Yosemite Clean Install Problems

hummm Interesting, and thanks for the detailed instructions. Let me know if it works on your iMac. I may well have a go; I have a USB installation stick which I made as per instructions in OSXdaily and that worked just fine on my macbook air AND my wife's imac. You obviously think the clue is in the safe mode thing...

Do let me know. it might be my last throw of the dice before I give up and live with Mavericks for a few months!

when you say turn off wifi, do you mean disconnect from the 'net? I use wifi and a LAN on my Mac...

@mishlich

Good for you! - Hope everything continues to work out.

@jono1949. To answer your question, my Yosemite install completed the install without any error messages

I did 'freak out' when in my first attempt I disconnected the external drive where I had the Install OS X Yosemite App !

I couldn't believe I did that but after turning the computer off, on, off again, and on again it restarted the installation process.

I felt good about doing a clean install this way. And now I not only installed Yosemite on that external drive (and it will boot up) but also on my main machine.

I'm also impressed how MIGRATING my data from Time Machine worked out so well (doing this during the start up first run of Yosemite).

. Everything seems in place and working; just had to later upgrade a few apps (1Password, Cocktail, needed the latest version of Final Cut Pro).

I feel pretty lucky. But I also got the sense that the computer (not quite a year old, yet), the Time Capsule, and the Apple software was all

trying to work together intelligently and pulled it off.

Note. It was almost 24 hours from start to finish, then about 7 hours for the data from Time Machine to all transfer (600GBs)

THEN: Using Airport Utility (last tab, Disk), I erased Time Machine, then set it up to be elected again in System Preferences, then copied

all my newly installed Yosemite iMac stuff back onto it. So I guess I'm pretty Yosemite set up now.

Will later use the external drive to do the same on my older, 5-year old Mac mini (late 2009). So I'll feel pretty secure and

more secure with data and apps than I've ever been before; much to my pleasant surprise ('cause you read so many horror stories).

OK; I have tried it all now. switching off wifi, unplugging all peripherals, installing from Lion clean install, installing from mavericks, clean install, installing from an OSX installations USB downloading new copy of Yosemite and I think every combination thereof. I have had support from Apple (4 calls/chats) and the personal help of a senior Apple Engineer.

I have now given a week of my life to this. No more. Mavericks it is until Christmas. I'll try again then. I just may at that stage take the machine to my local Mac agent (not an Apple shop) who have said they will do an install for £35.

Good luck chaps and chapesses...!!!

same here:

even the 4th try of installing failed.

and no startvolume is shown-seen-known.

it was the "classicla" way of downloading the upgrade from the apple.

imac out of service

macbook worked fine for 2 days- now there is no wlan at all or loss of Connection after 1 Minute.

any idea how to downgrade to mavericks ??

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH -- Completed 2nd installation on older machine.

After getting Yosemite to install on my iMac (late 2013, quad core i5) I figured the obvious thing to try next was to install it on my older Mac mini (late 2009, Core 2 Duo).

Much to my surprise (again), it worked. I used the same steps previously posted (erase disk complete, do a clean install from Install OS X Yosemite I had put on a external drive (some folks use USB flash drive). & was also able to MIGRATE all my data from my newer iMac.

One thing 4dsure: The progress bar is 'wildly inaccurate,' (as other have reported). I may say 20 minutes but take two hours. -- I find it good to forget about it, do other tasks and check back now and then to move on to the next steps, if required.

Why problems for others? - Don't know. Could be so many things. I didn't do anything with 'Safe mode' as others have reported here. But I did disconnect all USB devices except for keyboard and mouse, that's about it. Then followed instructions provided by oxsdaily.

I guess if you can't get it going, waiting till an upgrade comes out is necessary. I read an average time till first upgrade of new OS is

about six weeks.

Good luck.

Thanks for the update. I am write in thinking that you never encountered the basesystemsbinaries.pkg error code? That is the one that is stumping me!!!

@jono1949. Correct. To answer your question (again), my Yosemite install completed the install without any error messages.

Now, since I'm 'all installed,' - I searched briefly on your error message. The most recent item was a discussion thread you were already aware of and had replied to.

In that thread there were several suggestions and the OP poster, AbdullahAldrees, indicated THIS solved his problem (although I think you've already tried THIS)

Creating a bootable OS X installer in OS X Mavericks

In that thread it struck me that several of the complains were NOT that Yosemite wouldn't install, but they had problems trying to MIGRATE their data. (which I was surprised worked so well for me...credit going to having a Time Capsule, imo).

THE WEIRDNESS OF COMPUTERS (A short essay). The methods discussed here (making a bootable OS X Installer and using Option key during startup to boot up from that installed --- then erasing your internal hard drive using Disk Utility which is available in the Menu Bar -- then proceeding with Yosemite installation strikes me as the absolutely most complete way to do it.

Then you have to worry about MIGRATING all your data from wherever you backed it up...and do this during the first run of Yosemite when that option presents itself (click the correct radio button).

YET, some weird things can still happen. I figure it may be 'software conflicts' specific to an individuals machine and Who Knows what they might be. I got one where a Safari Extension will not work completely on my iMac but (gasp) I just discovered it works fine on the new version on Yosemite I installed on the external drive I initially used to the installation (I decided to, why not, install Yosemite there, too -- which I found 'strange' but cool that it could be done).

At time like this all I can think of saying is: Keep wondering about it (what's causing the conflict), keep researching it, and --- Keep your cool. No profit getting bent out of shape, esp. by things you can't resolve at the time.

Have fun.

mishlich wrote:

HI Jono,

Just to let you know, I'm trying to install it by opening the installer while in Mavericks. I will try a USB clean install of yosemite again later if it works.

So the installer kept pausing at about 50% so I restarted and tried again. It seems pressing shift when the computer restarts during install doesn't agree with it so much. I tried without safe mode but when it proceeded to install files, it "failed to copy files" and quit.

TRying again in safe mode. The mac book pro didn't have this problem and the install went ahead.

perhaps, before you try, delete any start up programs in the Users system preferences. I read that that could b a problem too.

in regards To wifi, it says to turn it off either before launching the installer - or after pressing command + R and then hovering toward the top of the screen right to turn it off. i don't think you need to turn off your router though. 🙂

typing on my phone, so apologies for the typos.

At this point I would suggest you stay with Mavericks for the time being… It would seem to be the best solution.