MBA booting into Monterey

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I was booting my MBA and it stalled about half way through the status bar. I waited a good 10 minutes then I powered off by holding down the power button.  I waited 10 minutes then rebooted and I was able to make it to the login screen.

I’ve had issues since upgrading to Monterey where on booting it would stall halfway through but only for 20 to 30 seconds nowhere near the 10 minutes I waited today.

I haven’t made any changes recently, no new software. I usually shutdown when not using it. Maybe it was a glitch. I’ve been using my Linux Mint laptop more than my MBA recently.

 

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My MBA was new in mid 2017. I bought it from Apple refurbished in 2019 with Mojave on it. It has since run Catalina and Monterey. Each operating system exhibited it’s own boot pattern. Mojave showed a fast even progression of what I call the Apple bar, booting up in about 25 seconds. Catalina seemed to jitter a bit and was a bit slower. Monterey is the slowest and pauses after about 20 seconds for maybe 10 seconds and then finishes booting booting to an account screen in a total of about 40 seconds. I have had two accounts since Monterey; before that there was only one account. After I choose the account and enter the PW it takes perhaps another 15 seconds before it’s ready. Sometimes, if it’s been a while (week or two or more) that 15 seconds can take more like 90 seconds before it’s ready. Not sure what it’s doing, but the next boot is “normal”.

The only thing I’ve seen that’s anything like you saw is a completely dead iMAC – power button did nothing. I unplugged the iMAC, let it sit for a couple minutes and then plugged it back in, started it with the power button and it was right back to normal.

Was your MBA battery charged up when it stalled? Was it plugged in?

Hopefully it was just a glitch.

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bassmanzam

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DrB, I have a similar setup as you. My MBA is a 2017 bought in 2020 when Windows 7 “died” off. Started with Mojave and upgraded to Catalina then Monterey. My boot times got longer on each upgrade. Never figured out what was the issue.

My MBA wasn’t plugged in and had around 25% battery.  I never booted up today as I was “playing” around with my LM 21.1!!

 

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DrBonzo

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I think longer boot times with succeeding OS versions is just an unfortunate fact of life. Same hardware running more and more bloated software probably means longer boot times. After booting up, though, Monterey feels faster on my MBA, but I haven’t done any benchmark testing

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bassmanzam

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Well I finally had a chance to boot up my MBA and the same thing happened. I booted up and it stalled on the “progress bar”, as Apple calls it. I had to hold down the power button to shut down. Waited 5 minutes, rebooted and was able to login.

I did some searching and found this article from Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207019

It talks about repairing the startup disk using Disk Utility. Has anybody used this before? Not sure why it “freezes” the first time and works fine the second.

Thanks for any info.

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I’ve never used Disk Utility. Seems pretty straightforward, but you never know.

Have you charged the battery? Have you tried booting with the the MBA plugged in? Not sure either of those would cause a problem, to be honest.

When you press the start button to turn on the MBA are you holding it down longer than you need to? The main user of my iMAC likes to press the power button and make sure it’s really been pressed by holding it down for sometimes as long as a couple seconds or more. Then strange things start happening, ranging from delayed starts to completely dead. Only thing that fixes it is complete shutdown, wait 5 minutes and press power button for a fraction of a second, and it boots normally.

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The battery was about 75% when I last logged in.  I never tried logging in  with the power plugged in. It’s worth a try.

I’ve never thought about how long I press the start button. Maybe 1 to 3 seconds? I usually wait to here the login “chime” so it could be longer than 3 seconds.

I might give that disk utility a try. If I can over come my anxiety!

 

 

 

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DrBonzo

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1 to 3 seconds strikes me as a long time. I just push the button until I feel it “bottom out” and then immediately release it. Contact time of my finger with the button is probably 0.5 seconds, max.

I hardly ever run my MBA without it being plugged in.

I know you said your battery was 75% charged the last time you booted up, but that doesn’t mean the battery is good. It’s possible the battery isn’t discharging (i. e., providing power) properly. I’m away from my Macs right now but click on the battery icon in the upper right and see what information you can get from the resulting drop down (I hardly ever do that so I just don’t remember what info is there).

If it was me, I would also be leery of running the disk utility, so I’d try booting it up twice while it’s plugged in, once with and once without a quick touch on the power button. If either works, great, and you will then also have some info about where the problem is even if it’s not obvious how to fix it.

I’m just speculating here, but I’d try to eliminate simple things before I went down a potential rabbit hole by using the disk utility that I’ve never used before.

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bassmanzam

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Thanks DrBonzo, I took your advice. I plugged in my MBA and pressed the power button very quickly and the laptop booted first time! Now I’ll have to try it without being plugged in to see if it’s the power button or the battery. I’m hoping it’s just the power button and my heavy hand pressing it. Thanks again!

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DrBonzo

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Glad it worked. Hopefully that’s all it was, but I’d try it again a couple times just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

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bassmanzam

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Continued holding of the Power button down on boot is the way to access the Disk Utility on boot to make changes to the MacHDD. What is happening is it is trying to do that when you hold the button down, but you don’t hold it down long enough. So it starts the process, then aborts it and boots to the login screen.

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bassmanzam, DrBonzo

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Can you boot off a USB stick to test boot times?

cheers, Paul

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Follow-up

Today I started my laptop without plugging it in and quickly pressing on the power button and it successfully made it to the login screen.

So it appears I was being heavy handed on the power button. Thanks to all for the suggestions.

 

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DrBonzo

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