A70 Recovery Mode

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Melanie Wendelberger

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:49:53 PM8/3/24

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the Locker Icon asking for a passowrd when booting in "cmd-R Recovery Mode" and also "Alt/Option Access Mac Startup Manager" was the SSD firmware password I set up old time ago in the DIskutil tool .

Apple care give me a phone apointment with a local french compagny to help and repair the material. and after some minutes the guy explain me what was this password and to take car about EN/FR keyboard.

I encountered this issue soon after turning on FileVault on a 2019 MacBook Pro with the T2 security chip. Things seemed to be running smoothly until I had a WindowServer crash during a Skype session. On rebooting, my password was accepted at login, and in various other places, but not to unlock Safari passwords or change Touch ID settings, and when I tried to reinstall Ventura from Internet Recovery Mode, I could not get started by unlocking the boot volume with any of the user passwords.

I could not repair permissions from Recovery mode either, because a password was required to unlock the Data volume, and neither my login password (nor any of the login passwords on the other accounts) were accepted.

The fix was to reset the SMC functions in the T2 security chip (the first step Apple recommends trying BEFORE resetting the entire SMC) by shutting down the MacBook Pro, then pressing and holding the power button (ignore the start chime after first depressing the button) for 10 seconds, then releasing it, and waiting a few seconds before briefly depressing it again to turn on the Mac.

Apple Diagnostics found no issues, nor did Disk Utility after I ran it from Internet Recovery Mode. The T2 security chip SMC reset seems to have fixed all of the aforementioned issues for me. (It was not necessary to do the fully SMC reset with Control-Option-Shift + Power button).

Install macOS: Reinstall macOS on your computer. In the Recovery app, select Reinstall macOS [name], then click Continue. To return to the Recovery app, choose Install macOS [name] > Quit Install macOS. See

Startup Security Utility: Set the security policies for your Mac. In the Recovery app, choose Utilities > Startup Security Utility. To return to the Recovery app, choose Startup Security Utility > Quit Startup Security Utility. See Use Startup Security Utility to set secure boot options.

The options available in Startup Security Utility vary depending on your Mac model. See the Apple Support articles About Startup Security Utility on a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip and Mac computers with the Apple T2 Security Chip.

When the firmware password is turned on, each time you start up from macOS Recovery or from a storage device other than the one selected in Startup Disk settings, you need to enter the firmware password.

Disallow booting from external or removable media: Restricts the ability to boot from any device not protected by the Apple T2 Security Chip, such as USB and Thunderbolt drives or internally connected PCIe or SATA drives.

If you erase and reinstall macOS, your user accounts, network settings, and all of the files and folders on your Mac are deleted. Before you erase macOS, attempt to log back in to your system, then back up any files you want to keep by copying them to another storage device. Also, write down your network settings from Network settings to make it easier to get connected again after reinstalling macOS.

Your Mac restarts automatically while restoring your system from Time Machine or reinstalling macOS. In other cases, you need to quit macOS Recovery manually (for example, if you want to back up your files before reinstalling macOS, or if you just changed a setting using Startup Security Utility).

My Mac's hard drive (running Mojave) suffered some corruption recently, and I found myself unable to boot into the system. I am able to boot into Recovery Mode, and my intent was to rescue the important data sitting in /Users/(my username), but to my surprise, the entire /Users/ folder is just not there when I try to access it via Terminal.

I am very hesitant to reinstall MacOS right now, because IF /Users/ has been compromised in the corruption, I don't want to do anything further that will prevent it from being recovered somehow. In other words, I am trying not to write any new data to the drive at all.

I had my "Macintosh HD" drive mounted as /Volumes/Macintosh HD, but /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users was empty. It turns out that there is a separate "Macintosh HD - Data" partition that also needs to be mounted. I used diskutil apfs unlock "Macintosh HD - Data" and entered my password, and then I found my missing Users directories in /Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data/Users.

I was able to use Disk Drill recovery software set to "deep scan" on the entire contents of the physical drive - and somehow, the software was able to reveal the Users folder. Thankfully, I was able to extract everything I needed from there (as well as files I didn't even want anymore, but that's a small price to pay).

