10.13.6 Installer won't let me do firmware update

[Eneco]

Hey folks,

I'm currently running Sierra and with the latest release of 10.13.6 I wanted to upgrade to High Sierra. I'm running a Mac Pro 5.1 by the way.

So I went to the Appstore, downloaded the full installer, made a bootable USB, restarted my machine, selected the bootable USB drive, chose to install MacOs and that's it. I can go on from there.

The installer tells me, that there is a firmware update required and therefore I should restart the machine. But I can't click on "Shut down" at the bottom of the installer window. I clicked a million times all around that little button, but nothing happens.

Has anyone encountered this problem as well?

 

[gmhentropy]

I had the problem of being unable to do any installations involving firmware if my mac was connected to anything via the usb. The problems went away as soon as I disconnected the printer and the usb-to-battery-backup. So, I'd install without a bootable usb (why did you even do that?).

 

[Eneco]

Because I want a clean install, that's why the USB installer. I have nothing else connected to my Mac except a wireless mouse via USB. I may kick that one out and try it again with a bluetooth mouse tomorrow.

 

[flowrider]

What GPU are you using?

Lou

 

[gmhentropy]

Because I want a clean install, that's why the USB installer. I have nothing else connected to my Mac except a wireless mouse via USB. I may kick that one out and try it again with a bluetooth mouse tomorrow.

I see. You could do an "unclean" update, which will install the firmware, then do the "clean" install, which will not require the firmware update anymore.

 

[Eneco]

What GPU are you using?

A flashed AMD R9 280X

I see. You could do an "unclean" update, which will install the firmware, then do the "clean" install, which will not require the firmware update anymore.

Nice idea, I will give it a try as unplugging the USB mouse and use a Bluetooth mouse didn't help.

EDIT: It worked, thank you very much for your help.

 

[Chung123]

This happened just last night with a used Mac Pro 5,1 that I got off eBay just yesterday. The firmware update would not take with a created High Sierra installer on a USB stick. I had to do the firmware update while booted from a Hard Drive running Sierra installed.

The High Sierra on a USB drive also would not see a APFS formatted SSD drive which I intended for the clean install. (I had formatted the SSD on another Mac, so I had to reformat the new SSD as Mac OS extended on the other Mac.). Painful.

Once the firmware was done, and the SSD was reformatted, the created USB High Sierra installer worked as expected.

Make me think about future scenarios with failed SSDs.

I have never done a network recovery install, but gee whiz, it is always best to have another Mac around when fixing a Mac nowadays. (I generally keep a Carbon Copy Clone of my SSD on my main Mac.)