iMac late 2015 keeps restarting

Hello community, I hope someone here can help me out because I don’t know what else to try.

Last week I put off my iMac and after an hour I put it on again, and the OS couldn’t load, I was getting a black screen with symbol circle with line through it, like this one:


So I went to that website and followed all the steps:

First I went to recovery mode and check with disk utility all the disk, everything was good.

Secondly, I have erased my main disk and installed again the last OS supported by my iMac late 2015, that is Monterey.

The installation was going fine, until it gets in to the black screen with an apple logo an a progress bar, after 18mins left it will restart and do this in a loop for ever (I left the computer on all night and the next day was in the same screen).

So I called Apple support and they advice me to install OS El Capitan, and luckily that worked! The problem is that I can’t use the computer with El Capitan because no app is supported with this OS.

I tried again to update to OS Monterey but the same problem I have mentioned before was happening, no progress after minute 18.

I was able to install OS Catalina but now my computer is restarting every 20-30 minutes… (It restarted already twice while typing this)


After restarting I get this pop-up:

The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer

I have nothing connected to my computer (Only my keyboard and Bluetooth mouse), and my hard disk was erased, so I don’t have any software installed.


I have also checked on Apple Diagnostics and it was all fine...


Can someone help me out why my computer is acting so strange?


Thank you

iMac 27″

Posted on Aug 7, 2024 8:38 AM

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Posted on Aug 7, 2024 9:33 AM

The computer is suffering from Kernel Panics which can be hardware or software. On a 10+ year old computer my bet is on either a failing HD or failing RAM. My recommendation is to download DriveDX and run a report on the HD portion of your Fusion Drive. NOT the Fusion Drive and NOT the SSD only the HD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If any errors appear than means my hunch is correct and the HD is failing. On such an old machine I would replace it however if you don't want to do that then I would take the HD out of the equation and install an external SSD and use that as your startup drive. Instructions for this are in How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk and the external SSD I would recommend is the OWC Envoy Pro SX.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 7, 2024 9:33 AM in response to nicobiglie

The computer is suffering from Kernel Panics which can be hardware or software. On a 10+ year old computer my bet is on either a failing HD or failing RAM. My recommendation is to download DriveDX and run a report on the HD portion of your Fusion Drive. NOT the Fusion Drive and NOT the SSD only the HD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If any errors appear than means my hunch is correct and the HD is failing. On such an old machine I would replace it however if you don't want to do that then I would take the HD out of the equation and install an external SSD and use that as your startup drive. Instructions for this are in How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk and the external SSD I would recommend is the OWC Envoy Pro SX.

Aug 7, 2024 8:47 AM in response to nicobiglie

Start with this if...


Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes or more.


Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.


I think maybe the Disk is formatted wrong, if we can get a screenshot...

Aug 7, 2024 1:00 PM in response to nicobiglie

You did NOT run the DriveDX correctly. You ran it on the SSD, I specifically indicated to run it on the HD ONLY, I will repeat that. Run Drive DX on the Internal Hard Disk ONLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If you look at the your report closely you will see that it clearly shows you ran it on the SSD only and did not touch the internal HD at all!


If you do not know how to run DriveDX on only the internal HD then please take your computer to your local third party Apple Authorized Service Provider and they will do this for you.

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iMac late 2015 keeps restarting

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