High Sierra Updates Stall During Installation

[cainehorr]

I'm sure this has come up more than once - but so far, I haven't found anything reliable...

Has anyone found a reliable method for upgrading High Sierra from one revision to another without experiencing the "Failure/Stuck/Installation" error?

We've been seeing this since we started deploying High Sierra at version 10.13.0.

The issue is this...

A user see a prompt in the app store that updates are available
The user chooses to update (ie 10.13.3 to 10.13.4)
The system requires a reboot
The system reboots
The update begins
At about 75-80% completion, the update hangs
Reboots with NVRAM and SMC reset have no effect

We have found that a user who reboots and holds down the option key will typically see two drives listed.

macOS Update
Primary Boot Volume (ie Macintosh HD)

By clicking on the primary boot volume, the system boots normally and sometimes, in rare instances, the update is/was applied.

This is obviously no bueno.

Any suggestions?

[craig_caruso]

Following

[SGill]

Try Option-Command-R instead.

Test first, but by default it should attempt to preserve data and upgrade to High Sierra:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

[cainehorr]

@SGill

We are not performing upgrades (ie 10.11.x to 10.12.x).

We are performing updates (ie 10.13.1 to 10.13.4).

Users should not need to be using Command-Option-R

[SGill]

Misread your post...apologies.

[Look]

You can stop the issue coming back on an individual machine by holding Control as you select the boot volume. Obviously this doesn't resovle the underlying cause though.
I have found that if you apply the updates immediately after a restart and do the required restart immediately after applying it that it seems to be much more reliable and scheduled it so in my environment.
It would be nice though if Apple just made it work! Or at least fail gracefully by defaulting back to the original OS.