Critical software update required, but an error was encountered... Stuck

My macbook pro is model: late 2016 with the Touch bar. I've the issue since middle of July.

In this moment the issue still exists. What I did in the past 30 days.

#1 Software Updates I did three software updates. Each of those software updates was between 2 and 3 GB.

#2 Big Sig Reinstall I reinstalled several times the Big Sir operation system.

#3 Reinstall of the old version of the operation system The same result as the point 2.

#4 Reinstall from Internet: Command + R The same result as points 2 and 3.

I found an article: https://tonyflorida.com/critical-software-update-is-required-for-your-mac the final result motherboard replace.

Step by step: My opinion is something is wrong between Big Sur and the TouchBar. Apple what do you think ?

Have had similar issues in the past. As I was working, my Macbook Pro (2017-mid with touchbar) heated up, about two weeks ago. Since it didn't feel right, rebooted it. Apparently, my MPB was updating in the background (at least, that's what I suspect, even though I always have auto installing off). During the reboot I got the same error message. Retrying or shutting down and starting up again didn't help.

When I has this issue before, last year, I managed to solve it by attaching an ethernet cable. Unfortunately, that didn't solve it this time. I was able to boot in safe mode, so I could at least back up my important files. Through safe mode I also installed the updates manually. This still led to the same error message. Resetting NVRAM also didn't help. Using Apple Diagnostics to check for hardware issues also didn't help me, since there were not issues found.

I then reinstalled my Big Sur installation from recovery mode (without erasing my disk), but still, the error message came up when booting. Then I erased/formatted/first aided my entire disk and tried to install Big Sur, but still the same issue. I've tried this many times, but one time it miraculously worked, I could start up my MPB in normal mode without any issues! I set my appearance preferences and was all set to continue working. But then I tried a simple reboot, and the issue came back again... But at least I could verify that my touchbar was working fine, since I was able to test it. I then knew for certain that my issue had nothing to do with any hardware issues as suggested by other people with the same error message.

I tried erasing my disk and reinstalling Big Sur multiple times after but with no luck anymore. I then safe booted, downloaded macOS Catalina and created a bootable installer on an external SSD I have. Booted by holding the option key and selected my bootable installer. It installed Catalina but eventually I got the same error message, I pressed retry and it somehow worked! I could boot normally in Catalina. First thing I did was installing all updates and upgrading to Big Sur again. This caused the issue to come back again... I then thought that it might be an issue with Big Sur, so I wanted to install Catalina back with the intention to not upgrade to Big Sur. After installing Catalina again using my bootable USB installer, I got the same error, but this time retry didn't help me. Again, I was stuck.

I retried formatting/erasing/first-aiding my disk and installing Catalina multiple times. Eventually, after a long, long time, after basically giving up, it somehow worked again. Catalina was installed and I could boot normally. But all my trust was gone.

Since I use my machine for work, I couldn't risk having to spend yet another entire week in resolving this vague (software!) issue. That's why I chose not to touch it again and to get a 2019 16" MBP with a discount by trading in my 2017 model. This was an extremely sour decision I had to make — a not even 4-year-old machine that cost me almost 3000 euro should NOT break like this. I even had it insured for three years, it had zero scratches, no hardware issues and I was expecting to use it for many many years. My Apple retailer even gave it the highest taxation value possible, which almost never happens they say.

In the end, I suspect that something went wrong during the first update attempt that also somehow affected the base volume. The base volume was the one volume I couldn't erase or format. I did perform first-aid on it, but that didn't resolve anything. But then again, out of my 30-40 re-installation attempts it worked 3 times, after 2 of those it crashed again, the third time I just didn't touch it again and traded it in. It is very sad to see my MBP go because of a software issue. Other people have suggested to replace the motherboard or touchbar, but I had found that both worked fine. Apple machines aren't cheap, and most people buy it with the intention to use it for more than 4 years as a stable machine to be productive on. Hopefully Apple will help their customers, but the lack of adequate responses from Apple doesn't lead to a glimmer of hope.

Joining the club as well.

2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. All working OK then one evening left off charge and battery went flat, plugged back in and booted up only to be greeted with the Critical update error.

As others Safe Mode boot is fine.

