Boot up: no entry followed by Apple logo and boots fine.

Question

Level 1

9 points

Boot up: no entry followed by Apple logo and boots fine.

I have my Apple Imac running the latest install/build of Catalina 10.15.6, however noticed when it boots it gives me a No-Entry sign then reverts to a boot up progress bar and loads fine.

There are no errors on the First Aid on any of my drives / data or USB drives, but I can see from an older post from May, that having another OS/X on a drive as bootable could cause this.

Since I have Mojave bootable permanently attached and also a short cut to allow me to boot to Catalina/Mojave from under System. I was wondering if my boot up process was trying the USB (Mojave) to boot from (even though Catalina is the Startup Disk) before reverting back to the Catalina and booting fine.

Weirdly if I set Mojave to boot as StartUp, I dont get any No-Entry sign, its only when Catalina boots, and all repairs/disk checks and diags have not reported any errors on any hardware, plus it doesn't stop on boot up and once the no-entry goes (After 1-3 seconds), it then boots up with the progress bar fine and gets me to the icons to login.

Is this a bug in OS/X where it boots and as there are two drives with the OS/X its causing the No-Entry?

Chris

iMac, macOS 10.12

Posted on Aug 1, 2020 1:55 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

den.thed

Level 10

81,742 points

Aug 1, 2020 2:43 PM in response to Chris-King

Hmm... I not having that problem with Mojave on the internal drive and Catalina on an external USB 3.0 drive.

Perhaps it is your "short cut" that is causing the problem. Try setting System Preferences > Startup Disk to one or the other and then reset the NVRAM, as per > Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

Then only switch between them using the Startup Manager, as per > How to select a different startup disk - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,098 points

Aug 1, 2020 4:38 PM in response to Chris-King

Even though Disk Utility First Aid shows everything as Ok, you should click on the "Details" and manually examine the report to see if there are any unfixed errors listed. For some reason Disk Utility now considers unfixed errors as "Ok", but they really are not Ok. If there are unfixed errors listed, then you will need to temporarily clone the drive to another drive and erase the original drive before restoring the clone to it.

Also try a PRAM reset (hold the PRAM reset for at least three chimes or a full minute if your Mac permits it -- some newer Macs don't allow multiple resets).

Does the same thing occur when Option Booting when selecting the boot drive on the Apple boot picker menu at power on?

Reply

Answer 3

Chris-King Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 2, 2020 1:05 AM in response to HWTech

With regards to [den.thed], my Imac is set up with Catalina as the main internal drive install and Mojave as USB (External)

The start up short cut works fine in both directions, but I tested using the normal Startup Manager and the same problem occurs.

With regards to [HWTech], I couldn't see Details for any reports/errors when doing Disk Utility First Aid, but I did also try and do a complete PRAM reset (and got the chimes) and again this made no difference.

However I think this is a bug in the startup which I will report, mainly because my last test, which was to disconnect (Unplug) my Mojave USB on a restart/power down start up, cured it, as soon as the USB was disconnected, and the iMac started, it went fine with no errors and no No-Entry, as soon as I plugged the Mojave USB back in the No-Entry Returned.

I had already done First Aid over Mojave USB drive and it was fine too... I will log this via Apple and see what I get back, thanks for both and all your suggestions, however if you can think of anything else I can try that in the interim.

Will leave the thread open, and see what transpires.

Reply

Answer 4

HWTech

Level 9

60,098 points

Aug 2, 2020 10:54 AM in response to Chris-King

Chris-King wrote:

With regards to [HWTech], I couldn't see Details for any reports/errors when doing Disk Utility First Aid

When First Aid completes, the confirmation dialog box contains a "Details" drop down link which opens up the report for the most recent operation.

However I think this is a bug in the startup which I will report, mainly because my last test, which was to disconnect (Unplug) my Mojave USB on a restart/power down start up, cured it, as soon as the USB was disconnected, and the iMac started, it went fine with no errors and no No-Entry, as soon as I plugged the Mojave USB back in the No-Entry Returned.

In your original post you mentioned the following:

Since I have Mojave bootable permanently attached and also a short cut to allow me to boot to Catalina/Mojave from under System.

Perhaps this is the problem. If you made some type of system modifications, then undo it and see what happens. If you want an easy way to switch between the two operating systems, then try using rEFInd instead. You can easily test out rEFInd to see how it works by creating a bootable rEFInd USB drive before installing it to your internal drive.

Reply

Answer 5

Chris-King Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 2, 2020 11:30 AM in response to HWTech

Hi HWTech

Thanks for the reply, I will check out rEFInd.

I have not really made any system mod, it was only a shortcut on my desktop to the System option, that allows me to select which drive to boot from. It was documented on the web on how to locate the app that displays that how to create an alias on the desktop so you can get to it quicker, I still have to go through the process of password and selecting, then restart.

It doesnt do this on switching from Mojave to Catalina, using the shortcut/alias from Mojave, and in fairness, even if the Mac was completely powered down, set to boot from its own internal drive a the time it was shut down, then booted from cold, it will still do No-Entry, Pause then boot fine. (but doesnt do this the other way, i.e. if set to boot from Mojave, then powered down, then restarted from cold).

I will check also the details after running First Aid, but as I am running Beta etc, its possible that the option isnt there, but will check that later.

Chris

Reply

Answer 6

Chris-King Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 3, 2020 12:57 AM in response to HWTech

Hi HwTech

My bad on the details, I always keep the drop down open/picked so I can see the full listing of the checking / status, about a month ago, I did re-do the entire drive due do a problem then, and its been rebuilt, now it is error free every time and checked against each time machine snap shot and clean each one.

Chris

Reply

Boot up: no entry followed by Apple logo and boots fine.

Similar questions