Has anyone else had a problem installing Catalina (not the beta)? It took nearly two hours (so far) on the “Setting Up Your Mac” screen. I see a spinning icon next to “setting up...” but there doesn’t seem to be any progress. Should this take hours? Any suggestions on what to do if it doesn’t finish after an over-night (8 hours)?
I was on the phone with Apple Support and they helped me get it to work. Here's how:
1) Restart Mac (since we're in "Setting Up" mode, Catalina was installed so there was no worry about restarting during installation)
2) Zap P-RAM (he had me reboot a few times with some special instructions to zap the PRAM and a one other setting
3) Disconnect external devices (I had a few items on my USB-C chain)
After rebooting again, it worked and didn't take much time!
Good luck!!
I was on the phone with Apple Support and they helped me get it to work. Here's how:
1) Restart Mac (since we're in "Setting Up" mode, Catalina was installed so there was no worry about restarting during installation)
2) Zap P-RAM (he had me reboot a few times with some special instructions to zap the PRAM and a one other setting
3) Disconnect external devices (I had a few items on my USB-C chain)
After rebooting again, it worked and didn't take much time!
Good luck!!
Same here. I was stuck on "Setting Up Your Mac" for 10 hours, and let it go overnight, not wanting to mess up anything. Checked for solutions this am, and it was as simple as holding the power button until it shut down, booting up, and all was fine. It just... WORKS!
The previous answer did it for me! I simply pressed and held the power button to force a shut down and then unplugged all ancillary USB's from my mac and restarted. Everything started up perfect with Catalina loaded with greetings and tour offers. Well done that man/woman!
This worked, my MacBook Air 2018 is finally installing Catalina after hours of idling.
Instructions to reset PRAM are here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
Stupidly, I did after my post appeared. Thanks. Problem solved by restarting.
I have been sitting for over two hours watching the “set up” screeen. Reboot and I have my MacBook Pro back. Thanks for the tip.
Hold the power button until it shuts down. Restart it and you should be fine.
It took 6.5 hours for me to load Catalina. 4 hours waiting for it to finish copying my files to Archive. In the end no files were copied and I lost every document on my MacBook. Fortunately, had back ups. Not impressed with Catalina. Confusing instructions and so far can't see any improvement on Mojave or Sierra. I have spent all day trying to reload all my data.
Wish I hadn't loaded it!
Same problem here. One iMac worked quite quickly (32gb memory) Other one (8gb) is taking hours and hours. I presume the memory is the problem. Although a Mac book with 8gb worked relatively quickly.
I tried the solutions that you proposed, restarting and resetting the PRAM, yet I’m still getting the same screen telling me that I have “About 9 minutes remaining…”
I’ve had nine minutes remaining for the last several hours now still trying theses solutions!!
9 hours overall since I started the installation.
Any other suggestions?
Hi, same here. After almost 4 hours of black screen, it is now stuck on the „setting up“ screen for an hour. Should I force a restart?
What were the special instructions? I’ve been on the “Setting Up Your Mac” screen for 4 hours...
Thank you for posting this. I let it churn on the set up screen for 6 hours before investigating lol This worked immediately for me!
Worked!! Thanks heaps,
H
Please refer to previous response!
catalina install takes forever
