Cannot login after upgrading El Capitan to High Sierra

Question

Cannot login after upgrading El Capitan to High Sierra

Bit of a convoluted tale.

Late 2011 Macbook Pro, was upgraded to SSD and El Capitan years ago.

Running Parallels 10 with 2 iterations of Windows (7 & 10), both are or were open and running after upgrading to Parallels 13.

Parallels installations went well and all Windows updates performed.

Shut down and restarted to upgrade Mac OS from El Capitan to High Sierra (most current OS supporting both intel Mac and Parallels).

Began install of High Sierra, took many many hours to install but seemed to progress as expected.

Restart yet again to do work and log-in screen would not accept login which was not changed during any phase of upgrades.

Logged in via recovery, used terminal and reset login per online advice.

Still no login access.

Searching for tips, advice or procedure to login...thoughts?

MacBook Pro 15″

Posted on Oct 7, 2024 4:03 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

244,967 points

Oct 8, 2024 1:41 AM in response to Upgrade_trials

Start with this...

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes or more.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

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Answer 2

Oct 8, 2024 12:15 PM in response to BDAqua

Thank you for the reply.

I have restarted multiple times in safe mode and to no avail.

I attempted recovery multiple times, to no avail.

I have reset NVRAM, no change...still cannot login.

Attempted to reset SMC, get chime and laptop immediately goes to a black screen.

I am vexed.

p.s.: in recovery, the utilities will not allow a re-installation of High Sierra, yellow triangle warning comes up saying it can't reach server.

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Answer 3

Oct 8, 2024 5:51 PM in response to BDAqua

As noted in initial post, went from El Capitan to High Sierra (10.13.6).

Installation was initially successful. I was able to move around in the High Sierra environment until I shutdown and restarted, as mentioned both iterations of Windows were running at the time and they historically suspend when I am in the Mac environment.

Is it your suggestion to download a clean copy of High Sierra 10.13.6 to an external drive?

While I can undertake this, please elaborate on what might be gained doing so.

If however, the suggestion is to download a copy of my installed OS on my laptop to the drive, I am not up to speed on how to effect this.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

244,967 points

Oct 8, 2024 6:34 PM in response to Upgrade_trials

Is it your suggestion to download a clean copy of High Sierra 10.13.6 to an external drive?

Yes, so far the only possible clue we have is that some bits got crossed on the Internal drive.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

244,967 points

Oct 8, 2024 4:47 PM in response to Upgrade_trials

What OS version are you running?

Might you get another external drive & install the OS to it so we can check out things?

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