I have the same problem. Tried to upgrade my 2017 Macbook Air with Mojave to Big Sur 11.6 yesterday and after the whole day had to give up and use Time Machine to go back to Mojave. Tried safe mode, Command R, rebooting....nothing worked...I could boot into safe mode and it was Big Sur installed but it is not useable and it could never boot normally.
I'm honestly fed up with these clowns - I've read dozens of comments like these, I was holding out on a 2015 Macbook Pro with High Sierra, because Catalina removed Widgets, but when the Widgets stopped working anyway I said to myself, why not upgrade to Big Sur? Big problem. Exactly the same issue - installation hangs many times, I restarted it. System then acts super-slow, got through the init phase, worked fine after that, except admin password does not work, so I can't access any preferences or my old files. Try restarting, system hangs at about 33%. Would have reverted to High Sierra which worked nearly flawlessly (except for backup to a NAS which was my major issue). Now reinstalling Big Sur just to see if it can go through - showing 6.5 hours to go just downloading. This is crazy stuff, hearing these stories from owners of even brand new Macbooks. Past High Sierra Apple starting screwing the system big time. I'm honestly beginning to hate this company.
There is a fix for specific root cause, caused by a large number of mdworker files.
If you are upgrading from macOS High Sierra, Mojave, or Catalina to Big Sur your upgrade could fail if it matches a very particular condition.
If folders in multiple directories in the location below
/private/var/folders///C/com.apple.metadata.mdworker have more than 20,000 files your upgrade could fail.
In some situations users have reported 500,000 – 2,000,000 files!!!
Entire solution is here: https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-upgrade-to-big-sur-failed-stuck-progress-bar-fix-prevention/
Big Sur total lock-up like so many others on this thread. Apple progress bar stuck at 30%. Tried booting into safe mode, internet reset and then 2 hrs last night with Apple technician chat. Another hour this morning. No joy; I now have an appointment at the local Apple "Genius Bar". What Apple genius a)released software that does this and b) hasn't fixed it in over a year? At the very least this should come with a health warning for older machines (mine is a 2015 Air)
all asking questions but seems, no one have answar, sick apple problem n sick developed system
I wish I saw this thread before trusting the upgrade process. I'm stuck at ~40%... PRam didn't help. Going to look into the mdworker solution from here: https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-upgrade-to-big-sur-failed-stuck-progress-bar-fix-prevention/
Going from Mojave to Big Sur. Mac Pro late 2013. Should have gone to Catalina first I guess. I wonder if I can recover. I've got different partitions and volumes and USBs that are bootable into Mojave, hopefully this can get be back to a functional state without a clean install.
If all the standard recovery options do not work... try the link / fix provided above by @Mentorofmen (older MacBooks will most likely have more than 20K files in those folders):
https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-upgrade-to-big-sur-failed-stuck-progress-bar-fix-prevention/
worked for my 2015 MacBook Air and many others...
I too suffer from the Big Sur failure to finish uploading, every time I try, I can’t get it to finish continuing to upload. I’ve tried the ins and outs of ever hard reboot, soft, I even pulled my cord out of the socket, when I slowly put it back in and pushed her button it booted up again and it gets to the last moment before fully finishing and it just stops. I’m sure the other end is happy as hell but I just can’t be satisfied until I finish and she boots up perfectly, fully connected running 500mbps, information flowing fast af, back and forth, in and out, and I know everything is fine when im all over my task and finish and then when I come back to finish another… when everything goes right that time, that’s when I know it’s fixed, sometimes a hard reboot and a yank on the cord will help anyone finish its start up load.. the release of all the anxiety feels sooo good when you get a happy ending. Then I can relax and smoke a cig.
My solution: If you are running any antivirus/malware software, remove it from your system. "Pausing" it, will not work, it has to be removed and then reinstalled after the update is complete. Also, some drivers for some printers can cause this update to fail. Unplug all devices from USB ports. Reboot your system, and then perform the update. Then connect all USB's that you removed and reinstall the antivirus/malware software if you had any. This worked for me, hopefully it will for you as well.
I had the same. Installation got stuck at the final stage (status bar) at 50%. After a while, I've got a blinking question mark with a folder icon...so I did the reboot and the status bar got stuck again at 50%, this time no blinking icon.
I left my MacBook pro (early 2015) for the whole night but the bar didn't move at all Then, what I did:
Huge relieve! Big Sur works much better on my mac than Catalina. Fans are engaging less, performance is great, and overall very happy with the new system.
My recommendation, make sure you make NVRAM and PRAM reboot correctly, you can eventually run the system in verbose mode and see what is the exact error. Try a few times reboot before you pull the trigger on erasing the data and making a clean install. Time machine backup is a must before trying the update.
good luck!
Had the same issue. What helped me:
Good luck
Had the same issue on a Macbook Air (2014) and could resolve the issue following the recommendation in the previous comment. Thank you for sharing Pzavora!