Catalina installation stuck

I'm having the same issue, I have been staring at a "setting up your mac' screen for close to 24 hours now. I tried shutting down and opening, no luck.

not looking to get scolded either, should I be posting this in a different thread?

iMac 27in

I pressed the power button, and immediately the 'estimating time' label changed to something like

• this mac will reboot when the installation is finished

then

• 9 minutes remaining

then

• 18 mins..

then

• back to the 'estimating time remaining'

It does at least show me that something is still working, and the process is responsive. It may be that some subprocess is completely stuck though. The 18mins was completely wrong!

Thanks for posting this. I’m fed up after more than an hour of ‘Estimating time remaining’ However, if you said it took three hours, I’ll be more patient – but I had work to do tonight.

Apple really ought to make it look like installs are progressing or they will get a lot of people thinking they have hung machines. This is really very poor.

Waited 20 hours while the installation seemed to be stuck at the startup with the black background with the progress bar only and a indicating about 90% complete.

i forced reboot and got the Catalina background with my account icon and name, along with the same progress bar stuck at 90%. It has been going on for 14 hours now and no changes on the progress bar.

RIP Steve... you are missed!

Same problem here. The bar isn't moving a bit for over an hour. What has happened to the quality of Apple? Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave. Who would've thought that putting a soulless accountant in charge of Apple would lead to problems?!?

I don’t actually see the answer to the question anywhere on this whine fest. My mac pro lacked memory for the install, and gave me only one option to get out of the frozen state (clicking ‘Restart’). When I do it stupidly attempts to install Catalina again. I want out. **** the update, I’m a busy person. What do I do? Escape doesn’t work. CNTRL FUC DELETE doesn’t work nor any other obvious combo. Please advise.

Thanks. Wouldn’t it have been a simple thing to insert a sniff for disc capacity in the update script? What a lot of trouble that we little people didn’t need to bear. Ugh. Thanks to Miner2008 -that worked.

When I first went to download Catalina the download itself seemed to stall once it finished. I tried restarting the download multiple times and it stayed stuck at 8.09GB of 8.09GB. I restarted my computer and it said it installed. Then when I logged on it said I needed to update my OS to Catalina, which I thought I had just done. I downloaded it again and my computer restarted and then I sat there for 50 minutes without it budging a single centimeter.

Contacted support. We tried to boot my Mac every which way possible to no avail for 4 hours. They suggested I go to a store and made me an appointment. Then I saw this thread. That was an hour and a half ago. It’s not 8am and this is the first time I’ve seen my log in screen since 2:30.

This update does indeed seem to be ridiculously long.

Bless your patience. 49 hours. Honestly the most frustrating part was that the progress bar didn’t move to indicate that it was doing anything. It would say ‘40 minutes’ then ‘estimating time remaining...’ then ‘17 minutes’ then ‘32’ and so on and so on all night throughout every boot up and Apple Support was convinced it was a hard drive issue with my Mac which was working perfectly right before I installed the update. My 6 hours seem a mere pittance compared to your 49 hours. You deserve a medal for patience.

It's been well over 24 hours and NO progress. I have been stuck with progress bar filled to approx. 98%. After being stuck at this spot for 14 hrs, I tried a reboot into safe mode. Still the same thing... Just a blank screen with a progress bar filled to approximately 98% capacity. It's not an internet issue. It has been plugged in and on our broadband network. I'm at a loss. The next step is taking it in to a genius bar if no one has any suggestions.

I started the installation on Tuesday evening at around 6:00pm. It’s still on the Apple logo installation screen with white bar at around 90% now (which it has been since 9:00pm on Tuesday). It’s just a ridiculous amount of time.

I started installing on Jan 4 early afternoon. It’s now Jan 10 and I’m still stuck at the exact same spot I was on the morning of the 5th. I’m now contacting Apple support to talk to a technician. I’m thinking 6 days is a bit excessive.

so I spoke to the technician. Evidently they are just as much at a loss as we are. The response I got was “give it a bit longer and if the issue doesn’t resolve on its own you can schedule an appt” I asked her how much longer is a ‘bit’ longer, given the fact that it’s been 6 days already and my internet connection is strong and my Mac isn’t old. She said that’s entirely up to me but then hinted that I should just go ahead and schedule or the appt

Mine is running on 3 hours now

It say's 25 minutes remaining, half an hour ago it was 26 minutes remaining, but at least it's not the "calculating time" progress bar, anymore.

Meanwhile AAPL at an all time high

Hey i m stuck after installing catalina. Now i m unable to proceed to my homepage. on switching on my macbook pro , just page for password entry appears nd than processing signs appear for few minutes nd than shutdown itself. What shall i do?

Same issue