Level 3

672 points

Mojave install a disaster

My upgrade to Mojave has been an mitigated disaster. First I could not even get past the 90% or so marker (on the little bar) after the first installation. After waiting for what I thought as an inordinate amount of time I did a hard restart. After restart the screen immediately jumped to where it left off. So I did a hard rest and went into recovery mode. selected reinstall Mojave. Did the same thing; stopped at the 90% mark. I finally let it run over night. This was yesterday. This morning I when I looked at the screen it was at the Login screen. I tried logging in but it was so slow and painful. After every letter I typed the beachball would spin. Another weird thing was the account picture was still in its original place (it happened to be on the far left) but would “inch” closer to being over the text box with every letter I typed.

I was finally able to log in. The desktop loaded by slowly. I tried selecting an applicat to get a window. Nothing. Finally I was able to get the computer to shutdown.

After looking for some help I found a message with a link to a YouTube video. There were four recommendations: 1) Hard restart, 2) boot into safe mode, 3) zap the PRAM, 4) Recovery mode. I tried all three nothing really worked. Maybe a slight, and I mean slight, increase in speed. Now I am upgrading a MacPro with 2 quad-core processors. And I am upgrading fron 10.13.X. Finally tried Recoveray mode again.

When I finally get to the desktop the strangest thing is I have no communications. Under the grayed out Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar it says “No WiFi hardware installed.” The Network pane in Systems Preferences shows nothing connected to the two Ethernet ports. I am writing this on my IPad, so I know the house network works.

I am am at my wits end. I made a backup of the drive BEFORE I started the upgrade but I have no way of “slicking” the SSD drive so I can do a clean install.

i really could use some help!

iPhone 6 Plus, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Sep 25, 2018 4:45 PM

Top-ranking reply

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Posted on Oct 12, 2018 5:50 AM

SUCCESS! In fact the following did work and enabled me to sucessfully upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave resolving all issues. IMPORTANT: Make sure your spacing is correct when typing ls -l /etc/sysctl.conf into the Terminal.

A. If you can log in (even if slow), or you're still on High Sierra, and have not yet upgraded, follow these instructions:

1. Start the terminal app from Applications/Utilities

2. Check if the file exists, by typing

ls -l /etc/sysctl.conf

If this returns a result like the following, then the file exists. If it does not, then your issues are caused by something else

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 136 24 Nov 2013 /etc/sysctl.conf

3. Simply rename the file by typing in: sudo mv /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.conf.bak

(You’ll be prompted for your password)

4. Restart your computer, and you should be all set, or if you've rolled back to High Sierra, you should be good to attempt the upgrade again.

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100 replies

Ann Laux

Level 4

1,843 points

Oct 1, 2018 8:56 PM in response to WilliamL

I had the same disastrous experience, including the weird sideways creep of the user icon with each keystroke of the login password. The only remedy was a hard drive wipe and restore from Time Machine back to High Sierra. Ugh.

Oct 24, 2018 10:43 AM in response to Susan Williams

I was trying to invoke the macOS recovery menu, holding down cmd-r while powering up. I finally got a Senior Advisor at Apple to help me get out of whatever state my computer was in. Now restoring High Sierra from Time Machine. No more Mojave until Apple works out the kinks better. Thanks for responding.

Sep 25, 2018 5:12 PM in response to WilliamL

Ok great. Which year? 2010, 2011, 2012 or trashcan?

Sep 26, 2018 9:18 AM in response to WilliamL

Got these exact issues too. AND, the BT mouse cannot be found.

Reverted back to 10.13.6 on my late 2014 iMac 27".

Sep 25, 2018 4:58 PM in response to WilliamL

Which machine is this? Mac Pro? What year? Stock or aftermarket drives? What kind of GPU? All of this can cause trouble with Mojave apparently.

Many folks are having trouble upgrading on 2012-2015 MBPs with aftermarket OWC Aura SSDs. Others have GPUs that don’t support metal.

Sep 26, 2018 10:46 PM in response to WilliamL

exact the same here: MacBook Pro 15‘ Late 2013 all Apple: no network at all, wifi not installed (works in recovery mode), login almost impossible, the same with the desktop picture, all possible resets and tests done, installed mojave again, trashed network preferences: nothing helped!

