Incompatible items on hard drive

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Incompatible items on hard drive.
How do I find them & what do I do with them?
Running Mojave 10.14.6 & went to upgrade to Monterey 12.6. Had a devil of a time. Finally got it installed and it ran like crap. Many of my favorite applications wouldn’t run, the 32/64 bit thing. After struggling with it for a few days I decided to revert to my back up and back to Mojave. I know it works the way I want it to.
Now every time I start it up I get this “Incompatible items on hard drive” notice. What & where is it & how do I get rid of it. It bugs the living daylights out of me.
Thanks
 

pigoo3

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Here's what I would do:

* Make a list of all non-Apple apps (anything you would have installed on the computer yourself).
* When you make this list...also add the apps version number.
* Visit RoaringApps:


...and one by one...check the RoaringApps website to see what versions of each app are compatible with Mojave (assuming you ONLY want to keep apps that are Mojave compatible).

This RoaringApps info also tells you what version of these Apps are compatible with Mojave...thus if you really like a particular app or apps (and want to keep it)...you could upgrade the app/apps you want to keep.

HTH,

Nick
 
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...After struggling with it for a few days I decided to revert to my back up and back to Mojave
... “Incompatible items on hard drive” notice.

Two questions that are important to know the answer to before we can give you an answer.

First, exactly how did you downgrade to Mojave (please tell us all the steps you took.)

Second, at some point did you install apps to run in Monterey and/or 64-bit apps?

It sounds to me as if you tried to downgrade by doing an upgrade install, and what you needed to do was a nuke & pave (a clean install.) But I can't tell if part of the problem is that you installed new apps under Monterey that won't run under Mojave.
 
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Downgrading to Mojave was by cloning one of my external hard drives containing Mojave back to the hard drive.
I did discover that this error notice is now also on my back up drives. Probably by backing up prior to correcting the problem. When I upgraded I did not install any programs to my knowledge.
I did go through my apps as suggested & found no offenders, other than a file named Install macOS Monterey. Could that be the culprit? Don't want to trash it at this time, because I feel an upgrade is inevitable. Your thoughts?

thanks again.
 

Rod


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Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Just going back a bit, you say that you had "a devil of a time" upgrading to Monterey and that it "ran like crap". Assuming you have a compatible device (you don't mention what that is in your profile) neither of those things should have happened.
So what did happen?

Back in Mojave we were warned that certain (32bit) apps were or would be incompatible with macOS and we should check for updates by the developer. This notice usually only appeared once for each app concerned. It was then a fairly simple process to identify these 32bit apps from the About This Mac item under the Apple Menu. It was Apple's intention that failing a 64bit upgrade we should delete these apps prior to upgrading macOS to what would have been Catalina macOS 10.15. the last of the MacOS 10 series. If any were overlooked they appeared in the Applications menu after upgrade with an overlayed circle with a strikethrough. Although it was simple enough to delete the app itself (drag to the trash) it may not be so simple to delete the app's associated files especially if it came with it's own Uninstaller (also a 32bit app).

A lot of changes occurred from Catalina to Big Sur to Monterey and todays Ventura. So when you cloned Mojave back to your device did you erase the target device (your HD) beforehand? That should be done at the "media" level (the actual SSD or HDD) then reformat and Map done using the external boot drive with Disk Utility.
 
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When tried to upgrade, got a notice in the system preferences, I would get a message saying I could not upgrade to Monterey from this version OS.
After exhausting attempts to find a version I could upgrade to, to then upgrade to Monterey I gave up and contacted Apple tech support. After several techs I was finally told to restart holding down a series of keys (which I don’t remember now) to get a window that would allow me to wipe the HD and then install Monterey. Which I did.
It just didn’t run right. Sluggish, wouldn’t allow me some of the desktop icons/folders I prefer, and things were all jumbled up. Just too confusing for the old mind to comprehend.
At this point I decided to return to Mojave. Shouldn’t be that hard, I thought. Booted off my backup drive. Used disk utilities to erase the HD and partition. Then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone back from my backup drive.
After that the “Incompatible items” notice appears.
I checked my apps & found nothing of the 64 bit nature.
This has been going on for a while so my memory isn’t 100%.
 

krs


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I think it would really help if you posted which specific Mac you are using
 
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This?
 

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Rod


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Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Yep, that's it. So, no reason why your iMac cannot upgrade to Monterey but as said there have been a lot of changes so that might account for some of your reported issues, "wouldn’t allow me some of the desktop icons/folders I prefer, and things were all jumbled up." As for "sluggish" well the system would have been re indexing initially, downloading and syncing things from iCloud so...

It sounds like you did all the right things as far as cloning Mojave back to your HD, other that the incompatible apps notifications is the device operating as it used to?

It is normal for Mojave to notify you about apps that are not "optimised" for the next macOS. These will be 32bit (not 64bit) apps but Mojave will run both with no problem, after Mojave only 64bit apps will run.

To locate all of your 32bit apps is easy.

Find 32-bit apps on your Mac through System Report​

1. In the Finder, click on the Apple menu and select About This Mac.

macos mojave about this mac
2. In the Overview section, click on the System Report button.

