Clearing the “Preparing…” Status Lock on Target MacsSolved

We saw the exact same behavior during our macOS Sonoma rollout! The confusing part is that Hexnode reports the command as successful because the download completes, but the device never actually transitions into the installation phase.

Same here. We noticed it happens most often on machines that haven’t been rebooted in a while. In our case, restarting the local update service consistently fixed the issue.

Hi @ezekiel,

This behavior generally indicates that the macOS update workflow is stuck at the local system level, rather than an issue with the UEM delivery. Hexnode successfully delivers the OS update command, but the actual installation relies on Apple’s local update subsystem. If that subsystem becomes unresponsive, the update will remain stuck on “Preparing…” indefinitely.

Administrators can remotely recover affected devices using Hexnode’s Live Terminal. Here is the step-by-step fix:

1. Check the daemon: Run the following command to see if the background execution daemon has frozen:
   Check the daemon

   sudo launchctl list | grep softwareupdated

   1	sudo launchctl list | grep softwareupdated

2. Clear the system deadlock: To force Apple’s download controller to rebuild its active process thread pool, kill the execution daemon completely with this command:
   Clear the system deadlock

   sudo killall softwareupdated

   1	sudo killall softwareupdated

3. Re-issue the update: Once the service resets, re-issue the OS update command. You can do this manually by navigating to Actions > Update OS from the Hexnode dashboard, or simply let your assigned OS update policy naturally re-sync.

Let us know if you need any further assistance with this!

Regards,
Sienna Carter
Hexnode UEM