Shortly after Apple’s new M1 Macs came out, we found reports that trying to restore and reinstall macOS on these machines immediately could result in an installation error that would make Macs not work properly. Although M1 chip brings Mac stronger performance and power consumption, the new architecture will inevitably face problems of system application adaptation and compatibility in the initial stage. Recently, users reported that they had an error when reloading macOS on macs with M1 chips, and were prompted with the message “There was an error while preparing for the update, failed to personalize the software update, please try again.” Interested partners remember to collect.

Silicon for MAC (M1 chip compatibility testing application) download

If you reset your Mac with the Apple M1 chip before the update to macOS Big Sur 11.0.1, you may not be able to reinstall macOS from macOS Restore. An update error popup appears.

Apple advises Apple Silicon Mac users who are experiencing this problem to either reinstall the system through the Bootable macOS Installer or use a terminal in macOS Recovery.

Or follow these steps

This process may take some time to execute. Before you begin, make sure you have enough time to complete these steps.

Prepare your Mac

  1. Open the Mac and continue holding down the power button until you see the Boot options window. Select the option and click Continue.

2. If you are asked to select a user whose password is known, select the user, click Next, and enter the administrator password.

3. When you see the Utilities window (shown here), choose Utilities > Terminal from the menu bar.

  1. typeresetpasswordAt the terminal, then press Enter.
  2. Click the Reset Password window to display it at the top, then choose Recovery Assistant > Erase Mac from the menu bar.
  3. In the window that opens, click Erase Mac, and then click Erase Mac again to confirm. When done, the Mac will automatically restart.
  4. Select your language when prompted during startup.
  5. If you see a warning telling you that you need to reinstall the macOS version on the selected disk, click the macOS utility.
  6. Your Mac will start activating, which requires an Internet connection. After activating the Mac, click Exit to Recovery Utility.
  7. Perform steps 3 to 9 again, then proceed to the next section below.

Then reinstall macOS using one of the following methods

Use any of the following methods to reinstall macOS.

Use the reinstall macOS Big Sur utility

If your Mac was using macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 before it was deleted, select reinstall macOS Big Sur in the utilities window and follow the on-screen instructions.

Or use a bootable installer

If you have another Mac and a suitable external flash drive or other storage device that you don’t want to delete, you can create and use a bootable installer for macOS Big Sur.

Or use a terminal to reinstall

If neither of the above approaches is suitable for your situation, or you do not know which version of macOS Big Sur the Mac has, perform the following steps:

  1. In macOS Recovery’s utility window, select Safari and click Continue.

  2. In Safari in the search field, enter the following url to open you are reading the article: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT211983

  3. Select this text block and copy it to the clipboard: cd ‘/Volumes/Macintosh HD’ mkdir -p private/tmp cp -R ‘/Install macOS Big Sur.app’ private/tmp cd ‘private/tmp/Install macOS Big Sur.app’ mkdir Contents/SharedSupport curl -L -o Contents/SharedSupport/SharedSupport.dmg Swcdn.apple.com/content/dow…

  4. Put Recovery first by clicking outside the Safari window.

  5. Choose Utilities > Terminal from the menu bar.

  6. Paste the block of text that you copied in the previous step, then press the Return key.

  7. Your Mac is now ready to download macOS Big Sur. Completed, type the following command and press Return: / Contents/MacOS/InstallAssistant_springboard

  8. The macOS Big Sur installer will open. Follow the on-screen instructions to reinstall macOS.

If you need help or these instructions are not successful, please contact Apple Support.