Stuck on white screen with cursor ...or apple logo.

Your post actually helped me. I was stuck on the white screen after 3 restarts with no success. I typed in my admin password and then things happened. It seems like a window was supposed to appear to enter the password and the computer was waiting for it to continue but that was not visible to me (or many others). If you are stuck on the white screen with the cursor, I recommend typing in your admin password to see if that works

Most frustrating ... the white screen of death ... For reasons unknown to myself I managed to finish the installation by:

restarting the computer whilst holding down option, command, "p," "r"

that is to say that i reset the "pram"

why this worked, anybody's guess

now receiving App Store's own version of the spinning ball of death while trying to update the rest

Prior experience has taught me to avoid being an early adopter of a new operating system ... best to wait a week or three ... should have done so this time

good luck with the "fix" ... hope it works for others

HI again

My Mac Pro is a 2013 model.

i Just used the tip where you turn off the Mac, turn it on and press (hold) the option key after the chime to create the reboot screen. I put in the network password and clicked the Mac icon. It showed the apple icon and 40% for 10 more mins............then started and is now working!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 hours later.

I love the new font/layout and new features.

Hope very one gets sorted soon and thanks for the tip.

Steve

MId 2011 Mac here and also received the "white screen of death" several times. Finally gave up and returned to Mavericks. Thank goodness for external hard drive. NOT a happy camper right now, Apple .

hi,

i had the same Problem minutes ago. I solved it by klicking the middle of the screen where usually the login picture appears. I then typed in my password and pressed enter. Maybe it was just the "klicking around in the Middle of the screen", wich helped. Anyway, it worked! and im now able to finish my installation.

hope that workes for you,

Michael

II think Judi is on to something. Mcafee Internet security might be the issue. I could not get past white Apple logo. System would hang for hours at the half way mark. I could not restore to Mavericks. I could not access my back ups on my time capsule. Nothing, I was stuck.

what finally worked was starting in safe mode which seemed to let the install complete. Access safe mode by turning on computer and then hitting the shift key as soon as you hear the chime and hold the shift key down until you see the Apple and then release.

My install finally completed. It was slow and I had graphics issues. Flickering and missing text. But I was able to find Applications folder and I ran the McAfee uninstall application. Then I rebooted normally and the system is working fine.

Hope this helps.

Switch off and reboot into Safe mode (Hold shift key straight after the chime). It can take sometime to load but if it does then go to system preferences and look at the login items and remove them or at least the ones that you think might require updating. Restart normally and see if it loads.

IIf you are stuck on the white screen try this. Click around the center of the screen where the login icon would normally be. Then move around until you get the cursor icon. Click there and enter your password. T

This worked for me. On boot up progress bar runs then finishes. White screen appears and only the cursor is present. Clicked the middle lower portion of the screen a few times, entered my password and hit enter (I just typed the phrase, the screen was completely blank). The installation is now completing. Weird! Regardless thank you! I'm stoked.

Hi Everyone- some of you have worked it out already- but yesterday several of us were going back and forth on another thread, and I eventually contacted apple. I'm just going to copy and paste what finally worked for all of us. Use it, don't use it, share it- up to you.

If you've made it to the status bar with the black screen and the Apple Logo (after going through the white installation page) then Yosemite has installed- its just having problems opening. Why you ask? Because of something on start-up or a third-party program. So how do you go about fixing this? Follow the steps below:

1). Hit the power button to turn your computer off

2). Hit the power button on again - hit shift right away and hold it for approx 5 seconds and let go (this will take you into Safe Mode). It may take you about 5-7 minutes to load into safe mode, this is normal

3) Under System Preferences- on the bottom menu if you have a Citrix file sharing thing on the bottom remove it. (You don't need to remove Citrix the program just the application in the system preferences)

4) Check on the third-party non-Apple programs that you have. Check to see if they are up to date. Depends on the program how you do this.

5) If you have McAfee or another antivirus remove it (I know this sounds bad- but trust me its causing loads of people not to be able to launch Yosemite).

6). When in safe mode there is a variety of things that you need to do to make sure that Yosemite will boot. First you need to go into System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items. If there is anything at all in this list what you need to do is highlight it and click the minus sign below the list. Have nothing launch at Startup. There are also some files hidden away that have to do with start-up as well. When you click on the finder menu bar choose go... then choose computer. From there there are a couple of files you need to look at. Click on your hard drive... then on library the look to see if the "startupitems" folder is empty- if you've removed everything from start-up it should be empty and this is what you want. Then look at "LaunchDaemons" file under library- there can be things in here, but if you've removed the program then make sure the startup files are deleted here as well. Then check the "LaunchAgent" file- same thing as the Daemons file needs to be done. Then go through Go -> Computer -> Your Harddrive -> System -> Library and the same 3 files as before need the same thing done to them. Important- don't remove anything from LaunchDaemons or LaunchAgent that you actually have and use.

Like I said earlier if you are on the black screen with the apple and the bar without the countdown than Yosemite is installed. You'll notice when you're in Safe Mode that its actually Yosemite. Your problem is almost guaranteed to be a program causing it not to launch so after you've tried the above if it doesn't work you're going to have to try to figure out which program is causing the problem. From my experience the programs I know are ok are: Microsoft Office, Steam, Kindle, Spotify, Google, Keka, Firefox, Flixster, Microsoft Silverlight, Textwrangler, Citrix, Origin, Twitter, Dropbox (though don't have it on startup in any of the files), Skype, and Fotor.

After you've gone through everything above then either click start -> restart or start -> shutdown (if you pick shutdown you'll have to obviously turn your computer back on). After that it should go into Yosemite finally (if it doesn't- repeat and look for the problem program)

If you have McAfee Internet Security for Mac on your machine, this could is the culprit. I had to re-boot in Safe Mode, uninstall McAfee and then continue the Yosemite installation. This worked a treat.

Just out of interest, I tried to re-install McAfee and IT WOULDN'T INSTALL. There is obviously a conflict here. It will be interesting to see if OS 10.10 doesn't allow non-Apple approved programs to be installed.

See post from FROG786 for full details.

I had installation problems too. The install hung with the Apple logo on the screen, and the progress bar at approximately 33%.

I saw another post about booting into Safe Mode. I tried it was successful.

After logging on in Safe Mode, a message indicated that the installation was continuing.

It completed and and I am now able to logon normally.

Same issue..... I tried to get to the safe screen - success. Click preferences - can't click anything. Should have learned from the botched iOS8 launch. What was I thinking? Calling Apple - extended wait. Hmmmmmm..... Wonder why?. I guess Apple answered the question as to what would happen after Steve was gone. Missing you, Steve. Guess it's time to migrate everything back to my PC....

I've just had problems with the Yosemite install as it sat with the Apple logo and progress bar at about 33% for about 20 hours. Inspired by this thread i was prompted to do a restart using the power button. All loaded straightaway within about 2-3 minutes. This fault appears to be causing many people a lot of heartache to resolve because of its randomness but maintaining the same symptom.