I cannot offer any explanations for why nothing else seemed to work in getting the Users folder to be visible in Terminal/sudo, whether in Recovery Mode or after taking the drive to another computer, regardless of many different ways of initiating chflags -R nohidden on the ENTIRE partition, trying extremely convoluted chmod settings, verifying permissions, manually searching every folder I could imagine, mounting the partition in every way I know how, even trying to mount OTHER partitions on the physical disk that clearly were unrelated to the partition in question. I'm sure I'm forgetting a handful of other things that I tried along the way as well - and trust me when I say I tried everything I could find, even beyond the suggestions on this site, and I tried them correctly, with nearly 20 years of Mac experience under my belt. That's not to say I am a perfect human by any means (obviously), but I am also not a fumbling noob when it comes to this stuff.

I have no doubt that in time, someone will see this thread and have a definitive answer for the troubles I experienced. I absolutely encourage that person to offer their knowledge to the world, because whatever the true solution was, it is not well documented knowledge as of the time of this writing. Either that, or it was something so specific to my situation that it proved crippling and against the normal workings of macOS as a whole.

Instead of removing the SSD, you can try using Target Disk mode. This allows you to boot from the Internal SSD on another computer. Try checking the /var directory. Have you tried First Aid on Macintosh HD (or whatever the OS Drive is)? Reinstalling macOS does not affect any settings or user data so that isn't something to worry about. Can you see an entry for your user accounts in /Volumes/(OS Drive)/etc/passwd? If you don't then that means that all your user accounts have been deleted. If you would like, you can also check /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users and check if there are any .plist files for your user(s). You can also try installing macOS on an external hard drive using macOS Recovery then try booting up on the external drive to see if you can see the /Users directory on the Internal SSD. Good Luck!

(Also : Could you please write somewhere in one of the guides on nvidia website that in recovery mode the fans are turned off and nothing is shown on the screen ? I spent a lot of time trying different things expecting a different behavior. Thanks again.)

I recently tried booting into the Grub2's menu entry "Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.0-24-generic-pae (Recovery Mode) just to see what was there. It booted successfully, but I had no idea what to do after I was there. My question is where can I find some documentation on the recovery mode and what to do if I truly needed to be there. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04.

After a few moments, your workstation should display a menu with a number of options. One of the options (you may need to scroll down to the bottom of the list) will be "Drop to root shell prompt". Press Return with this option highlighted.

** If you reboot, there is no need to hold the Shift key in step 3. The GNU GRUB menu will continue to be displayed automatically on each boot until a normal startup of Ubuntu completes. To configure GRUB so the menu is always displayed, even after a normal startup, see

When a database corruption occurs, the My Cloud Home will go into database repair mode and the recovery process can take up to, but not limited to 5 or more days in some cases. We would recommend to wait and let it complete. You can refer below article for more details about this.

This has just happened to me. The MyCloud Home device has always acted up from time to time since I first bought it (e.g. dropping offline for no reason). Now it is throwing up this message for the first time.

Same problem with my Roku Streambar that I've had less than a year and a half. Several days ago it just went into recovery mode on its own, and now it's stuck. I keep going through the prompts, successfully connecting to the internet, and then the only option is "update now". It updates and restarts, only to go back to the start of recovery mode.

We're glad to assist you with your problem with your Roku Streambar being stuck in recovery mode. Recovery Mode is a feature supported on some models that allows you to clear all data and software from your TV and reinstall the operating system. Please try to press and hold the reset button for at least 10 seconds on your Roku Streambar and see if it changes anything on your screen. Also, how are you powering your Roku Streambar? Please ensure that it's powered directly from the wall outlet. Try to unplug it from the wall outlet for a minute and plug it back in right after. Try to reboot your modem and router too by unplugging them from the wall outlet for a minute and plugging them back in. To know more about recovery mode, check this support article here.

So for _hits and giggles I tried it a few more times, (I also had a new streambar remote) and this time the recovery screen had French language selected! Hmmm, I hit enter and wala!! it went to a select wifi and then password! It did update, But then it came back to recovery. I hit enter again, and then it went to another wifi and password, enter, and then finish final update. It's back!