Im trying to update my wifes macbook air to Big Sur but no matter what i do i get the message “could not complete. Access denied.”
i tried Disk Utility and doing a First Aid on both volumes.
Any ideas how to fix this?
Shutdown computer by whatever means required. Disconnect all external Drives. Plug into charger. Restart and Immediately hold SHIFT. This will be Safe Mode and it will attempt to do a Repair Disk, clear cache files and only load Apple Software and Fonts. It will load slowly and is normal. The idea of doing the Safe Boot is to eliminate all Third Party software from interfering with the update process. If all goes well - it may or may not allow the installation to complete.
Shutdown computer by whatever means required. Disconnect all external Drives. Plug into charger. Restart and Immediately hold SHIFT. This will be Safe Mode and it will attempt to do a Repair Disk, clear cache files and only load Apple Software and Fonts. It will load slowly and is normal. The idea of doing the Safe Boot is to eliminate all Third Party software from interfering with the update process. If all goes well - it may or may not allow the installation to complete.
Are there more than one User Account on this computer ? Is the Installation of Big Sur being done from the Administrator Account of this computer ?
Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac
How to upgrade to macOS Big Sur
macOS Big Sur is compatible with these computers
If upgrading from macOS Sierra or later, macOS Big Sur requires 35.5GB of available storage to upgrade. If upgrading from an earlier release, macOS Big Sur requires up to 44.5GB of available storage. To upgrade from OS X Mountain Lion, first upgrade to OS X El Capitan, then upgrade to macOS Big Sur.
Try again and if still can not - suggest having the computer Evaluated by An Apple Authorized Service Centre.
According to the Mac’s info on storage she has 114 GB available out 250?
i have no idea what to try next. Maybe something with permissions?
There’s only one. And yes, its the administrators :)
Apparently i can’t open in Safe Mode? That seems weird?
Upgrade to Big Sur. Access Denied.
