iMac Freezes right at a tenth of booting up on the loading bar

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iMac Freezes right at a tenth of booting up on the loading bar

Every time I boot up my iMac it shows the apple logo for a few seconds, then it shows the loading bar at approximately 1 tenth of the way up. It never shows it loading to that point, and it never shows it going past that point. Now, this gets even worse/or better when this happens on every disk I boot up from. It happens on recovery and my os install drive. This seems like I should reset my pram, but whenever I hold option+cmd+p+r, it boots into internet recovery, almost like the p never existed. This is a wireless keyboard, as I do not have any wired mac keyboards (but plenty of windows) maybe somebody can tell me the keybinds of a windows keyboard on mac recovery. The iMac is a mid 2011. Maybe the firmware is buggy?

More details: This mac was on el capitan when I recieved it. I wiped the drive in recovery and attempted to install el capitan but it said resource temporarily unavailable. Then I made a bootable install drive and installed el capitan that way. Then I updated it to High Sierra. All was well until I clicked restart to update. When I checked on it in the morning, the boot screen showed a tenth of the way, like I described above.

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 17, 2019 7:03 AM

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Answer 1

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randomodbuild Author

Level 1

17 points

Jun 17, 2019 12:16 PM in response to rkaufmann87

As this is not my primary computer, I took a (maybe) sketchy approach to fix it. First I recalled a problem similar to this on a macbook pro and all it needed to boot up after an update was a pram reset. So I plugged in my windows keyboard and held windows key+alt+p+r while starting up. It did what it should, make the bong noise, restart, and do it again. Then, I played around and got it to boot into recovery by holding option (alt on a windows keyboard) and selecting recovery. I ran first aid on all the drives, no problems found. Then, I selected re install mac os and let it do its thing. It booted up and all my data was fine. So far it is still working, but I will update this if I am incorrect. So if you are having a problem like this, know the following:

-If the loading bar gets stuck after updating, reset the pram

-If you cannot reset the pram with a wireless keyboard, try using a windows keyboard and substitute cmd for windows key, and option for alt key (or just use a wired mac keyboard).

-The actual drive may be fine, so first try to reinstall mac os before wiping it completely, to save your data.

-And finally, take this advice with a grain of salt, it may only be a temporary fix while you backup your data (which you should already be doing).

Cheers!

randomodbuild

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

143,392 points

Jun 17, 2019 8:33 AM in response to randomodbuild

You basically have a mess on your hands. Take the computer to an independent AASP and see if they can fix it for you.

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iMac Freezes right at a tenth of booting up on the loading bar

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