Only windows is available on boot screen

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Level 1

4 points

Only windows is available on boot screen

Hi there. I'm not a terribly experienced mac user (it's my work computer), so forgive me if this is confusing or if I have trouble answering any questions.

About a month ago I installed bootcamp and Windows 10 and everything seemed fine. I'm not even sure if this is the root of my problem. I'm also not sure if this is pertinent info, but I only use Windows for Quickbooks, and I had it set up with Parallels so I didn't have to boot into Windows every time. This was all working just fine, which is why I said I'm not sure if it's the root of the problem.

Yesterday my mac froze completely and then turned off. When I tried to restart it, all I got was a white screen with the little loading bar that is usually there when I start it, but without the logo. That bar took FOREVER to fill and then just stopped. It sat like that for probably about 45 minutes and then I restarted it with the power button. When I restarted it, I got the bar again and the same thing happened so I again restarted it. Then all I was getting is a white screen that would show up for I wanna say 5 - 10 minutes, until Windows would try to boot. This took me to the install screen for Windows, which should already be installed. That was a bit worrying. I called it a day and left it.

This morning I read a helpful article that said to unplug all peripherals. I had my keyboard, an ethernet cable, and the original flash drive that I used to install Windows all plugged in. I removed the flash drive and the ethernet cable and tried again. This time I got a black screen that said that a disk read error had occurred and to hold control + option + del to restart, but this did nothing. I tried it twice (restarting and pressing the required keys) and still nothing. Throughout this whole 2 day process I had intermittently tried holding the option key on start up to get the boot options, but it didn't work. I tried it again at this point and now I'm getting the boot options, but the only thing that's there is Windows - have I lost everything? I don't know where to go from here...

Thanks in advance for any help!

P.S. the mac is from before I worked with the company. I believe it's from 2012, which I realize is probably pretty **** old.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 16, 2021 10:42 AM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Oct 18, 2021 1:24 PM in response to Pepromene

Before you spend any money, it is worth looking at correcting this without replacing the disk. If this is a 2012 iMac with standard configuration then you seem to have a 1TB 7200 rpm drive. These can fail. Let us try and fix it, so that you can at least create a backup. When was the last backup of this Mac?

Samsung-Inch-SATA-Internal-MZ-76P1T0BW is about USD 199 (+ tax).

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Answer 2

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Oct 18, 2021 3:30 AM in response to Pepromene

Time Machine requires the Mac (as a backup source) to be configured to use a backup destination (Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support).

If you have macOS Catalina, the Recovery OS is failing back to the original version of macOS that shipped with your Mac, not the Recovery OS on your internal disk. Click on Utilities -> Terminal, and post the output (screenshot) of

diskutil list internal

If the 'internal' keyword is not recognized, run

diskutil list

You can safely ignore all disk images that are mounted which are part of the Recovery OS.

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Oct 17, 2021 1:14 PM in response to Pepromene

Let us see what you see in Recovery, before we go further.

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Answer 4

Pepromene Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 17, 2021 10:21 AM in response to Loner T

Thank you for the help!

I'm going through your suggestions and have now tried resetting the SMC and NVRAM and neither fixed the problem, unfortunately. I am now going through the steps in Recovery and it doesn't look like I've got any backups available (it still says it's searching, so I'll wait). But if it turns out that there are none, is the next step to reinstall MacOS? And does that mean that everything on my computer is gone?

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Answer 5

Pepromene Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 17, 2021 2:09 PM in response to Loner T

For sure. It starts with the spinning globe mentioned in your link, I select the network and log in, and then I get the attached image.

When I let I went through this process earlier today I let it sit in the "looking for backups" screen and it eventually just turned itself off.

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Answer 6

Pepromene Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 17, 2021 5:44 PM in response to Loner T

I did regular updates so it's definitely more recent than that. Likely Catalina.

I also swear that Time Machine was running on the computer, but like I said, I don't have a huge amount of experience with Macs so I could be wrong.

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Oct 17, 2021 5:38 PM in response to Pepromene

If you do not have a Time Machine backup set up, then you cannot restore. The recovery OS you show is Mountain Lion. Is that the current macOS version on your internal disk?

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Answer 8

Pepromene Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 18, 2021 8:29 AM in response to Loner T

Here you go:

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Answer 9

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Oct 17, 2021 5:34 AM in response to Pepromene

Since you are unable to see macOS, can you

Reset SMC - How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support
Reset NVRAM - Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Support
Neither of these procedures touch your disk. They will force the Mac to rebuild its internal hardware and the contents of NVRAM will be cleared. The NVRAM content will be rebuilt as the Mac boots.
Reboot and hold Alt/Option and check available selections. If you still do not see macOS, you will need to boot into About macOS Recovery on Intel-based Mac computers - Apple Support.
If your Mac has a firmware password set up, and you do not know it, then you may need to contact the IT group that supports your Mac.
Do you recall the current macOS version of your Mac?
Assuming that you have a MacBook Pro, take a look at Identify your MacBook Pro model - Apple Support, and post the Model Identifier. Do not post the serial number of your Mac?

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Answer 10

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Oct 18, 2021 11:34 AM in response to Pepromene

Do you have an external disk which is 64GB or larger? If yes, install macOS (any available version) on an external disk and upgrade to macOS Catalina. Boot from this internal disk, and we can then repair the internal disk.

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Answer 11

Pepromene Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 18, 2021 12:59 PM in response to Loner T

I was asked to take the computer into a shop this morning to have it looked at and they ran a test that confirmed the drive had failed. The tech said that the results of whatever test they ran indicated that it had failed pretty significantly... If I install macOS on an external hard drive, is this still fixable? The price the shop gave us for repair (drive replacement with a 3rd party drive) or data recovery was too high to be worth it.

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Only windows is available on boot screen

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