bar is stuck at 100%, I can go to another Mac in the house and use Screen Sharing to find the frozen Mac login screen. In other words, the Mac is fully booted but literally stuck at the progress bar. I can interact with the remote Mac e.g. check email, use a browser but when I physically go back to it, its still stuck on the 100% progress bar. I have found that re-booting via Screen Sharing will get the Mac to fully boot on the second attempt. A hard shutdown/restart from the culprit Mac does not seem to help.

I have had the same impression but thought it was just too crazy so thanks for sharing that. Sometimes when the progress bar is stalled, the mouse pointer appears and if I move the mouse, I get my login screen. So it is fully booted as you said, but not updating my display.

P.S. I just updated my 2012 Mini to 10.13.3. The installation took quite a while (half hour-ish) so I hope it did some good! So far the Mini seems normal and happy, including a test restart, which did not stall, although it does still seem slow.

For the record I have a late 2017 iMac so for those who believe this issue is caused by their Mac's being too old (as advised by Apple), I wouldn't agree. If Apple allows High Sierra to be installed, it should work and leave it to the end user to decide if the potential slower experience outweighs the benefits of the newer OS. Although this issue doesn't help the cause to upgrade.

This issue most often occurred when I was booting back into MacOS from Boot Camp. As a rule of thumb, I enable either Screen Sharing or Remote Management on all installations. So to answer the question, if you haven't already enabled Screen Sharing on a Mac stuck at 100% progress bar, I am not aware of a way to enable Screen Sharing on that Mac via command line, from a remote Mac. From a security perspective I would be surprised if this is possible even if File Sharing was also already enabled. I have not Googled it.

Hi!
I just had this happen to my work iMac two days ago. Did just about EVERYTHING suggested in this thread.
Did the reset of the NVRAM, wouldn't start in Safe Mode, went into Recovery Mode, did First Aid, no errors, reinstalled the OS THREE flipping times... spoke to Apple Care... first guy said to do a reinstall, second person said that it would be a hardware issue (right... ok.. this machine is less than 18 months old, and have had NO issues with it).,

I called local Apple tech, and they said I wouldn't be able to get it in for another 5 days. Was at wit's end... the ONLY thing I didn't do was recovery from Time Machine. Was told by the tech that it wouldn't work if it's a hardware issue.

After the third reinstall didn't work, I decided to screw the advice, and use Time Machine recovery. The only problem being is that my last back up was from October 7 last year. I let it install overnight, and when I came back to work this morning, the recovery install was successful. Booted up, and voila! I lost three months of work, but everything else is here.

My only theory is that the last back up was prior to High Sierra. The Mac has gone back to Sierra (and I've turned off auto-update).

So, whatever the issue is with High Sierra, this machine definitely didn't like it.

I am starting to seriously consider retreating to Sierra as well. After updating to 10.13.3 yesterday, this morning the Mini (2012) stalled on the progress bar again. My hope that the update would help was obviously vain. Decided it was time for the occasional visit to Disk Utility via recovery mode. As usual, First Aid found nothing wrong in any of my three partitions. The Mini managed to restart after that, but it was excruciatingly slow. This stupid problem is becoming quite intolerable.

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.

I can confirm this approach works and I had the same problem as everyone else with High Sierra (also, it wasn't just the one kext issue, it was multiple different ones each time I restored which was a bit weird).

This was the only way I could get anything back without repeating the same issue yet again.

I ended up reinstalling High Sierra about 6 times with multiple different settings and restores but to no avail. I eventually did exactly as steve626 describes and am still currently reinstating my software.

So far so good.

There is only one clincher...now my Command-R boot into Recovery mode hangs at 100% load screen and goes no further. Oh, the irony...

😐

I ended up being able to take a disk image in disk utility and tossed it in an external, to make up for my lack of viable time machine back up, in order to save my files.

Then I created a Sierra boot with a USB flash drive I had laying around, wiped the machine, and downgraded to Sierra. Once that was done and with the added confidence of having a back up, I upgraded to high sierra ONLY AFTER I turned screen share on, as Brianfromedmonds indicated success using that.

The weird thing is, now i’m upgraded to 10.13.3 without issue. I restored my files but not my applications, I only use this Mac (2012 Mac mini) to edit video and audio. I only restored what I needed and it seems to be running fine. AND I learned a valuable lesson about letting a lot of time go between time machine back ups.

Hello all I am in the same boat as many here have a 2010 Mac book pro and after the High Sierra update it is stuck on the progress bar and have tried pretty much all the first aid fix it’s, reinstalls, reboots etc here and spoke to Apple today who suggested I thunderbolt it to another Mac here and copy data over and reinstall. There is one thing I would like to try before that it is the kext file issue but I am totally thick with Terminal window in recovery mode when I type what some people have suggested on here to bring up the non-Apple kext files it does not recognise what I have inputted. I am guessing I am doing the whole thing wrong. If anyone knows of a total idiots guide to using Terminal in RMode and getting it to list the non-Appls kextList.txt file let me know. I have a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow not holding out much hope than having to buy an external hard drive .......😕