3. In the left column of the System Report, scroll down to the Software section. Then select Applications.

4. The section on the right may go blank for a moment. This is because your Mac is compiling a list of software on your Mac. When the window appears, it will have two sections. The top section is the list of software. The bottom section shows more details about an item if you click on it in the list.

high sierra system report apps 64 bit
If you click and hold the dot in the divider between the two sections, you can resize the window so you can see more of the list or more of the details.


5. In the list, there is a column called “64-Bit (Intel)” that is located to the far right of the top row. If you don’t see it, try expanding the window by clicking and dragging the right edge, or you can scroll the window to the right. Once you see the 64-bit (Intel) column, you can click, hold, and drag it to the left to reposition it closer to the app names.

6. Now you can see if a particular app on your Mac is 64-bit or not. If it’s listed as Yes, it’s 64-bit. If it’s No, it’s a 32-bit app, and you need to upgrade it before using macOS 10.15.
 

Rod


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In some cases the 32bit apps can be updated in other cases not. You will have to check with each developer to see if they have produced a macOS 10.15 or above version.
If you decide to simply delete the apps where there is no later version be sure to use the app's instructions for uninstalling. There may be an Uninstaller provided or available from the developer's web site.
Where the app is relatively small and self contained or where no uninstaller is available you can usually safely just trash it but I advise using an app uninstaller such as AppCleaner free from here; AppCleaner
 
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krs


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All of this information is fine and good, but as I understand it, right now the OP just wants to get rid of the annoying message (per post #1).
A later message states:
I did go through my apps as suggested & found no offenders, other than a file named Install macOS Monterey. Could that be the culprit? Don't want to trash it at this time, because I feel an upgrade is inevitable.
Since the Mac is a 2017 iMac which acording to the information I see on the net will run macOS Ventura, I would get rid of the file "install macOS Monterey"and see if that gets rid of the message.
The upgrade of this iMac later will be to Ventura, not Monterey, but if the OP doesn't want to get rid of Monterey completely, that file can either be copied to a properly formatted USB drive be just moved to the trash without emptying the trash.
Thn,if that doesn't resolve the issue, the file can be moved back from the trash to its original location if wanted.
But one can always get a Monterey installer later, so there is little need to keep this one now.
 
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Thanks for all the replies & helpful info.
Yes my iMac is running as before just with this annoying notice. I did remove the Monterey installer & got the same notice.
I just followed Rod's steps & the vast majority of the apps seem to be 64. I have some listed (Wireless Setting) as in the screen shot that I have no idea of what they are for.
I'd really like to keep Mojave for a while longer before I upgrade, just would like to get rid of the notice.
Thanks again all. Really appreciate your input.
 

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I'd really like to keep Mojave for a while longer before I upgrade, just would like to get rid of the notice.
Did you do what @krs suggested in Post # 11? Move the "Install macOS Monterey" installer to an external drive*, or just move the file to the Trash?

*= then Trash and delete the file.
 

Rod


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garmp, what exactly does this notification say? Do you only see it at startup?
When you say 'startup" do you mean you turn your iMac off every day and "startup" every morning? Or perhaps you mean when it wakes from sleep? Most of us never turn our devices off, especially desktop devices.
If its only when you turn it on, with respect, I would suggest you stop turning it off and ignore it when you do.
Alternatively, the four 32bit files/apps are likely the culprits, you can attempt to root them out but locating them for removal will probably require an app like Find Any File.
Thomas Tempelmann developed this great little free app available from here; Thomas Tempelmann - Find Any File
Able to find and display all files, including "invisible" files and trash them direct from the search results window.
We can see from your screen shot that the files are a couple of years old, two from unknown developers and they would be my first suspects but I think you could safely remove all four.
**When you right click on any item in the FAF window and select trash, note it will stay in the window but it's location will change, to Trash.
Try restarting and see if the notification appears. If not you can play it safe and leave those files in the Trash for a few days and if no problems arise delete them.
 
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Simply having 32-bit apps present wouldn't be causing this or any error message (I do recall a more specific message at one point about 32-bits apps being phased out in future versions, but I don't recall what prompts that message). What we need is a screen cap or photo of the error to see what exactly it says. I did some googling and can't find any reported error messages like this elsewhere. What I DID find was a discussion on Apple's forums where someone did something similar and wound up with an "incompatible disk" message. My guess here is that there is an compatibility issue with APFS.
 

krs


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I did a google search for this issue a few days ago.
The only solution that supposedly worked was to do a full backup, wipe the drive clean, reinstall the Mojave software using a USB installer or recovery mode and then bring the data back from the backup.

Seemed to me like a major exercise to solve an issue which is more of an annoyance, so I didn't bother posting that "solution".
 
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I did a google search for this issue a few days ago.
The only solution that supposedly worked was to do a full backup, wipe the drive clean, reinstall the Mojave software using a USB installer or recovery mode and then bring the data back from the backup.

Seemed to me like a major exercise to solve an issue which is more of an annoyance, so I didn't bother posting that "solution".

Agreed that that would be the only solution. But if I'm right about it being an APFS compatibility issue, I'm not sure that shrugging it off is a good idea. In any event, it's better to get a grasp on what the actual error and problem is rather than chasing our tails trying to come up with an answer if the error message is not exactly what the OP reported it to be.
 

Rod


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I agree, we need to know exactly what this notification says.
 
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Yes I do turn it off most nights. And the notice only appears after start up. Here's the actual notice:
 

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