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WilliamL Author

Level 3

643 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.

View in context

100 replies

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.

Oct 28, 2018 5:41 PM in response to WilliamL

Horrible. I too interrupted the install on my iMac because it was so slow. Rebooted. Restarted the install. Watched the log files and things were happening but incredibly slow and the estimated time never moved. What finally worked ( after following advice on this thread ) was

Shift-Option-⌘-R

Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.

which tried to install Mountain Lion but the target disk could not be found. Then I went to disk utilities and erased the whole disk. At that point ( not sure of the order here... ) was able to install Mountain Lion and then restored from backup. The whole system came back up again.

Bit slow.

My iMac always has had slow so I run this script everyday which prevents those slowdowns.

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

So after being down for 24 hours, back up and running. Will the Mojave update ever be safe to use?

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Oct 29, 2018 6:33 AM in response to t.i.wells

Not sure what on which device you’re running your Mountain Lion OS, but you should check and make sure that it is compatible with the Mojave OS - pre-late 2012 iMac’s are likely to have some problems. You should also make sure that you have sufficient memory/storage.

Nov 14, 2018 11:47 PM in response to dmauch

I will be lighting a candle for you, tonight! Thank you!!! After taking my 2013 MacBook Pro 15” in to an Apple Store, thinking they could remedy the Mojave issues, they returned it still not able to connect to WiFi and running very slow. I can’t believe that this easy fix did the trick! I normally try to avoid any kind of Terminal activity, but I was desperate and now my machine is super fast and WiFi connected. If only this thread had existed before I attempted my update...

raddeo

Level 1

4 points

Nov 17, 2018 3:30 PM in response to WilliamL

I found out the hard way (4 days long) That the above article has a typographical error. Funny thing is that 4 Apple Agents didn't catch it...

2. Check if the file exists, by typing

ls -l /etc/sysctl.conf

SHOULD BE...

2. Check if the file exists, by typing

ls -1 /etc/sysctl.conf

The L should be a 1....The last Agent was a 9 year veteran to Apple....Thanks Eric.....

dmauch

Level 1

18 points

Nov 17, 2018 4:09 PM in response to raddeo

Repeatedly on other threads I pointed out that the ”ell is a lower case ell and not an upper case eye.” Perhaps the digit 1 works as well. I also mentioned the importance of spacing. There’s no typo in the article but rather a clarification that was needed. The fact that I neglected to provide that clarification on THthread is wholly my fault. I also learned the hard way by substituting on Terminal until the infamous file showed up.

Davert

Level 1

14 points

Nov 19, 2018 11:40 AM in response to dmauch

THANK YOU!!! This fixed an extremely nasty problem instantly!

I guess the system was trying to access the network over and over and over and over and over and over and pausing everything for five to ten seconds while it did so.

Apple... this was really the .1 release? You really tested this operating system? Really?

PS> I shortcutted after looking inside the file: rm -rf /etc/sysctl.conf

Dec 21, 2018 7:09 AM in response to WilliamL

Thank you so much for figuring out this fix!

I was having the same problems you described with my late 2014 5k iMac with Fusion Drive. I spent an embarrassing number of hours trying to figure out what was wrong with my computer. Upgrading, restoring backups, working on the hard drive, etc.

This fix worked perfectly. I had already restored a Time Machine backup to High Sierra. So I ran the terminal commands you suggested, then did the Mojave upgrade process. It went flawlessly this time.

Thanks! (I even created an account here to make this post thanking you)