Q: Boot up after installing El Capitan

After my first difficult upgrade on my 2009 MacBook Pro, in which a PRAM flash fixed it, I've performed successful upgrades on a 2010 MacBook Air, a 2012 iMac, a 2013 MacBook Pro (took 25 minutes with an internal ssd), and a 2009 MacBook. I clocked the last one as taking a little over an hour (despite the on screen timer stating 30 minutes.)

One thing I noticed on all of the upgrades was how the process appeared to stall with the install meter stuck at 80% or so under the grey apple logo. There was no timer underneath. Just a stuck meter. After waiting a long time, despite my inner urges to interrupt the process and proclaim that it was frozen, the screen flashed and the meter continued with a timer popping back up on its own and the install completed.

Just sharing my experiences... all of which have been upgrades and none of which have required the removal of any KEXTs.

Yep, that seems to have done the trick. Removing all the obsolete apps and then cleaning out both the /Library sub-folders as well as the ~/Library folders is a good exercise too, IMO.

Anyone noticed a difference with 10.11.1 ?

No difference, I just posted a new thread, although I'm not sure if my symptom is the same.

After being an Apple user for years, I can assure you that waiting for today's Apple to address all the flaws and fixing issues before upgrading to the new system is a funny but useless idea -- they will NOT fix most of the issues we have, no matter how long you wait. And after a long wait (1Y, 2Y...) you'll only realize that most of the old problems are replaced by new problems in new releases. So you'd either learn to live with it, or don't use it at all.

El Capitan works fine for many that have not installed undefined 3rd party software.. (at least I have not seen a list of software that people have removed that has resolved this issue)  Its not up to Apple to try and make El Capitan compatible with out-dated software..  3rd parties software companies should be updating their software to be compatible,and users need to be willing to upgrade to newer compatible versions if they are not free.. or be willing to give them up if they have not been updated to work, or look for other options.

Apple I believe does try to some level to provide backward compatibility, but there are limits as to how old and how much software Apple or any company will go through to make sure of backward compatibility.  I am pretty sure if people were willing to do a clean install, El Capitan would work fine, but if they re-install an old program that breaks it again, they are back to the drawing board.

I ran into this issue and removing ancient kexts resolved my problem without a clean install. But I would go there if needed to achieve stability and not be stuck on Yosemite or previous generation of OSX..

My issue was process related. I did not check out the collection of apps the user's computer had before commencing Migration Assistant. Short of Apple putting the same kind of filters in place to check for obsolete software using in Upgrades inside Migration Assistant, I figure the assumption is that if the software is really old, don't use it. Funny though; the offending app did not cause offence under Yosemite.

Hi

Is the BOOT PROBLEM solved with 10.11.1 ?

I have that issue since my update to El Capitan (Mac Book Pro 2011), could boot a few times after fiddling with .kext files but most of the time not. Re installed then and didn't shut down Mac for a week, shut down and couldn't boot again. The I re-installed and have now 10.11.1 but I fear shutting down. Does anyone know if these problems solved now? I'd like to restart my Mac now and then...

Hi!

Same problem  (installed El Capitan 10.11.1  but could never boot after shutting down....  did it several times,  clean installs even  and each time the same: all fine till shutdown, then impossible to reboot without installing again.  Tried the kext removal techniques many have suggested to no avail. 

Apple Care (who told me lots of people are having the issue) has an official solution given to me today and is as follows :  if you have a clone of your hard disk or a full time machine backup from before the problem:      boot up from internet recovery (startup with alt command  R   )  erase your drive with disk utility then recover  the OS,  which will be the original OS that came with your mac, not el capitan.  Once you have done that, download and install el capitan over your freshly reinstated old OS.    Not a clean install.    You can then use migration assistant to copy over all the apps, files and settings from your back up  (time machine or clone etc)

The problem seems to be installing el capital over  certain versions of yosemite  in particular  as the installer is not removing some things it should remove.  Installing over your original mac os freshly recovered seems to solve the issue...

HAHA! Yeah, **** Apple! How bout solving the problem by an update... if so many people have that issue it might be BAD SOFTWARE! Things like that make me sick (or thinking about converting to Microsoft after decades of following Mac...) what a load of CRAP they became recently!

But thanks for the help! I'm gonna try that!

Totally agree. 

But at least it worked and I can use my computer again  without having lost any data or settings,  after three days of horrid time waste, waiting and stress....   ARGH   Nightmare.  I could kill them.    But, yes, it worked!

My boot problems started with the 10.11.1 update. My 2011 Mac Mini took the original 10.11 install OK, but when I tried to update to 10.11.1 it froze during restart and on all subsequent attempts to reboot.

I booted into the recovery partition and reinstalled from the last Time Machine backup, but then got the "no go" sign (circle with a diagonal line through it) on every attempt to restart. I also had a Carbon Copy Cloner backup from just before the El Capitan install so I've now used that to go back to Yosemite on my Mac Mini.

On the other hand, my 2013 iMac updated OK and is currently running 10.11.1

The big thing Apple told me was  that  it was important to install el capitan on a very clean version of one of the previous Operating systems.  So  do not do a clean install as just erasing the hard disc is apparently not enough to eradicate whatever the problem is .  FIRST install a fresh copy of a previous system on you freshly formatted drive (the easiest way is to restart from internet recovery , erase your drive and recover whatever your mac's original system was) then then install el capitan on top of that. The reinstallation of your old system on an empty drive apparently zaps all the bad stuff   and then the el capital installer does things right.  Apparently if not , the clearly buggy installer does not remove some things it needs to remove....   A normal installation for most people because they happen not to have those things that need to be remove, whatever they are.  But for some reason we do have thise things so we first have to go backwards to then go forwards if you see what I mean.

Anyway. That is Apple's official solution, and it works.

I hope they now actually release an installer that works for everyone.  It is unbelievable they released this one....   The mind boggles.  

It is really unbelievable that they release such a crap! Maybe it's the punishment for having installed some apps we shouldn't, but still, I have updated without any issues from Tiger days on with a **** lot of 3rd party apps. Always! Update is update. Something that screws everything up is crap. Steve Jobs would be turning in his grave!

Ahh! I did a clean install of El Capitan and then only migrated my data. And still had the problem.

OK I shall try this when I get the chance.

Thanks for posting!