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fpuk69 Author

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

Top-ranking reply

dfsdfsdfzsdfxdfzsdfzsdfzsd

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Jan 19, 2018 11:37 AM

Success: I resolved this exact problem. When trying to install High Sierra, my Mac was stuck the black startup screen, stalling at either 90% or 100% completion between restarts.

I managed to get High Sierra installed without losing any of my files. Here is how I did it.

Failures:

Resetting a billion times.
Resetting PRAM.
Resetting CMD.
Using Safe Mode.
Using Recovery Mode (It would freeze upon attempting to re-install the OS, and Disk Utility couldn't detect my drive).
Using Internet Recovery Mode (Same as above).
Looking at Verbose startup mode -- it said "Error 13" on the drive IO.
Talking to the "geniuses" at an Apple Bar, as well as online tech support. They suggested either formatting my drive, or even buying a new drive. They had no inclination to dig into the problem and actually figure it out and fix it.

What worked:

I put my Mac in Target Disk mode (hold down T upon startup).
I connected my Macbook to another Macbook using a Thunderbolt cable. The other Macbook must be running High Sierra. If you don't have a friend with a Macbook, you might be sh*t out of luck.
I made a backup of my files, in case things went poorly. My Macbook appeared as a drive on my friend's High Sierra computer, but dragging files over in Finder resulted in an error. I had to use Terminal and "cp" my files over.
I opened Disk Utility on my friend's computer, and here are the steps I took:
- View -> Show All Devices
- My Macbook showed up, along with various "Container disks".
- I ran First Aid/Repair on all of the various things I saw. Some of them threw errors and refused to repair, but that seems to have been okay.
I then created a bootable USB installer as per How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support using my friend's computer.
I ejected my Mac, disconnected it from the other computer, and booted my Mac onto the USB booter. I ran the installer from the USB stick, and it succeeded! After it completed, High Sierra booted up, and all of my files were present, unharmed.

This was a huge headache for me, and I hope that this writeup helps save your files. Don't necessarily listen to the Apple "geniuses" who say that a format is necessary.

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148 replies

Philly_Phan

Level 7

20,725 points

Feb 7, 2018 4:51 PM in response to fpuk69

I updated a new iMac and and old MBP to High Sierra and both went smooth as silk. In fact, I loaded High Sierra on the iMac a second time because of what turned out to be an unrelated problem. Again, smooth as silk. You won't like this but I'm suspicious about your memory.

Feb 7, 2018 5:07 PM in response to Philly_Phan

What if I told you that I have 5 2010 iMacs at our school currently exhibiting this problem of frozen startup where the machine continues to get hotter and hotter. For us, a hard shutdown and then turning the machine on again eventually leads to the machine successfully booting. Held off on updating these machines until last month and they exhibit the problem with 10.13.3. There is definitely an issue in High Sierra.

Feb 7, 2018 5:44 PM in response to Philly_Phan

Obviously the machine is not too old, or I wouldn't have been able to install High Sierra.

High Sierra was an OS update meant to focus on improving performance and fixing bugs. These machines had no problems running Sierra.

Too old is only an excuse that salesmen use to upsell. Unless in fact there is a failing hardware problem like memory or hard disk. Still, with many people experiencing this problem due to an OS upgrade, it seems likely there are just some bugs that Apple needs to iron out. This stuff happens. I have a Computer Science degree and used to build computers from scratch, I think I can evaluate if a machine is just TOO OLD.

Feb 9, 2018 6:39 AM in response to steve626

If it was a third party software related issue, then High Sierra should properly boot in Safe Mode, but it's not.

I have this problem with an iMac 27" 5K (mid-2015 but I've bought it as new a few months ago) on an external brand new Seagate 2TB. I also tried to reinstall both from an USB stick and with internet restore (opt-cmd-R), on 3 different Mac. Still I can't boot.

It worked, more or less, for a few weeks and then one day I switched my iMac off and the day after it didn't load the login screen. Now I'm stuck.

I also tried to format (low level) the HDD and reinstall with Migration Utility, it worked for some days, then the same problem again.

I think High Sierra is the most unstable macOS I've ever seen in 20 years.

Feb 9, 2018 7:28 AM in response to gabriele1973

I ended up bringing my laptop to genious bar yesterday and problem was solved pretty quickly. Not exactly sure what caused the issue, but essentially my hard drive is intact, and being backed up at the Apple store now. Which was a relief. After a hard drive wipe and restore. Should be up and running again soon.

