same here except mine gets stuck at 14% at the installer i installed catlilina after my hard drive had removed my full macOS partition so i wanted to dual boot my mac and this issue hasn't been resolved
I have the same issue. BigSur froze my iMac. I’ve spent nearly four hours with Apple tech support and still have no solution. I was hoping to find some kind of solution but all the suggestions here have been tried and have been unsuccessful.
Is there a fix? I desperately need to help to get back online. I can’t believe that this would be out there and cause so many people problems.
Hey all - I have had this happen to 5/ 80 devices - trying to find a a common denominator - I think its filevault - did you all have filevault enabled?
Cheers
We’ll my iMac is now a brick. Any chance Apple may spend some of those Apple Developer’s Fees to provide us with some support?
Same-
I have been working on mine for 3 days. About to go insane. I have tried everything. I currently have something i haven’t seen. Any new tips??
Still seeing some desperate users here, so I will summarize some previous posts.
In recovery mode, you can connect to wifi and do a network install. Takes a while, but one way to get a remote re-install if your computer won't boot.
From Safe Mode, you can: a) Reinstall Big Sur b) Run Disk First Aid c) Backup your files
If you reinstall, and come back to the same problem: A) backup your files, then do a Clean Install (this means you lose your files, so hence backup first) B) you can try to find the needle in the haystack (what was Big Sur trying to install from your previous system that is incompatible?) and remove it, but that requires some deeper expertise.
These are all Mac101 troubleshooting tips. I'm currently having this problem, and this is what I'm doing to try and fix.
Same is happening to my mac. Is there any solution to it yet. Please help.
I created the account just to respond to this thread.
Last weekend, I was basically forced to "upgrade" to the BS (Big Sur) system cuz I needed to download iMovies but it no longer supports my "old" OS that came with the MBP I purchased in 2019. Like so many others, the progress bar got stuck at ~95% when rebooting. I tried everything mentioned here, but nothing worked. I was only able to reboot in "safe mode" and get into the "fancy" "Big Sur (BS)" system, but could not do anything other than browsing the most basic web pages. I wasn't able to open any documents or log into my online drive, and most importantly, external hard drives could not be recognized!
After wasting over 7 hours of my life trying to sorting out the mess, I called the support and talked with a technician over the phone for another 2 hours. I could tell that he tried everything, but still at no avail. He then presented me with two options: 1) wait for more experienced "Apple engineers" to investigate (which could take a very, very long time), or 2) erase everything and do a "clean install" (which still would NOT guarantee that it would work). What a Sophie's choice. I went with option 2), and asked for an extra day just to email my most important documents by getting into "safe mode" again.
This is not the first time I got screwed by Apple. Last year, I lost all the photos and text messages on my iPhone after "upgrading" the system. I suppose Apple has given me enough reasons not to trust their products so much again, and I'm now more open than ever to trying out new brands
The same thing happened to me a few months back and the only solution apple could give me was to completely wipe my computer and start from scratch. This meant I lost all my files and photos. All they said was that I should've backed my laptop up on a hard drive.
Same problem now. After downloading it, it booted up, then the apple logo showed then the progress stucked on abt 10%. What to doooo? :(
They had me enter into Safe mode, back everything up to the iCloud, shut down and enter "command" + "R," try re-installing Big Sur, when that didn't work because th eprogress bar was still loading constantly, they ha dme go into disk utility, macOS HD, and erase. Then, go back and install mac os HD big sur.
Did you find a solution? Mine’s been stuck for 9 hours. I’ve tried to do the Option power up and selected Hard Drive and it still gets stuck.
Just update to Big Sur last night and stuck on progress screen whole night. Cannot boot on recovery mode or safe mode. How i can fix this? Anybody can help?
Hey guys. I was stuck on 90% for a day but what actually worked for me was the following:
Clear parameter ram: Reboot with Command-Option-P-R held down.
I really hope this can help some of you lucky few out there who can solve the issue with just a Ram reset.
I have the same problem. Tried to upgrade my 2017 Macbook Air with Mojave to Big Sur 11.6 yesterday and after the whole day had to give up and use Time Machine to go back to Mojave. Tried safe mode, Command R, rebooting....nothing worked...I could boot into safe mode and it was Big Sur installed but it is not useable and it could never boot normally.
