Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking problems after OS upgrade

I was using 10.13.6 on my 2015 MacbookPro. I was having problems with both Safari and Firefox loading pages so I decdied to update my OS to 11 BigSur. I have a problem with my Mail app. Nothing is in my trash or junk folders. When I click on delete or junk the messages disappear. In the past I had messages go to junk folder and at times I have needed to take important messages out of junk. Is this the way Mail works in Big Sur?

(I assume you mean "when [you] click on trash or junk?")

Mail.app should definitely NOT be doing what you've reported.

You may be best off waiting for further commentary, but my only suggestion is to rerun the Big Sur installer.

Mail should NOT be doing what is happening. Artie's suggestion might solve the problem, and doesn't take long. But do it right...

1. MAKE A FRESH BACKUP OF YOUR SYSTEM to an external drive using Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, or utility of your choice. You are unlikely to need it, but if you do need it it is invaluable.
2. power your MBP down
3. Boot your MBP while holding the Command+R (⌘R) keys down to boot into the Recovery Drive
4. From the Recovery Drive menu bar, launch Disk Utility
5. Select Macintosh HD and run First Aid (If First Aid reports an unrepaired error, run it again.)
6. Once you have a run that completed with no errors, Quit Disk Utility.
7. Launch the Installer and reinstall Big Sur (the latest version compatible with your MBP will be installed.
8. Once that quits and your MPB has rebooted from Macintosh HD test to see if your issue is resolved.
9. post here and let us know the results.

I ran the BigSur installer again but it didn't change anything with my mail app. It seemed I had more problems than with my mail. I got a message that I didn't have enough space to install BigSur so I put a large amount in the trash and emptied the trash but it showed I still had the same amount of space. It wants me to upgrade to Monterey but I get a message that read "A required firmware update could not be installed. Compatible internal storage is required in order to update" and Pages window says I need to update so I can get the updated Pages. And I noticed that while starting up for a second I would have white, blue and blacks lines on the screen.
Anyway with all that going on I installed a bootable external drive with High Sierra, the OS I had been using before and I erased my hard drive. The only thing that changed when I installed BigSur was my mail program worked better but... I use Mail for two email addresses. One is working fine but my google is annoying as I can click on either delete or junk on the top bar and the emails disappear only to come back later in the Mail inbox and are marked as read. The only way I can get rid of google emails is to drag them to the gmail junk folder in the sidebar. Kind of a pain but workable.
I still get notifications to upgrade the OS and I would like to use Monterey but I get the firmware error message. And on Apple site my computer can have Monterey installed.

The momentary streaks on your screen may be a hardware issue and changes at Google are causing problems with Gmail on local Email clients. (In retrospect, I seem to recall an announcement that Gmail will only be compatible with the more recent versions of Mail, but I can't swear to that.) Both the screen streaks and Gmail need to be dealt with as separate issues.

TAKE ONE ISSUE AT A TIME (A cardinal rule of troubleshooting)

1. The first step would be to install the firmware update as that is blocking other updates.
2. Have you run Disk Utility > First Aid on your internal drive while booted from your external drive to see if there are any issues with the volume structure of the drive?
3. If errors are found, run it again.
4. When First Aid reports no errors, how much disk capacity does Disk Utility show? How much free space?
5. while booted from the external drive, try installing the firmware update from there.
6. It may be necessary to erase the internal drive again to get enough room to install the firmware update.
7. Once that has been done, you can try Big Sur again.
8. WHAT HAPPENED???

It struck me as odd that bischue was prompted to update firmware, because I haven't seen or heard of such a thing in considerable period of time, so I went looking, and found <https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/about-your-computers-firmware-mchlp2609/10.13/mac/10.13> which says "Firmware updates are usually included in macOS updates...."

In the end, it seems like there is no firmware update which can be accessed and installed independently of a clean install or upgrade, and a nuke and pave may be the way to go.

Did you replace your Mac's internal drive with a non-Apple drive? Apparently the firmware update in question requires the presence of an Apple internal drive.

Yes, a nonApple drive is installed.

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,4
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 16 GB
System Firmware Version: 194.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.29f24
Serial Number (system): C02SL6HMG8WN
Hardware UUID: CEB115EB-3C7F-5A87-B2D0-E32BD25AB318
Provisioning UDID: CEB115EB-3C7F-5A87-B2D0-E32BD25AB318

Running First Aid on “Container disk1”

Verifying the startup volume will cause this computer to stop responding.

Verifying storage system
Using live mode.
Performing fsck_apfs -n -x -l /dev/disk0s2
Checking the container superblock.
warning: container has been mounted by APFS version 1934.141.2.700.2, which is newer than 1677.141.3.7.2
warning: disabling overallocation repairs by default; use -o to override
Checking the EFI jumpstart record.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the space manager free queue trees.
Checking the object map.
Checking volume.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking snapshot 1 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-06-235501.local)
Checking snapshot 2 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-07-094334.local)
Checking snapshot 3 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-11-114924.local)
Checking snapshot 4 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-11-124933.local)
Checking snapshot 5 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-11-134942.local)
Checking snapshot 6 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-11-145727.local)
Checking snapshot 7 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-004026.local)
Checking snapshot 8 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-014023.local)
Checking snapshot 9 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-024033.local)
Checking snapshot 10 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-034044.local)
Checking snapshot 11 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-044047.local)
Checking snapshot 12 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-054059.local)
Checking snapshot 13 of 13 (com.apple.TimeMachine.2024-03-12-080545.local)
Checking the extent ref tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
warning: orphan omap mapping found for oid 427135
warning: orphan omap mapping found for oid 572637
Checking volume.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking volume.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking volume.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking volume.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking snapshot 1 of 1 (com.apple.os.update-FFF53D234F4B4A9892E3E7A8189E7B75A6A4EDE097E525A819DEDEB8FC32F5C1)
Checking the extent ref tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the file extent tree.
Checking volume.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Verifying allocated space.
The volume /dev/disk0s2 appears to be OK.
Storage system check exit code is 0.

