Catalina install freezes on boot

Catalina hung for over an hour when finishing the install.


The machine installed on the black screen with the Apple logo no problem, then rebooted to the login screen where a progress bar was then shown. The bar got to approximately 90% complete and would not continue. I hard rebooted the machine and booted into verbose mode (CMD+V) to see the output.


It repeatedly prints out:


Notice - new kext com.apple.driver.KextExcludeList, v15.0.3 matches prelinked kext but can't determine if executables are the same (no UUIDs).
Interface link is not up, do not pull packets yet

Interface link is not up, do not pull packets yet

Interface link is not up, do not pull packets yet

Interface link is not up, do not pull packets yet

Interface link is not up, do not pull packets yet

kextd stall[0], (60s): `GFX0`, `IGPU`, `GPUC`, `IOResources`

considerRebuildOfPrelinkedKernel com.apple.kext.triggers triggered rebuild


I have tried moving out of the WiFi area to see if that would help but it didn't.


I was able to reboot into Safe Mode, where I deleted all my LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons. Rebooting did nothing. Does anybody have any idea how I can resolve this?


Thanks,


Jack

Replies

How did you get past the "ready-only file system"? That's what's blocking me from this proposed fix...

This worked for me on my iMac Pro (2017), although it took 6 attempts to get my computer to reboot in safe mode.

Aany progress? I have a Mac Pro 2013 with NVMe upgrade drive. Worked fine until I rebooted and now it's stuck on Apple logo screen with 100% progress bar.


I cannot start in safe mode.


stuck!

Thank you, this really help,

For me it was AppleMobileDevice.kext
I wasnt able to run the command at first as it was not permitted if you have the same issue start terminal in recovery and run: csrutil disable

Restarted in safe mode and was able to run:
mkdir ~/Extensions-Backup && sudo mv /Library/Extensions/* ~/Extensions-Backup/

this worked for me.

For me I kept getting the following warning in verbose mode, boot would not progress past a certain point:

Code Block
Notice - new kext com.apple.driver.KextExcludeList, v15.0.3 matches prelinked kext but can't determine if executables are the same (no UUIDs).


I'm running firevault which perhaps is a contributing factor. This fix worked for me:
  • Boot into recovery mode (holding down command-R) and open a terminal from the appropriate menu

  • Disable security mode with this command: csrutil disable

  • Reboot again normally. With security mode disabled, the upgrade will (hopefully) be able to complete as more of the system is writeable.

  • Boot into recovery mode again, and re-enable security mode: csrutil enable

This is not a root cause fix, but it will work until your next upgrade.
The solution posted by kimonp worked for me, thanks!
This is still an issue with Catalina 10.15.7

I tried the Apple support solution of running the disk utility after rebooting with Cmd-R, but that didn’t appear to do anything. The only error disk utility gave was the disk was unmounted, which is presumably to be expected as it was running from the repair sector. 

I then rebooted with Cmd-R again and followed kimonp’s method. I stuck a post it on the screen to mark where the progress bar had stopped and saw it creeping slowly along. The screen then blacked out. Pressing shift to wake it up did nothing. I left it for a while and came back to power down, but before doing so found it woke up to show me the Catalina screen image and my login icons. 

I logged in then had endlessly spinning wheels: onscreen and for the cursor. After a while the cursor returned to normal, but it was 2 hours before the onscreen spinning stopped and the setup screen appeared. 

I clicked through the first few setup items then when it said it was setting up my Mac, I had a black screen and cursor again for 30 minutes.

Finally, I was in. I did a restart into recovery mode, as suggested, to restart security. 

It now takes many minutes to start up, but appears to be working okay. It is also very slow, presumably as it is indexing things.

At least I can now download iMovie from the App Store, which is why I was forced to do this upgrade in the first place.

My laptop is a 2012 MacBook Pro and cannot run Big Sur, the more recent OS upgrade.

This is a follow-up to my report that following advice here I’d been able to get past the install freeze. My MacBook Pro 2012 was painfully slow booting up and with any operation involving the Finder. I tried switching off Spotlight indexing and gave it a couple of days to sort itself out, but to no avail.

I tried various suggestions regarding resets, deleting various cache files, etc. and it ended up worse. Unusable.

I then tried a reinstall of Catalina, thinking if that didn’t resolve things I’d do a clean install.

It ran the install with no problems and is currently operating as well as under Mojave.