I'm honestly fed up with these clowns - I've read dozens of comments like these, I was holding out on a 2015 Macbook Pro with High Sierra, because Catalina removed Widgets, but when the Widgets stopped working anyway I said to myself, why not upgrade to Big Sur? Big problem. Exactly the same issue - installation hangs many times, I restarted it. System then acts super-slow, got through the init phase, worked fine after that, except admin password does not work, so I can't access any preferences or my old files. Try restarting, system hangs at about 33%. Would have reverted to High Sierra which worked nearly flawlessly (except for backup to a NAS which was my major issue). Now reinstalling Big Sur just to see if it can go through - showing 6.5 hours to go just downloading. This is crazy stuff, hearing these stories from owners of even brand new Macbooks. Past High Sierra Apple starting screwing the system big time. I'm honestly beginning to hate this company.
There is a fix for specific root cause, caused by a large number of mdworker files.
If you are upgrading from macOS High Sierra, Mojave, or Catalina to Big Sur your upgrade could fail if it matches a very particular condition.
If folders in multiple directories in the location below
/private/var/folders///C/com.apple.metadata.mdworker have more than 20,000 files your upgrade could fail.
In some situations users have reported 500,000 – 2,000,000 files!!!
Entire solution is here: https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-upgrade-to-big-sur-failed-stuck-progress-bar-fix-prevention/
Big Sur total lock-up like so many others on this thread. Apple progress bar stuck at 30%. Tried booting into safe mode, internet reset and then 2 hrs last night with Apple technician chat. Another hour this morning. No joy; I now have an appointment at the local Apple "Genius Bar". What Apple genius a)released software that does this and b) hasn't fixed it in over a year? At the very least this should come with a health warning for older machines (mine is a 2015 Air)
all asking questions but seems, no one have answar, sick apple problem n sick developed system
I wish I saw this thread before trusting the upgrade process. I'm stuck at ~40%... PRam didn't help. Going to look into the mdworker solution from here: https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-upgrade-to-big-sur-failed-stuck-progress-bar-fix-prevention/
Going from Mojave to Big Sur. Mac Pro late 2013. Should have gone to Catalina first I guess. I wonder if I can recover. I've got different partitions and volumes and USBs that are bootable into Mojave, hopefully this can get be back to a functional state without a clean install.
If all the standard recovery options do not work... try the link / fix provided above by @Mentorofmen (older MacBooks will most likely have more than 20K files in those folders):
https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-upgrade-to-big-sur-failed-stuck-progress-bar-fix-prevention/
worked for my 2015 MacBook Air and many others...
I too suffer from the Big Sur failure to finish uploading, every time I try, I can’t get it to finish continuing to upload. I’ve tried the ins and outs of ever hard reboot, soft, I even pulled my cord out of the socket, when I slowly put it back in and pushed her button it booted up again and it gets to the last moment before fully finishing and it just stops. I’m sure the other end is happy as hell but I just can’t be satisfied until I finish and she boots up perfectly, fully connected running 500mbps, information flowing fast af, back and forth, in and out, and I know everything is fine when im all over my task and finish and then when I come back to finish another… when everything goes right that time, that’s when I know it’s fixed, sometimes a hard reboot and a yank on the cord will help anyone finish its start up load.. the release of all the anxiety feels sooo good when you get a happy ending. Then I can relax and smoke a cig.
My solution: If you are running any antivirus/malware software, remove it from your system. "Pausing" it, will not work, it has to be removed and then reinstalled after the update is complete. Also, some drivers for some printers can cause this update to fail. Unplug all devices from USB ports. Reboot your system, and then perform the update. Then connect all USB's that you removed and reinstall the antivirus/malware software if you had any. This worked for me, hopefully it will for you as well.
I had the same. Installation got stuck at the final stage (status bar) at 50%. After a while, I've got a blinking question mark with a folder icon...so I did the reboot and the status bar got stuck again at 50%, this time no blinking icon.
I left my MacBook pro (early 2015) for the whole night but the bar didn't move at all Then, what I did:
Huge relieve! Big Sur works much better on my mac than Catalina. Fans are engaging less, performance is great, and overall very happy with the new system.
My recommendation, make sure you make NVRAM and PRAM reboot correctly, you can eventually run the system in verbose mode and see what is the exact error. Try a few times reboot before you pull the trigger on erasing the data and making a clean install. Time machine backup is a must before trying the update.
good luck!
