MacBook Pro upgrade to new operating system stuck for several hours.

[theandymancan]

Hi,

My girlfriend has a MacBook Pro that she was updating to a newer OS X, and it has been in the process of updating and appears to be frozen for the past several hours. It has been in process since before I woke up and has been going on for at least eight hours now. It is stuck on the loading screen that says her name with the bar approximately 40% of the way complete, as well as the spinning beach ball. If you turn it off and on it returns to the exact same situation. Does anyone know how to fix this? Or, is it not broken and this just takes an exceptionally long time?

Thank you!

 

[Audit13]

Do you have a time machine backup of the previous OS? If yes, restore from time machine and try again or do a clean installation of the new OS and restore the apps and data from time machine.

 

[theandymancan]

Do you have a time machine backup of the previous OS? If yes, restore from time machine and try again or do a clean installation of the new OS and restore the apps and data from time machine.

I don't believe there is a time machine backup but I will ask. If not, do you have any advice? Thank you!

 

[Audit13]

What is the Macbook Pro's model #?

Has the data on the drive been backed up anywhere?

 

[ZapNZs]

What is the Macbook Pro's model #?

Has the data on the drive been backed up anywhere?

**These are two critical questions and it is essential to know these before taking any further action as this can further complicate the process.**



Also, was the OS she was trying to update to High Sierra or an older version of macOS?

You can try booting into safe mode (hold shift at startup) or booting into the recovery HD to run First Aid on the drive (Command+R at startup) and resetting the PRAM/SMC, but, most likely, the system is going to need a fresh install (especially if this was an attempted upgrade to High Sierra). A fresh install is easy to do, but all documents, third party Apps, and files on the drive will be permanently deleted.

If the information on the drive is not backed up and is important for her to have, this is going to be much more complex (and, unfortunately, likely a much more expensive/lengthy process if those files need to be recovered.)