Monterey upgrade - falls back to Big Sur

jfriedel
New Contributor II

Hi All,

I know this is not JAMF Pro related but I thought it might be impacting others as well.

I have bunch of Macbooks (Intel models from 2017, 2018, 2019) that are running on Big Sur and upon trying to upgrade to Monterey 12.3 there is a weird behaviour.

The upgrade downloads just fine, the install process starts. Looks like everything is fine but at the end of the upgrade process the device reboots and it's still on Big Sur. No change to the OS at all.

What I have done so far:

  • double checked on free disk space
  • deleted the installer from /applications folder
  • completed an NVRAM reset
  • uninstalled MS Defender for Endpoint

Facts:

  • EFI password setup for all of them
  • CyberArk EPM installed to all of them
  • All of them have Apple SSD installed

Still no joy.

Anyone else experienced this so far?

 

5 REPLIES 5

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

@jfriedel I'd suggest taking one of the machines and disabling the EFI password then testing the Monterey upgrade. If it still doesn't work try removing CyberArk EPM and testing. I have seen macOS upgrades blocked by other EPMs, but have no personal experience with the CyberArk EPM.

jfriedel
New Contributor II

Disabling EFI did not help unfortunately. CyberArk EPM has also been removed from the impacted devices but it did not change anything.

The fix for this weird issue is to reboot into safe mode and upgrade the OS from there. For this we obviously need to have EFI password disabled.

The annoying thing here is that I still don't know why it would not work in normal mode.

arnoldtaw
New Contributor III

@jfriedel  anything new? Still having to upgrade via Safe Mode? 

jfriedel
New Contributor II

I already upgraded about 50 Macs in safe mode successfully. But in normal mode the upgrade still keeps failing. Even with CyberArk EPM removed and users made admin, it still would not work in normal mode.

So the workaround is proven to be working but it's also loosing a lot of time with having to go through the steps to enable a Mac to get into safe mode + grant users permissions to be able to run the upgrade.

 

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

@jfriedel It's been years since I dealt with Macs that had an EFI password enabled, but if there's a mechanism to boot into Recovery Mode on those machines you might might want to take a look at https://apple.ent.box.com/v/MacProvisioner-4-2 which will build you a provisioning USB drive that you can run from there. It _might_ be easier than safe mode + granting user permissions.