Feb 9, 2018 11:42 AM in response to fpuk69

Since this morning without warning without any reason without any technical issue I am experiencing the same crazy High Sierra bug / problem. I have lost a full day trying everything i read online. Nothing worked so far. Something that makes me super super mad is the fact that after spending a huge amount of money for Apple and after the billion of profits they make the quality of their OS is getting worse and worse,,, Who is paying me back the time spent on this????

as1967a

Level 1

4 points

Feb 10, 2018 2:47 AM in response to DanielBoone84

you can try to boot in verbose mode (cmd V pressed when powering on). In my case it allows me then to login and then you could do a Time Machine backup, which you could later use to migrate back when you decide to reinstall Mac OS completely new (which solves the problem of stuck progress bar).

Feb 10, 2018 4:10 AM in response to fpuk69

I just found the site below that claims to have a solution without needing to use a backup.

http://robinmonks.com/2018/01/crashed-too-many-corpses-being-created-how-to-reco ver-high-sierra/

It is exactly what you describe and what I experience. I will check out if it helps and will report later if it worked.

It really seems that it is a High Sierra issue and it is amazing that Apple does not react on it.

L5tc

Level 1

4 points

Feb 10, 2018 6:45 AM in response to Stephan Graf

What is so great and new about high sierra to want to go through this? In my younger days I would done all this but for those of us with older Macs? Apple doesn't even support their own updated and if you do an extensive work around you're really in uncharted waters.

Feb 10, 2018 12:16 PM in response to steveward71

Take it to the apple store. All of the fixes that I could have done at home, I tried and none worked.

Apple Genius Bar Diagnosed in less then 15 mins. Hard Drive was intact, just couldn't run High Sierra apparently?

I pick it up tomorrow so ill know for sure then and post in here.

I used it as an excuse to upgrade anyway 🙂

L5tc

Level 1

4 points

Feb 15, 2018 2:52 PM in response to fpuk69

All these work arounds for something your Mac doesn’t need. Why high Sierra? Because it’s free?For what reason is everyone doing this. You won’t even see a difference in the older units. Call me crazy but I value stability. I work hard who has time for this nonsense. Banging your head on a desk would be more productive than this rinky **** useless upgrade.

Feb 16, 2018 3:03 AM in response to Josh_Jones

Hi Josh,

I had to take mine to the Genius Bar (I was there for over 5 hours !) in the end they wiped it after trying to back it up and re-installed just Sierra. They stated that they had seen many of the older Mac machines with the same issue and they suggested I just leave it on Sierra for a while and then make sure I back up on Time Machine before embarking on the upgrade if desired. It was all really annoying I had no intention of upgrading it and came over and found it upgrading I must have accidentally pressed ok to a later upgrade. I hope that helps (I have a 2010 MacBook), Lee

npegram

Level 1

4 points

Feb 21, 2018 9:36 PM in response to fpuk69

500+ people have said they have this issue and still no clear answer? I tried to read the whole thread but so far it hasn't helped. Why don't they just say "hey we have a new OS... but it only works on the following products..." This is just like how they are killing off old iPhone after a few years. I am so glad that this happened on my old macbook, while my two other PCs are still working awesome! My Dads 2008 Dell is still running XP better than my 2012 Macbook trying to do high sierra....

Feb 21, 2018 10:32 PM in response to fpuk69

I will just add that after installing the 10.13.3 supplemental update,

My install stuck on the Apple logo with the progress bar at 100%.

I did a hard shut down then turned it back on.

The computer showed the brief "setting up your Mac" graphic then came on with the install complete.

Late 2015 iMac.

Feb 22, 2018 5:35 AM in response to npegram

I totally agree. I basically spent 5 days a couple weeks ago dealing with this issue, and not working, which doesn't seem like much, but it's definitely crippling when you are trying to run a small business.

I did use this as an excuse to upgrade to a new iMac, which is fine since it was long overdue, and the tech at the genius bar was super helpful and issue on the laptop was dealt with, but I still don't have a clear reason as to why / what happened. They never really told me what cause the issue, and essentially denied that it was the upgrade to high Sierra. In fact, the tech even told me that some of the newer Macs are having trouble with High Sierra.

So long story long, I am up and working after spending $1600 to upgrade, but I am left with a stank taste in my mouth over it.

Progress Bar Stuck on 100% on boot High Sierra