El Capitan install error, stuck in install loop

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Level 1

11 points

El Capitan install error, stuck in install loop

I've downloaded and tried to install El Capitan on release yesterday. It was going fine until it restarted and continued to install there. The progress bar went up a tiny bit, and then it gave me an error "file system verify or repair failed, quit the installer to restart your computer and try again".

It's now stuck in an install loop I can't get out of. Reinstalling OSX from recovery doesn't work, just to compound my problems. I've tried verifying and repairing the disk, but that didn't work either. I've tried to copy my files to an external HDD because I'm afraid I might have to wipe the whole thing to get it working again. Help me, please.

I'm on an Early 2013, 15-inch, Retina, MacBook Pro, FileVault is on.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Trying to install 10.11 El Capitan

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 6:26 AM

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Answer 1

brenden dv

Community Specialist

Oct 1, 2015 3:01 PM in response to Skellingtor

I’m sorry to hear about the issue you are having with what I imagine you expected to be a straightforward install; that’s always frustrating. I’m sure we can help you out, but before we dive in it may be good to establish what we are working with:

1. Were you able to successfully copy your files to the external hard drive as you noted? Do you have any other full or incremental backups of your system from prior to the install, like in Time Machine?

2. What are you seeing when you try to reinstall from Recovery? Is it giving you an error, or is it just hanging/failing? If you are seeing an error, what does it say specifically?

3. Similarly, what are you seeing when you try to verify/repair the disk? Is it saying that the disk is fine, is it finding repairable errors, or is it failing because it cannot repair the disk?

Again, I’m sorry to hear that this happened, but we should be able to get you pointed on the right track.

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Answer 2

Skellingtor Author

Level 1

11 points

Oct 1, 2015 4:00 PM in response to brenden dv

1. Yes, I transferred everything overnight. No Time Machine backups, I pulled everything from recovery.

2. It gives me a bland "an error occurred while preparing the installation, try running this application again" as soon as I type in my Apple ID.

3. Before, it told me it couldn't repair and that I should back everything up for reformatting. Now the process goes along smoothly, but nothing changes.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Oct 2, 2015 6:46 AM in response to Skellingtor

Do a backup, preferable 2 separate ones on 2 drives. Boot to the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option/alt key during a restart and select Recovery Volume). Run Disk Utility Verify/Repair Disk and Repair Permissions until you get no errors. Reformat the drive using Disk Utility/Erase Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then click the Option button and select GUID. Then re-install the OS.

OS X Recovery

OS X Recovery (2)

When you reboot, use Setup Assistant to restore your data.

Then try the download again.

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Answer 4

Skellingtor Author

Level 1

11 points

Oct 2, 2015 6:01 AM in response to Eric Root

Formatted the drive, reinstalled Yosemite, El Capitan went ahead without a hitch. I'll have to put all my music back in there manually, but no big deal.

Thanks for all your help.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Oct 2, 2015 6:28 AM in response to Skellingtor

You are welcome

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Answer 6

uservod

Level 1

9 points

Oct 10, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Eric Root

It happened to me and i fixed it. There are no hardware issues even though you're sure there are. Steps:

1. Don't panic.

(boot with cmd+R)

2. Connect an external hard drive which is at least the size of your HD, make sure it's mounted.

3. In terminal - run 'diskutil list' and find out the name of your OS drive (should be of type Apple_HFS, mine was /dev/disk2) - and your external drive's

4. Block-copy all its data to a the external HD. The trick here is that we're skipping "bad sectors" - run:

dd bs=4096 if=/dev/disk2 of=/Volumes/External Drive Name/Temp.dmg conv=noerror,sync

This will take a lot of time and will show u the bad sectors but u can ignore them.

5. Restore the Mac OS drive from this dmg using Disk Utility - pick "Restore > from image..." where source = this .dmg and target = The bad OS drive.

6. You are now back to the old OS and can relax.

7. Restart with cmd+R and run disk utility, which will find bad sectors, and run repair which will successfully repair them.

Enjoy!

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