iMac 27" Slow Booting & Never Goes to Main Screen

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iMac 27" Slow Booting & Never Goes to Main Screen

I have a late 2013 iMac 27" (A1419) that is refusing to boot back up. When pressing the power button it takes 30 seconds or more to even sound the boot chime. A couple of minutes later the Apple logo appears, and minutes after that the progress bar finally shows on screen. After a very, very long while it will get to the end of the progress bar but just stalls there and never goes to the main menu.

I've checked the RAM and that appears not to be the issue. The boot process is so slow that I had to connect a wired keyboard and mouse, however, I've still not been able to get it to boot into Safe Mode nor into Internet Recovery Mode.

At this point my best guess is something has gone wrong in the Boot ROM, but that seems like quite a rare event to have happened. Does anyone have a better guess or solution? Thanks!

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jul 4, 2020 9:34 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,017 points

Jul 4, 2020 10:11 AM in response to Stormrider67

It sounds like the drive is failing. Do you have an external drive from which you can boot the computer? It is possible the drive has just gotten corrupted but the only fix is to erase the drive. This will also provide the opportunity to find out if the drive is failing or salvageable.

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Answer 2

Stormrider67 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 6, 2020 9:55 PM in response to BDAqua

Ran EtreCheck and it did say that it thought the hard drive was failing. Now debating whether to see as is, or replace the hard drive myself and then sell it. While I like the large screen it is getting long on the years for what we’d be using it for in the future.

Thanks for the pointers!

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Answer 3

Stormrider67 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 5, 2020 3:09 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks. I've dealt with hard drive failures over the years, as well as RAM modules going bad. This feels different though. Unless I'm wrong, the long, long delay until the startup chime should not be happening due to a simple HD failure.

I was able to finally get it to go into Recovery Mode. Erased the HD and had it download and install Mavericks OS X. It took nearly 8 hours to complete the process. It seems to be functioning since then, albeit at a glacial pace.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 7, 2020 8:48 AM in response to Stormrider67

Failing hard drive - This machine has a hard drive that appears to be failing.

It isn't always failing when you see that message, could be etrecheck thinks something is wrong with it just due to so little free RAM & so much swapping going on, slowing the already slow drive like crazy.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 5, 2020 3:30 PM in response to Stormrider67

You can save us asking dozens of questions by submitting a report from this App for us to look at…

EtreCheck is a simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

https://pastebin.com/

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 6

Stormrider67 Author

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5 points

Jul 7, 2020 9:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Maybe, but the iMac is already is maxed out on 16 GB RAM. Plus the computer takes 35 minutes to boot to the desktop even after reformatting the drive and doing a fresh install of a Mavericks (which took 8 hours to install). Something is wrong hardware wise. That is for certain.

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iMac 27" Slow Booting & Never Goes to Main Screen

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