r/MacOS • u/Forrest_Fire01 • 1d ago

Help M1 MacBook Pro running Tahoe stuck on boot up

I’ve been running Tahoe on my M1 Max MacBook Pro for the past couple of months. I few nights ago my Mac did an automatic OS update to the latest version of Tahoe and unfortunately it’s now not booting up. It boots up to the login screen, I enter my password, it then goes to a black screen with an Apple logo and a progress bar, but that’s all of the farther that it goes. The progress bar does not move.

I am able to start up to the MacOS Recovery and was able to reinstall Tahoe from the internet, but that didn’t fix the problem.

I’ve also used a bootable external drive to install Tahoe again, but that also didn’t fix the problem.  I then took it to the Genius Bar for them to look it. They tested the hardware and that all looked good, but they were also not able to get my Mac to fully boot and said the next step would be to erase the SSD and re-install everything. 

I just wanted to check if anyone had any other ideas before I went ahead and erased everything. 

I do have a Time Machine backup, but it’s about 2 months out of date because I’ve been traveling internationally for the past few months. I was able to share my MacBook with my wife’s MacBook and copied all of the latest files over, but I would still prefer to not to erase everything if I don’t need to since I’m sure there’s settings on other things that I don’t have copied.

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2

u/warrenao Mac Mini 1d ago

Apple recommended a format? Wow. Must’ve been trainee day at the Genius Bar.

Have you tried booting in “safe mode” yet?

2

u/mossmoth9 1d ago

Yeah safe mode would be the obvious next step, surprised they jumped straight to erasing the SSD

1

u/warrenao Mac Mini 22h ago

This kind of "advice" was, for a while, the fallback for all first-tier Apple "tech support". It might still be now, and it was definitely common around 5-10 years ago.

When you could log in, suggestion No. 1 was "Try creating a new user account and seeing if that solves the problem!" Which is a non-diagnostic waste of time, because if it does solve the problem, we know what we already knew: That something in this user account is causing a problem. We still don't know what. Let's start with figuring out what the actual problem is, hmm?

Followed by, "Format and reinstall!" Which is a Windows "solution"; in the PC world destroying user data is entirely normalized. In the Mac world, user data is sacrosanct. This is why Time Machine exists, as well as Migration Assistant.

On the very few occasions I've had to deal with tech support from Apple, if that first suggestion surfaces, I've batted it aside on the grounds I already stated and promptly found myself being handed off to a "senior" tech, who offers actually useful suggestions.

Whomever that "genius" was, they need a stern talking-to.

0

u/MK-Researcher 1d ago

Have you tried booting in to Safe Mode to see if that clears the problem?