Tried all the tricks mentioned about waiting a few minutes before pressing "Try Again" button, using different networks, wifi and ethernet cable but the update always fails. Tried upgrade of OS to Big Sur still have the same message. Tried clean install of Big Sur and still have the same message.

Took machine to local Apple authorised service provider who repeated all of the above, after a while a second set of diagnostics stated it needed a new upper case as the Touch Bar did fail a diagnostic test. Cost circ £600.

Trying one more repairer who states they have had a 50% success rate with this when they get the soldering iron out on the machines but still around £400 to do the work.

Really wish Apple would recognise there is a common problem.

I got stuck in this mode recently, coupled with the comments here I was able to get a solution. The Solution: I entered into safe mode (power button and hold shift under the apple logo comes up) and updated my Mac fully, restarted it. Although it got me back to the wifi page after it restarted when I connected to the wifi and updated, it was fixed.

Same problem here on a 2016 MacBook pro 15'' on Monterey 12.0.1

Only way to leave the loop in my case is reset SMC memory: https://purplecomputing.com/tech-how-to/how-to-reset-the-smc-system-management-controller/

I have it literally on every reboot. Is there any help?

I experienced the same issue with my MacBook Pro (2017) just this morning. In sincere hopes that this advice may help someone...

This is what happened in my case:

1. My Norton 360 anti-virus software was misbehaving (the Norton dashboard would not open when I start it).
2. Since my annual subscription was close to an end, I ordered the renewal and decided to delete current installation and install newest version fresh from new download.
3. I force deleted the installation of Norton by moving it to Trash (bad idea).

As soon as I finished force delete, Norton dialogue box somehow popped up and asked me to restart in order to complete the uninstall. This appeared strange because I already deleted the software in previous step. (Obviously, there were remnants of Norton still lingering around my MBP. Hint: uninstalling Norton is very difficult...)

After the restart, I started getting the same "Critical software update required" loop error message, and that's how I ended up on this discussion portal. I've tried most of the troubleshooting tactics offered here (3min waiting game, wired ethernet connection, I also considered upgrading to Monterey but didn't), but nothing worked in my case.

Here is what worked though:

1. Restart in Safe Mode (hold left Shift + Power button)
2. Re-install and activate Norton
3. Restart MBP to complete Norton installation.

My MBP is now fully functional, and the first step that I am planning on doing is take a backup of all my work (music tracks, video edits) to my external hard disk before something else bad happens...

In my case, the issue seems to have been caused by forced Norton uninstall and simple reinstall brought my MBP back to life. So, if this issue happens to you, consider what you have done to your MBP just prior to this error message. You may be able to unwind it...

How is this still an issue with little to no resolution from Apple? Why should I shell out cash for something that is ultimately caused by Apple themselves?

I updated my 15 inch 2016 MacBook Pro w/Touch Bar to 12.1 as the update was available. Upon restart the laptop prompted me to connect to WiFi. After connecting, the laptop proceeds to “install an update” for a couple minutes and then comes back with an error message: “A critical software update is required for your Mac, but an error was encountered while installing this update.” This error message only prompts me to either Shutdown or Try Again with the latter just looping and I cannot use my laptop.

I can however boot into Safe Mode but the laptop is pretty unusable in this mode.

I’ve reinstalled Monterey via Recovery mode, installed Sierra via Internet Recovery (which failed) both of which did not resolve the issue.

I’ve also wiped the drives and installed 12.0.1 via bootable USB to no avail.

Having the issue with MBR with Touch Bar with Monterrey. One other user suggest unplugging all peripherals and rebooting. This did the trick. Once device was fully booted up normally, I was able to connect 2 monitors, keyboard, mouse and external USB speaker. All worked as expected.

I had the exact same problem. It appeared after updating macOS Big Sur 11.6 to Monterey 12.2 I have a MacBook Pro 13" 2017 (4 usb) I was sure from the beginning that it was a software error. And I wasn't going to pay Apple for their mistakes. None of the advice on this and other forums helped me. Then I did the following:

• Booted in safe mode (via Shift)
• made a full copy to Flash drive
• Rebooted into recovery mode
• opened disk utility
• and wiped absolutely everything - all the partitions on the drive
• rebooted again
• booted into internet recovery
• installed macOS 10.13 High Sierra
• and the Touch Bar worked.
• Then I upgraded to macOS Monterey
• and the Touch Bar still worked.
• Then I restored all my data from the copy and rebooted a few times
• Touch Bar continued to work fine.

