Hello,
I have the same problem, I can access by pressing the option button at the beginning, but every time I turn it off and on, it gives the error being necessary to keep pressing the button every time I restart it.
Did you update to 10.13.4 after getting it to boot? That might fix things, assuming you don’t need to stay at 10.13.3 for other reasons (like the dual-display apps). I did update, and don’t seem to have any trouble at restart.
I’ve had to go into safe boot lately to do OS upgrades and Friday (the 13th) I decided to go for .4. As often happens something hangs and I reboot, but this time I ended up at the same screen you saw. I looked through the log and couldn’t see anything that seemed suspicious, but I’m pretty minor league on reading logs. I tried safe boot again but to no avail. Forgot about Cmd-R mode and spent $75 at the local computer store to find out about my ignorance. If I’d only waited a couple of days or had read my saved notes on recovery.
The other problem I ran into is that I booted my MBP 2013 off another drive and tried Disk Utility and it would only do a quick check (took only a few seconds to check the drive compared to the normal minute or two) which seemed odd. It was odd, it should have told me I can’t use DU from a hard drive on an SSD formatted with APFS. I’d probably read that “long” ago, but that became part of my $75 education.
When I quickly Googled for problems with 2013 vintage MBP I found out that cable failures to the drive were common, so I quit looking then figuring OK the drive is good and I just need a cable.
Everything seems OK now, the store did the .4 upgrade and since I took it in this morning and picked it up an hour ago I can’t say everything is fine. Only one startup.
You can add the DU misinformation to your list of Mac irritants.
I had a very similar experience (MacBookPro mid 2012) previous day I updated to 10.13.3 -long time user playing cautiously with updates. The update run fine, the machine appeared to be somewhat slow (lots of beach balls) but was serviceable.
Shut down and re started next morning & got a warning similar to AE’s though the graphic was different. Tried several of the “usual” things; safe boot, running Disk D. from a clone start up disk etc. On the second attempt to start up from a remote disk I got the “cannot complete the update again”. Spent an hour and a half with the Apple service folks who re set PRAMS and eventually re installed 10.13.4. Good service but very unusual problem. As far as I can tell, no data was compromised. Hope Apple comes clean with an explanation
I had a less traumatic update experience yesterday with my MBP 2014, without the Installation Log screen. I had been working and left the computer plugged in. When I returned a few minutes later the screen was black and unresponsive. After a few minutes wait, pressing keys and diddling I pressed the start button - and nothing happened, even after repeated attempts and holding it down.
Finally it did restart - several times, with different kinds of installation process bars showing different amounts of time that installation would take. After about 30-40 minutes the process completed and I could log in as usual. The OS 10.13.4 update was installed even though I never actively check auto install in preferences.
I had upgraded to High Sierra a few weeks ago and haven’t had any problems.
Hi Adam I didn’t experience your errors BUT when I upgraded to 10.13.4 last night I got a notification from the App Store that there is another update to 10.14.5! I can only assume that another update means that something isn’t working as well as Apple wants. As my iPhone 6S updated its OS without my asking it to (I always leave at least a week before updating). Thus the control of updating IS being wrested away from us users and firmly in the court of Apple’s patrician (I don’t include our distaff as I’m a gentleman:) propeller-heads; this is borne out by a news item (that I haven’t verified yet) that Apple is disabling iPhones which have had their screen repaired by a third party! They DON’T want us messing around with “their” shiny technology:((
This is one reason why I prefer to never do an “automatic” update of the Mac OS, even one “within” the same Mac OS. For OS 10.13.4, given that it had bene a while since OS 10.13.3 was released, and with 7 beta versions of OS 10.13.4, I did a clean, fresh installation of V10.13.4.
With V10.13.5 (now at its second beta), I will most likely download the Combo Updater, and do the update myself. Like the clean installation above, that gives me way more control over the upgrade process.
Restarting again failed and showed the installation log. This time instead of hitting “Restart”, I selected “Startup Disk…” from the menu. This time when I selected the main hard disk it booted successfully, and has been fine ever since.
Sorry for the bump but this happened to me again this week. I am running macOS 10.13.6 and noticed that Security Update 2018-003 had been downloaded. I did not run it at once. The next day after shutting down and trying to start up the installation log appeared just as it did for people postponing the 10.13.4 update. So whatever the underlying problem is, it continues.
Edited to clarify. Here are my App Store preferences:
My complaint is not that the security update tried to install automatically, because my preferences allow security updates to be installed; my complaint is that it failed with a very confusing notification.
Well it’s happening to me suddenly too, on my iMac Pro running 10.3.6. I had installed the Security Update 2018-003 10.13.6. I started experience periodic loss of power to my Drobo 5D drive only to have it start back up on its own in a minute or two. It may be an intermittent problem with the power brick and a replacement has been ordered.
However, after this, I noticed general sluggish behavior of the Mac and decided to restart. I got the aforementioned Log and message that the installation couldn’t be completed. I restarted 3 times and got the log all three times. Finally, like others, I opted to reinstall the system. Before doing so I did try to reset NVRAM and the SMC, and ran Disk First Aid, scanned with ClamXAV and Malwarebytes, and everything else I could think of. Reinstalling did work, but it has continued to happen. After another Drobo power failure/restart (hurry up FedEx!!) today and another reinstall I started looking for more info and found this discussion.
I don’t know much about reading the logs, but I did notice one section in it that read:
Dec 16 19:45:28 iMac-Pro ReportCrash[611]: Time Awake Since Boot: 66 seconds
Dec 16 19:45:28 iMac-Pro ReportCrash[611]:
Dec 16 19:45:28 iMac-Pro ReportCrash[611]: System Integrity Protection: disabled
I’ve never knowingly disabled SIP, and I verified it was Enabled by checking it in Terminal. Perhaps that happens on every boot? I wish I knew what else to look for in the logs, but most of it is meaningless to me. the whole ReportCrash[611] section is quite long and involved.
I’m going to make a note to try holding down Option at boot and try to choose the main startup volume again as suggested here.
Actually, that option only controls background security related updates (e.g. XProtect, MRT & Gatekeeper data). Security Updates that show up in the Mac App Store Software Updates have only been allowed to take place automatically once when Apple felt the need was dire.
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