iMac keeps freezing, including while booting up in safe mode - can't set verbose safe from terminal. Please help!

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Level 1

13 points

iMac keeps freezing, including while booting up in safe mode - can't set verbose safe from terminal. Please help!

My iMac suddenly got sluggish, then completely froze.

Opt + CMD + Esc wouldn't even open the force quiz interface.

Hard restarted (holding power button). Did not re-open previously open apps. Tried to run "First Aid" in Disk Utility, but the iMac freezes as soon as I launch First Aid.

Tried booting up in safe mode. Loading page is very slow, but eventually gets to the end, and then hangs. Hard rebooted twice from here, and same issue every time.

Tried switching to Verbose + Safe using

sudo nvram boot-args="-v -x"

from Terminal, but it tells me the arguments are permitted.

Tried searching for updated Terminal commands for booting in safe + verbose, but found nothing.

At the moment, I cannot do anything with my desktop -- it freezes as soon as I try to do anything at all. Naturally, I am in the middle of a deadline :) Any help would be greatly appreciated!

All the best,

Rax A.

iMac 27", macOS 10.14

Posted on Oct 28, 2019 2:26 PM

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Answer 1

Rax Adam Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 20, 2019 9:50 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thank you for weighing in: helped me decide where to invest my time / energy :)

In case anyone else is having similar issues:

I rebooted in safe mode and ran Disk Utility from there. It repaired a bunch of issues (took ~4h). When I rebooted in normal mode and tried disk utility, it still hung, but basic functionality seemed to be restored.

A few weeks have passed and the computer is getting very slow again, so I imagine there's a bigger issue, though I'm not sure what it is. As soon as I'm done with my current rush period, I plan on wiping the drive, reformatting & doing a fresh install, from scratch: just need to plan the 2-3 days it'll take to reinstall everything :\

If anyone has advice / tips about how to record useful information before doing a complete clean install, please do share: not looking forward to having to reset all preferences, folders, files, not to mention re-installing software etc. but don't want the system to crash on me during a major work rush (!).

Cheers,

RA

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,596 points

Nov 20, 2019 9:30 PM in response to Rax Adam

Check the health of the drive(s) using DriveDX. Feel free to post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

Make sure to have good verified working backups. Now is the time to do it if you are not already backing up.

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

144,108 points

Oct 28, 2019 2:33 PM in response to Rax Adam

Rax A.

Sounds like you are experiencing a hardware failure. The next thing to do is to take your iMac to your local Apple Authorized Service Provider to be professionally diagnosed and repaired.

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iMac keeps freezing, including while booting up in safe mode - can't set verbose safe from terminal. Please help!

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