Bought a new MacBook Pro: Installed Mojave. Transferred the user from last timemachine backup: Can’t login to any user after that. New MacBook Pro dosen’t work: erase and new installation...

Sep 27, 2018 12:50 PM in response to WilliamL

Yes that is what I have done and everything is running fine. The report to view is top left About This Mac / System Report / Applications - on the right side it shows if apps are 64-Bit compliant. I now have no 32-Bit apps whereas before I had around 25 some going back many years. These apps will still work for now with Mojave but maybe just one of them has the legacy that impacted our initial installs.

I did some screenshots of my applications folder beforehand plus for the list of my non 64-Bit apps and am only reinstalling what and when I need them.

Sep 28, 2018 3:33 PM in response to RDustinC

I would not bother doing a clean install with the 14.0 release. Better to wait until 10.14.1 or 10.14.2. The .0 releases always have all sorts of issues. They just don’t have the time to ship a perfect version right away and some things only come up after millions of people are using it.

As long as the installation went well, the machine is working and performing a first aid or disk check using disk utility results in no errors, the problem is not on your end.

For several releases High Sierra kept throwing out errors in the console saying month 13 is out of bounds. Many people reinstalled for nothing and Apple fixed it by 10.13.4 or .5.

tgagle

Level 1

13 points

Sep 30, 2018 12:56 PM in response to WilliamL

I have seen the same problems with early betas up and to including the public new version.

It starts with incredibly slow keyboard. Each character typed on logon as about a 30 second lag.

Once logged on, no wifi.

I have tried all of the resets and safe mode boots.

Nothing has been it better.

I have restored to High Sierra backup every time.

Very disappointing!

Oct 6, 2018 8:50 AM in response to pina999

Why would you lose pictures and files? Just copy them to a usb drive?

Not ideal, but I installed Mojave (Clean install) into an SD card (32GB) on my MBP 2015 (waiting for a fix) and I’m able to access all my files + connect to network.

There’s definitely no reason for you to lose any files!

Ann Laux

Level 4

1,843 points

Oct 6, 2018 10:30 AM in response to pina999

Try submitting a feedback report to Apple about the problem. I did--That's one way to be sure they get the message. I went down the page to Mac OS Apps / macOS .

apple.com/feedback/

Feedback - macOS - Apple

WarrenO

Level 1

72 points

Oct 6, 2018 10:53 AM in response to WilliamL

I've had the same problems. I have also made a few discoveries that might explain what the problem is, and possibly what to do about it.

Here's my post on the subject: Frequent system hangs and freezes in macOS Mojave 10.14: Notes, reproducible errors, and possible workarounds

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Oct 12, 2018 6:19 AM in response to WilliamL

Effectively renames a file that has been passed on from previous operating system upgrades that for some reason prevented wi fi, bluetooth, and other connectivity and other issues once Mojave was installed.

Ann Laux

Level 4

1,843 points

Oct 21, 2018 1:54 PM in response to dmauch

Just wanted to report, I updgraded 3 Macs to Mojave using this technique, including a recently purchased 2018 Macbook pro with the T2 processor chip. All 3 are running Mojave successfully. It's actually a pretty speedy system and I am happy with it.

All 3 had the sysctl.conf file found by Terminal, which I removed using your instructions prior to doing the upgrades.

The 2018 MBP did not have the file until I had used it for a week or so and installed some applications (Outlook 2016, Hallmark Cards for Mac 2018, Malwarebytes, Sophos) and been on the internet with Safari and used Mail. I had also done a very brief Migration Assistant run from my 2015 MBP (I terminated it because it was bringing in everything from apps and documents folders, which I did not want to do, but I'm not sure exactly what go imported before I stopped it). I'm glad I did a last minute recheck for the sysctrl.conf file with Terminal before I installed Mojave, because that file had come in somehow and it would have hosed the Mojave installation.

I hope Apple has gotten the message on this and fixes it when they issue their first bug fix.

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Oct 23, 2018 9:21 AM in response to TLGin315

Perefectly understandable TLG. After my 5th restore back to High Sierra, and then subsequently being made aware of the sysctl.conf file I did check for it using the Terminal. I also was at my wit’s end! But voila - there it was. As I’ve emphasized before - just make sure if you look again that your spacing is correct - a space between ls and -ls and another between the -ls and /

Also that the l is a lower case ell and not an upper case eye.

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Mojave install a disaster