Fully erased/reset Mini18 boots to location picker instead of "hello"

[jdmc]

I'm preparing my trusty 2018 Mac mini for resale. A couple of days ago, it had Sequoia 15.1 installed, and I used System Settings > General > Erase All Content and Settings… to reset it; when done, it booted to "hello" like it should. But then Apple released Sequoia 15.1.1, and I decided to install it so the mini would be completely up-to-date. So I booted up, created an account, installed the 15.1.1 update, and then repeated the Erase All Content and Settings… process. This time, however, the mini booted into Recovery and claimed that macOS needed to be reinstalled — specifically, here's what I saw:

So I proceeded to reinstall Sequoia. Booting again afterward led directly to the location-picker screen rather than to "hello". Normally the location picker comes after the language-picker screen, which itself appears when the "hello" screen is clicked. I did the reset sequence all over again, and got the same result. What's going on? How can I get the mini to boot to "hello" as it should when fully reset?

Thanks,
~ Justin

 

[Ray2]

M1 MBA here. I've gotten the macOS needs to be reinstalled last 2 updates and I’m running Sonoma. At least I come back to a fully functioning Mac. No idea what’s going on.

 

[jdmc]

For SEO purposes, I will quote here the text of the error dialog pictured in my post above: "Your computer started up in Recovery because a failure occurred during installation. An error occurred migrating user data during an install. Reinstall macOS to resolve the issue."

What's weird, in my case, is that I wasn't "migrating user data" at all; I was erasing the computer! 🤷🏻‍♂️