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WilliamL Author

Level 3

642 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

RDustinC

Level 1

14 points

Sep 28, 2018 3:15 PM in response to elthamblues

I believe Mojave still supports 32 bit apps. The next release won’t. So there should be no issues.

Furthermore in previous releases older apps didn’t make the system crash. You just couldn’t run them and were given an error.

A few people on other thread had the same issues doing a clean install. Personally I have so many files I’d rather not go through that.

I may just wait for the inevitable update to Mojave and hope it’s worked out these initial bugs.

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.

WilliamL Author

Level 3

642 points

Sep 28, 2018 7:44 PM in response to WilliamL

I wish I had heard about Mojave being the last 32-bit capable OS. I went through and purged all my 32-bit applications. Most were ones I had not used in years. The only one I regret is deleting is Microsoft Office 2011. Old, yes I know. And I had been seriou thinking of upgrading to 2016 version. But I have read that the latest version might be released in a few months.

Anyway, to tie off my story, I erased my Apple SSD drive, copied back from my backup drive, then re-installed Mojave. This time it worked. I have a fully operational version of 10.14.0.

hdkaplan

Level 1

4 points

Sep 28, 2018 8:54 PM in response to WilliamL

Same issues with 2017 iMac with 1 TB Apple SSD and two WD My Book 4 TB external USB drives. I had to revert to High Sierra, as unuseable. In addition to killing all conenctivity, it also wont mount the external drives. Lots of spinning wheels that take forever. Thx for any help.

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!

Sep 30, 2018 2:48 PM in response to jowdawg

Several users are having the same issue (multiple threads now). Even the USB ethernet adapter wont work.

Try contacting apple and opening a ticket. They’ll ask you to bring the device to a store to get a copy of the log files.

WilliamL Author

Level 3

642 points

Oct 1, 2018 12:08 PM in response to WilliamL

I think my problem had to do with SoftRAID drivers that were mot Mojave compatible. I have moved back to High Sierra and have tried to update everything I could. I am not brave enough to try Mojave just yet.

I am really disappointed with the Apple news sites. Usually they are all over something like this but they seem to be more interested in a small problem that the new iPhones are experiencing.

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.

RDustinC

Level 1

14 points

Oct 2, 2018 9:53 AM in response to WilliamL

I am shocked it's nowhere either. I googled the first day and found nothing. I ended up finding out here I wasn't alone with this.

A little surprised this happened too. I've never had a problem upgrading before that I can recall.

I am at this point just checking constantly for updates to everything daily, with the hopes that and maybe the next Mojave release will install . . .

I have too much in the way of software and plugins to go through the headache of a clean install and reinstalling everything right now. By time I can find the time to do that, I'm sure the next release will be out anyways!

pina999

Level 1

4 points

Oct 6, 2018 8:43 AM in response to jowdawg

Apple needs to reimburse me for the 2 months of pictures and files I’m going to lose. Why release something that a tech savvy person cannot fix? Only see users but no apple tech support people jumping into thread. Completely wrong.

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!

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Oct 6, 2018 10:42 AM in response to Ann Laux

Thanks to threads/posts like this, Apple is well aware of the problems. I’ve spoken with them now on 4 occasions spending hours over the course of the last several days and though unable to come up with a fix, I have no doubt that they are working on it.

Ann Laux

Level 4

1,843 points

Oct 6, 2018 3:24 PM in response to dmauch

Thank you for having these discussions with Apple. I never did get in to see the Genius Bar; I restored back to High Sierra from Time Machine instead and the computer is now working flawlessly. I'm leery of trying any Mojave installations until I see an update to the "point one" version. I am really astounded at how badly this has gone.

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Oct 6, 2018 3:32 PM in response to Ann Laux

I couldn’t agree with you more and thank goodness for High Sierra and TM. There will be no more Mojave attempts on my part until Apple sends out a version of Mojave that actually works. I too am astounded.

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.

Mojave install a disaster