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I'm an idiot and need help

J

jas88934

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 2, 2017
3
0
Minnesota
Hi, everyone! I'm hoping somebody can help me. Here's what has happened:

On one of my MacBooks, I tried installing the macOS Catalina public beta 2. When it came time to upgrade to the public beta 3, I followed the instructions, but it got stuck in the black screen with the Apple on it and the progress bar stuck at about 1/4 for hours. So, I tried restarting the computer and it goes to my log-on screen like normal, but when I enter my password in, it just goes back to that black screen with the Apple progress bar frozen.

I do not have a backup of my computer, BUT that is intentional. I do not have anything stored on my computer that I really need aside from a few apps I can just re-install; all my documents, photos, etc., are stored in iCloud (which I assume isn't going to be affected by this?)

Anyway, I've gathered that I should probably just re-install the previous macOS version and start from scratch? Can anybody tell me how to do that? I've made it as far as the Internet Recovery Mode and the Disk Utility (which looks like the attached image) -- but I'm admittedly not a pro (by any means) and need some guidance. I'd consider myself slightly more computer literate than average, but not by much. Thanks a million for any advice you can give me! :)

PS: I'm running a MacBook Pro from 2017.
 

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jas88934 said:
Hi, everyone! I'm hoping somebody can help me. Here's what has happened:

On one of my MacBooks, I tried installing the macOS Catalina public beta 2. When it came time to upgrade to the public beta 3, I followed the instructions, but it got stuck in the black screen with the Apple on it and the progress bar stuck at about 1/4 for hours. So, I tried restarting the computer and it goes to my log-on screen like normal, but when I enter my password in, it just goes back to that black screen with the Apple progress bar frozen.

I do not have a backup of my computer, BUT that is intentional. I do not have anything stored on my computer that I really need aside from a few apps I can just re-install; all my documents, photos, etc., are stored in iCloud (which I assume isn't going to be affected by this?)

Anyway, I've gathered that I should probably just re-install the previous macOS version and start from scratch? Can anybody tell me how to do that? I've made it as far as the Internet Recovery Mode and the Disk Utility (which looks like the attached image) -- but I'm admittedly not a pro (by any means) and need some guidance. I'd consider myself slightly more computer literate than average, but not by much. Thanks a million for any advice you can give me! :)

PS: I'm running a MacBook Pro from 2017.
Click to expand...
You will basically need to use the Internet Recovery macOS Utilities to erase the internal disk with Disk Utility and then "Reinstall macOS".
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
 
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Last edited:
jas88934 said:
Perhaps this is an even worse question, but which one of the things in my attached photo do I erase? Do I erase the "AppleAPFSMedia" option or do I do one of the ones under it? Or do I do the Apple SSD one?
Click to expand...
Erase the Apple SSD to nuke the whole internal drive since it got to an unknown state from the failed beta OS install. Then reinstall macOS.

Do you know which macOS will be installed from internet recovery? The answer to that question will help determine what format scheme to select (I believe the MBP 2017's shipped with Sierra so that would need Mac OS Extended (journaled)).
 
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1. Boot to internet recovery (command-OPTION-R at boot)
2. You'll need your wifi password
3. When you get to the utilities menu, open disk utility
4. Type "command-2" (the number two) to "show all devices" (you can also choose this from the view menu)
5. Select the TOPMOST item the represents the physical hard drive inside
6. Click "erase", then select APFS
7. Disk Utility will erase the entire drive
8. Close DU and open the OS installer
9. Choose to re-install the OS. It may reboot the computer once or twice, and will take some time.
10. When done, you will see the setup screen (choose a language). Go on from there.

One last thing:
If you had created a bootable cloned backup using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper, you'd already be up-and-running again by now, and helping others to solve THEIR problems!
 
The answer was to leave it on the black progress bar for even more hours, if not for days - and it would have likely eventually finished installing. (mine took 10-12 hours, one person here's took 2 days) Who knows why it's like this. I don't know of anyone's who it totally froze never to unfreeze, even if it looked like it was totally dead. :/
 
You are not an idiot for not knowing how to do this.

What that the ACTUAL idiots would so freely admit it! ;)
 
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