But I decided not to stop there. I installed Boot Camp. Now everything was just fine. I'm zen. I decided that my time was more valuable. And I don't plan on fixing the bugs that Apple makes. I've been googling a lot to find a solution to this problem. And I'm surprised at how many people have been misled by Apple experts on forums and in service centers. All of these people have paid a lot of money for programmer mistakes and unqualified customer service. They don't even want to admit that they screwed up once again.

i have a massive development guys.

my 2017, 13 inch, 4 tb3 ports laptop is back on business.

i detached the webcam and now all is working fine. no more critical update prompt, nothing. of course i sacrificed the webcam but it's better than nothing. i don't use the webcam frequently anyways. i can live without it.

when laptop disassembled the screen connector is facing north (speakers are south, towards you). webcam cable is on the right side of the screen connector, under the removable 3cm wide metal shield. there is a same connector on the left side of the screen. don't detach it otherwise screen is black. i think it might be screen backlight.

now the laptop went to sleep but it seemed like it slept really deep. i woke the laptop by pressing a button and laptop didn't wake up instantly but with a startup chime, like you put it to sleep for long or restarted the laptop. but it resumed from it slept. now i tried it again but this time it woke up instantly.

i am really happy now and i hope someone can benefit out of it.

edit: out of curiosity i plugged the webcam back. boot up speed significantly reduced. nearly 5minutes. greeted with critical update message. forced the laptop to shutdown by power button.

i plugged off the webcam cable and boot up speed was again same slow, around 3mins this time. i started worry if i caused the magical fix to not effecting anymore but it was all good again after turning on. it took longer to boot because i shut down the pc by power button and os x wanted to do a system check if everything was fine.

turned it back on from shut down by power button and it turned on really fast. guess what touch id, sound, touchbar, all working. so it looks like they all have seperate controllers. i don't remember if there was a backlight on the keyboard but it doesn't work. i don't care about it.

now my guesses are these

-webcam cable cracked and don't have all its pins sending data to motherboard and causing lag and system instability therefore touch bar doesn't work. -a controller chip or sort is failed on the motherboard therefore a new screen replacement may not sort this issue out. this is something i will try in the future when i can invest some money on a replacement screen.

so the infamous embeddedOS wasn't the problem on my case. i spent so much time on it.

please let me know if it helped you too.

I had the same problems today - rebooting on safe mode, then rebooting normally did the trick. I did turn off Nord VPN from running on startup given it appeared that some issues were related accessing apple web site for updates, so not 100% sure that wasn't a factor - but it actually doesn't start the vpn client by default.

Same issue today on MacOS Monterey 12.2.1 MacBook Pro 2017 15in i7

The same issue was on macOS Monterey 12.2.1 MacBook Pro 2016 15in i7 this week after restarting the OS while I was working normally.

I have tried:

• Upgrade to 12.3.
• Change Wifi/ use the phone's hotspot.
• Reset NVRAM/PRAM

For now, It still does NOT work :(

Confirm the other answer, got the problem with OS 12 Monterey, left shift safety mode, deleted the applications that I suspected (Unshaky, a software to solve sticky keyboard issue), downloaded the latest version restart and it’s working again

Hey there,

its funny , i tried everything , nothing worked so far until i saw @SensitiveMeatball comment ... i was decided that i will sell it as paper weight or for spare parts, but as last thing to do before i proceed was to check if it will works in case i will unplug webcam cable as @SensitiveMeatball mentioned .... well suprisingly nothing happened when i unpluged webcam cable ... but i decided to not wrap it up right away and i also unplug screen connector, so i started macbook nothing really happened just expected -- i have blacksreen ... then i plug all cables back to board and guess what .. macbook booted up normaly with working touchbar also touch id is working , everything like brand new macbook ... one thing which is not working is webcam even cable is connected to MB... but i really do not care about it as i have finally MacBook which is more or less working nice and smooth..

SO to all of you guys i recommend at least to try this out , I was convinced that it can not be repaired other than by replacing MB ...

Thanks alot @SensitiveMeatball , i dont know if its some magic/fortune/randomness whatever its , my macbook is finally running thanks to your idea with webcam.

My Macbook spec: Macbook pro 2017 15" Model A1707