Installing Yosemite is stuck for hours at halfway point

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Level 1

6 points

Installing Yosemite is stuck for hours at halfway point

I tried to install Yosemite on my iMac 27" (circa 2010) over Mavericks -- it appeared to download, install and reboot but was still at 10.9.5.

I looked and found "Installer OS X Yosemite" (5.17 GB) in my Applications folder, so double-clicked on that and started the install. After awhile the progress bar stuck at the halfway point, as shown in the photo below, and has been there for about 4 hours. I stuck a post-it note to the screen at the point of progress to mark where it was, and it has not progressed even a pixel.

I can hear the disk drive working away. I did not put any files in ~/usr/local nor installed any programs there as some have reported. I do no software development on this computer.

I have several questions:

I have a fresh Time Capsule / Time Machine backup, although I'm unsure if it contains a copy of OS X. Is the OS normally also backed up?

I've read through several forums, and most say to use Command + L to check progress. Command + L does nothing (as does Command + Shift + L). Does this mean that the process is frozen and I should go ahead and reboot? I'm in no rush, and am happy to let it run overnight.

Forums also say that the installation shows the percent progress (often pausing for hours with 4 min. left) but you can see from the photo that in my case the progress is only a bar without the number of hours/minutes left. Does that mean anything?

If I do hold down the power button to reboot, and if the OS is corrupted, I assume it will fail to boot up, so is there a key I would press at startup to go into "safe mode" where I could re-install Mavericks? How would I re-install Mavericks? (I've read somewhere that the OS contains a hidden boot copy of the OS.) Or how would I restore from Time Capsule?

Thanks for any help.

-Doug

(keywords: frozen, froze, paused, stopped, wait, midway, 50%)

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 16GB RAM

Posted on Oct 18, 2014 3:43 PM

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Answer 1

dougkramer Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 19, 2014 9:48 AM in response to dougkramer

SOLUTION: After 6 hours, I restarted by holding in the power button — it started up in OS X 10.10 Yosemite just fine. So the bug was that the progress bar was stuck for no reason at the halfway point.

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Answer 2

Feb 1, 2015 8:31 PM in response to dougkramer

I'm currently experiencing the same problem with my Macbook Pro Retina (mid 2014). It's running on Yosemite 10.10.1 and last night i tried updating it to 10.10.2. The download and everything went smoothly until the installation. The apple logo popped up, the load bar only goes to halfway. Thinking that maybe it needed some time, i actually left it overnight. For more than 9 hrs. Woke up and still the same thing.

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Answer 3

Feb 5, 2015 7:34 AM in response to dougkramer

The exact same thing happened to me. After about 2 hours I figured something was wrong. But after reading a few more posts I let it sit overnight. Next morning, the same screen. I ended up leaving it just in case, was stranded in another city overnight due to weather, came back and realized the power had gone off while I was gone. Hurried over to the computer and it had shut down. Worried, I rebooted to glorious Yosemite working as expected!

So, I do believe that it's just a bug getting stuck in the reboot after yosemite installs there and after a reasonable amount of time you might be able to restart and it will have correctly installed.

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Answer 4

cragusky

Level 1

4 points

Jun 30, 2015 8:24 PM in response to dougkramer

Similar issue here. Upgrading from Mavricks to Yosemite on an iMac 27" Mid 2011. The install "froze" at about 50% on the progress bar (same as image in original post). I let it sit all day, overnight, and all the next day. 32 hours total. After reading several posts about letting it finish on its own, and several more about powering down then restarting, I read this post last and decided to give it a try. Held the power button to power down, let it sit for a minute, then powered back on. Started right up, went through a few blank screens, then hello Yosemite. Restarted again for good measure. All seems to be accounted for and working well. All of my open applications from before the install were even still open. Not suggesting this is the correct option for anyone else. Just FYI on my experience with the "stuck" upgrade.

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