Kernel panic during Sequoia 15.4 installation on Apple M1 2021 MacBook Pro with Sonoma 14.7.5

I was on Sequoia 15.4 and I decided to erase and clean reinstall macos sequoia on my macbook pro m1. The installation went fine but the system restarts at selecting startup disk. My disk is shown but when I select it it says that macos needs to be reinstalled on this volume. And when I do this the same thing happens again and again.

Only solution I found (I don't have a second mac to try DFU) was to install 15.3.2 from a usb. But after this I cannot update anymore to 15.4.

Try installing 15.4.1, released today!

Yes, through a support chat, they are investigating internally, but there was no update on the case today. I will let you know next week once I hear back from them.

macOS 15.4.1 solved the issue for my M1 Macbook Air - upgrade worked and everything is running. :-)

Grant - Thanks for all this data! Were you able to finally get to 15.4 after successfully getting to 15.2? I'm trying to decide if I should just wait for 15.4.1 (or whatever the next one is) and stay on Sonoma 14.7.5 in the meantime.

Thanks again!

Thanks again. I have seen a couple other threads other sites with these same symptoms, so hopefully, as you suggest, Apple is working on a resolution. I'll just wait a few days before trying again.

Thanks again Grant

@Galileo135

Hi,

Are you in direct contact with Apple, please? I recently had a call with the local support team in the Czech Republic, and their statement was that Sequoia has no installation issues, and the problem lies with the hardware on my MacBook.

Thanks

I updated yesterday on my MacBook Pro M1 Max from 15.3.2 to 15.4 with 2.87 TB of space available. I had no issues whatsoever with the update taking about 20 minutes.

Sorry you're having issues and not trying to downplay your concerns by any means but for reference, there were no problems with Sequoia 15.4 on my M1 Max.

They don't care man!! I was on the phone with them and they wanted me to bring my laptop (without coverage) to a certified reseller for diagnosis, which of course cost extra money. They ignored my claims of it being a software in quality control issue. As a long-term customer, this is very disappointing. Upgrading to 15.2 instead of 15.4 solved the problem

I’m also having the issue of updating my M1 MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021) from 15.3.2 to 15.4. I have another issue to report. I launched Disk Utility and erased the Mac at the request of Apple Support after I reported the issue and requested its escalation.

When the computer presented the main screen in Recovery mode afterwards, I chose the 2nd option - Reinstall macOS Sequoia, I thought installation was proceeding as normal although what was actually installed was Sonoma 14.7.5. Anyone else had that experience? Anyway, partly because I’ve experienced that before when installing to external drives, I decided to go month by month with AppleCare after the original term expired. I’m wondering if the Sonoma installation may provide additional evidence that the logic board will require replacing. A caveat to the assumption that my Mac needs hardware repair is that I didn’t know Recovery mode had installed Sonoma, so I had already performed the restoration of my backed up boot drive before I realized I would have to upgrade to Sequoia before applying the 15.4 update. So my drive was restored in Sonoma, updated to 15.3.2, then I again experienced the kernel panic when trying to update to 15.4. My local Apple Store has my Mac now, and the request is simply to apply the 15.4 update. We erased the computer again while I was at the Genius Bar, so I’m waiting to hear what happens.

I just found this post from about 1 month ago relative to the 15.4 pre-final version (seems like this problem was present even then). At that time the DFU restore was perceived to be the only solution. Which I have not attempted yet. It comes from this Reddit website (you have to scroll down load more comments to get to it):

The original Post and response was in Portuguese - What follows is the google translate version.

Original Post (From 1 Month Ago):

I installed 15.4 Pre-Final Release Version on my external HD. It worked, but when I turned it off and booted from the internal HD with 15.3.1. The installation was corrupted. I cleaned the disk with Recover Sonoma, but now the Mac no longer accepts the installation of version 15.3.1. It always crashes and stays in a loop....Now when I try to update it always crashes with this LOG:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0x0): t6000dart 0xfffffdf03f8c2850 (dart-disp0): Can't ignore lock validation u/t6000dart.c:437

Reply #1:

Hi, I’m going through the same issue. I guess you haven’t found a solution other than DFU restore either, right?

Reply #2:

Unfortunately not, only restoring via DFU. After I restored everything worked normally.

Any solution to this?

So far only softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 15.2 worked, and now I'm stuck on that version which is progress but 15.4 patched some serious security vulnerabilities.

Thanks!