Computer skipping user creation setup?

[ganidran]

What would cause a brand new computer to skip user creation right after an internet network is chosen? We have a few recent computers that went out and some of the computers in that shipment, seemingly upon choosing a network, enrolls the computer and the management user then goes straight to the login screen. Mind you that other computers from the same shipment worked/enrolled normally.

[shaquir]

Are the computers on the same PreStage Enrollment? 

What OS version are are you experiencing this with?  

Once these machines are wiped and the OS reinstalled, does it work as expected?

It's been a while, but I have seen this a few times where the machine shuts down mid enrollment and turns back on to a login screen with no accounts completed.  The same machines worked after a wipe and reinstall (I believe I resolved one by deleting .AppleSetupDone).  The times I experienced this issue I believe the Macs were also fresh out the box, probably with the original bug ridden OS version (i.e. 12.0, 11.0 ).

[pbenware1 · Accepted solution]

I recently had a similar experience, although maybe not identical.  Brand new out of the box, or freshly formatted with new OS (happened to be Ventura; was unable to reproduce in Monterey).

Start the computer, get to the "This computer will be managed by xxx Organization", the skips to a login screen.

After many wipe and reinstalls, some confusing head scratching and a post on Jamf Nation, it was suggested to edit the Prestage enrollment settings.  In my Prestage most of the Apple Setup screens are disabled.  I re-enabled all of them, the very slowly disabled one at a time and tested.  I found that the Transfer Information, aka Migration Assistant to be the culprit.  After re-enabling that step in the Prestage, the problem went away.

[pbenware1]

Giving credit where its due, @bcrockett pointed me in the direction of testing and adjusting the prestige that resolved this issue for me.

[virtasupport]

Interesting, but not a viable solution for us as we are a remote company and drop ship computers to everyone. Have no way of knowing what works as the issue is so random, but getting worse

[VintageMacGuy]

I have had that happen a number of times (maybe 10?), but seemed to be centered around a shipment of Macs that I had last year. Very frustrating when you want to deploy that day, only to find out you have to erase the drive and reinstall the OS again. We use prestage enrollment and have a lot of the setup screens disabled. JAMF suggested to disable all our policies and enable them one by one, but I like the above suggestion to just enable the startup screens and see if any of those fix it.

I haven't seen the issue in a while and generally speaking, 75% were resolved by erasing and setting up again. Some required an additional wipe. I think one took three or four tries. 

I did notice that they appeared in JAMF after they started up - but with a generic name (ie: MacBook Pro), and the JAMF entry showed zero users. I think I have a post here that describes the issue in more detail. I even took a video of the process and sent it in to JAMF support. It just hopped right over the username/password screens and went to the desktop and asked for a username and password to sign in with - which would be impossible since no users were created, according to the JAMF profile for that Mac.

[ganidran]

Thanks all for the input! So far we've been seeing this happen on That's exactly what's happening. They appear as their generic name without any users and the end user only sees a login screen without ever setting up a user.

I'll take that advice to go one by one like you both said and see what solves it, if any. So far this is isolated to Ventura and it still does happen even after an erase and install so seems to be pointing to something up in Jamf.

[ganidran]

@pbenware1confirmed that turning on "Transfer Information" solved the issue ^_^

Edit: solved the issue... 'for now' xD

[pbenware1]

And what do you know, there is a Jamf Product Issue report for this issue: PI111120

[healthcareaa]

Happened to me on my test device a few times. That was my original prestage. My Jamf Connect PreStage never had the issue. 

[cesar_pineda]

All of a sudden we are getting hit with this issue. The only change was that we updated our DB from 10.42 to 10.46....

Thanks for the solution provided, we will give it a try.

[pbenware1]

I'm seeing this now on macOS Sonoma, both on a new computer that shipped with Sonoma and an existing computer that was wiped and Sonoma installed.  Prestage config has all steps enabled.

[juz]

Did you find a fix for this on Sonoma?