Operation successful.

[video:youtube]https://youtu.be/eSzFcLeOuPc [/video]

Excellent information, Well configured Mac, plenty of memory, good storage capacity, only 67 GB free storage. The question is what is taking up all of your data storage? Freeing up that data storage will enable you to upgrade the firmware, which will make the OS upgrade possible.

The trick is how to free up your storage. The most common storage hogs are Photos and Music (not the apps, the actual photos and tunes). There are ways of reducing that, but before going further, you have to be sure what the culprits are. There are several apps on the App Store that can help with this (search for 'disk cleaner'). They all do pretty much the same thing, but have unique ways of presenting the information. The choice depends on which you find most understandable. I have tried several over the years, but the one I keep coming back to is Daisy Disk. I am not saying it is any better than the others, but it is the one that presents the clearest picture to me.

Even with the help of a disk cleaner the problem of what to do with the extra files remains. There are three alternatives.

1. A ruthless appraisal of your data files and heartless deleting of everything that is unessential. (A disk cleaner can tell you the most fruitful place to start and can remove a lot of temporary system files)
2. Move your data files to an external drive
3. Move your data files to iCloud (Automatic, invisible in operation, relatively cheap, no decisions have to be made, but you may have to pay for more iCloud space -- may not free up enough space initially, but will prevent future shortages)
4. All of the above (my choice)

To take advantage of iCloud. (I am running Sonoma and these are likely in different locations in Big Sur and earlier macOS versions)
System Settings > Apple ID > iCloud

• Optimize Mac storage -- ON
• Optimimize Photos -- ON
• iCloud Drive > synch this Mac -- ON
• iCloud Drive > Desktop & Documents Folders -- ON

Photos > Settings

• iCloud photos -- ON
• Optimize mac Storage -- ON

This can take a few days to settle, so you need to leave your computer on and plugged in for a while.

Great research!

According to Mactracker, bischue's MBP can, indeed, be upgraded to the latest version of Monterrey, but the upshot of the info in dkmarsh's link and successive links appears to be that freeing up the space will not allow the upgrade without swapping out the non-Apple SSD too.

My picture folder has 403.95 GB of pictures. I have scanned in all my pictures and I scanned in all my mother's pictures. I have duplicates of her pictures as I have both larger ones and smaller ones that I can put on a drive to share with pc family. And I have also scanned in negatives. I have put so much time into my pictures that I have many backups. I have 3 external drives that I use for TimeMachine and also have the pictures backed up on other drives. Let's just say I'm paranoid about losing my pictures. So I have no qualms of deleting them from my internal drive.

I had a MBP 2011 that the video went bad and I have the internal drive from that in a case that I can use but it won't mount anymore, when I first plug it in I can feel it but for just a short time.
I presume that is a Apple drive.

Thanks for the imput. I'm going to play around with the computer for a while. I'm not comfortable doing anything with Terminal, My first computer was a SE 20 and in those days nothing was preinstalled so it was a learning experience for me. BTW I'm a 74 year old soon to be great grandmother with no training in computers.

Just to make sure we're not missing any bases, it sounds like you didn't save your OEM drive when you swapped it out for the OWC drive that's now in your MacBook Pro?

No, I do not have that drive. I bought the MBP at a computer store and they put in the larger drive that I wanted.

Given the number of drives of different manufacture, model and size, I have replaced in Apple computers over the years with never a problem, together with the fact Apple has not published a warning, and even a major source of upgrade drives for macs, OWC has never mentioned it. I am having trouble crediting a non-apple drive as an issue here.

Are these all in Photos or individual files? If they are in Photos, going to Photos > Settings > iCloud turning on iCloud Photos and selecting Optimize mac storage, waiting a couple of days with your computer turned on to allow for the necessary processing:) , and you will have another backup of your precious photos, and very likely more than enough room on your disk drive for the upgrade.

Sounds as if the video isn't the only thing from the old MBP that went bad.

(Is that handle "Blue Shoe" or "Bless You"? ) You are doing great for a youngster! I'm a couple of months shy of 85, and have been teaching computer's since the 1960's and treat the command line the same way I would nitroglycerin; with extreme caution and only when there is no other alternative.

First name Barb, middle initial L, maiden name Schue

If you search dkmarsh's linked document for "OWC" you'll find that they deal with the issue, although there apparently not being an Apple document in that regard is quite curious.

(The document also includes "How can I avoid an error preparing macOS Monterey installation on a Mac with an OWC Aura Pro x2 SSD?" which I believe is the drive installed in blschues's MBP.)

I wonder if Apple has ignored the issue because they don't recognize the existence of 3rd party solutions?

With all due respect, it seems unlikely that 67 GB of free storage is insufficient for this upgrade. If you google/duckduckgo the phrase "compatible internal storage is required in order to update" you will find a large body of anecdotal data confirming the drive issue.

While 67 GB free storage isn't much with respect to a 1 GB SSD, it certainly should be sufficient for a ~12 GB upgrade, but on the other hand, I recently ran into a situation in which I erased a large body of data from my thumb drive and was advised that I had insufficient space when I tried to clone the exact same body of data back. I did, however, succeed in accomplishing my goal after booting into another volume, which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that "insufficient space" is not a particularly meaningful term.

All that being said, though, I think your linked document nails down the non-Apple drive issue, including with respect to OWC which joemike has questioned.

Between MFIF and FTM, I've been around for 20 years or so, and you have ALWAYS been both the best researcher and reader on both platforms.