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3 Crashed Macs within hours - Won't boot - Shuts down after logo

2 iMacs (running Yosemite and El Cap) and a MacBook Pro (Yosemite) do not boot.


I am recovering from a brain injury, so my mind is completely over taxed right now.


Backups (of the boot drive), don't remember. Maybe, but no clue as to where, if they exist. The majority of my other data is backed up across a ton of mirrored hard drives.


Each system had been running for a extended amount of time. I was using one (iMac 27" 5k) when it felt unstable, so I restarted it. It locked up on restart so I held the button. It started to reboot, gets to the apple logo, the bar that runs across makes it about 1/3 to 1/2 then it goes dead. Hit the button on the back, and the cycle repeats.


It will not boot into safe or recovery mode. It has a fusion drive that I had a similar problem with that came unstable a couple years ago.


I put it into target mode and brought it up as a hard drive on my MacBookPro. Ran disk utilities, but it showed everything was OK. All files are accessible.


Afterward I tried rebooting my laptop, and it now does the same thing, except I can boot it into recovery mode. And If I can figure out where and how I have done a backup of it in the last year, I will try a restore, but the backup probably was a Carbon Copy Clone on an extra drive somewhere.


Now I'm freaking out. I go to my third iMac (old 27 running Yosemite), on the same network. I see the Sophos AV shield has an X and a pop up says autoupdate can't reach server. I run a system scan. I realize I can check email, but my browsers cannot connect to the internet. I start to try and troubleshoot but my username and password no longer give me admin access. The users control panel now says I have a standard account and there is no admin account listed. The Sophos scan continued to run at about 85% done, the last I saw. The system eventually went to sleep and wouldn't wake a up. An attempt to boot the system saw the same problem. It won't boot past the logo, stops at about 1/3 of the status line.


All 3 systems were running Sophos AV autoupdated within 24 hours. I have a 4th MacBook (running Sierra ) that I just pulled out, scanned with Avast, no sophos, and I used it to scan the target disk of the 27" 5K with no problems reported. Disk Utilities hasn't found any issues.


I don't know if this is a virus, and attack, or an autoupdate gone wrong. Any thoughts on where to go from here?


I'm pulling files I may need off the iMac27" 5K to an external from the running laptop. Once I know these files are copied, I'll do the same with the other systems, then get a little more aggressive with them.


Any thoughts?



iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Sep 25, 2019 6:00 AM

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Posted on Sep 25, 2019 5:42 PM

If you have Google Chrome installed, and are either running a version prior to OS X 10.11 and the advent of System Integrity Protection, or are running OS X 10.11 or later and with System Integrity Protection disabled, then Google may have just caused you a problem...

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/google-keystone-update-breaks-macs-ability-to-boot-if-system-integrity-protection-is-disabled/

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 25, 2019 5:42 PM in response to RTNDK

If you have Google Chrome installed, and are either running a version prior to OS X 10.11 and the advent of System Integrity Protection, or are running OS X 10.11 or later and with System Integrity Protection disabled, then Google may have just caused you a problem...

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/google-keystone-update-breaks-macs-ability-to-boot-if-system-integrity-protection-is-disabled/

Sep 25, 2019 6:40 PM in response to MrHoffman

I am not running Chrome, BUT, I did see that the Google Keystone files had been modified just before the system crashed., along with an update from Adobe and Sophos. SinceI found no evidence of a virus, I was pretty sure it was a bad update that took out all three. I even googled the keystone file to see what it was, but didn't find that article.


I got all three systems into recovery mode, and then just reinstalled the OS. It cost me a day of wasted time, and I have a really bad headache from the stress, but otherwise I up and running again.

Sep 25, 2019 8:59 PM in response to RTNDK

You would do yourself a favour by uninstalling Sophos, Macs do not need Anti-Virus software there are no viruses that attack the Mac. Anti-virus apps just use up resources and can quarantine and delete files necessary for your Mac to function correctly this also goes for apps that claim to clean and optimise your Mac. Please consult the developer of such apps as how to uninstall them thoroughly.

3 Crashed Macs within hours - Won't boot - Shuts down after logo

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