I paused the El Capitan download and now is frozen in waiting

This happened to me too. So, I just went into my LAUNCHPAND and clicked and held down for 2 seconds until the icons start shaking and showing the 'X' to delete. I deleted the unfinished El Capitan download and re-downloaded it. Now, it is fine.

I had the same problem. I got a message that it would finish downloading in 53 minutes. Two hours later it was still downloading in 53 minutes. I went to bed and the next morning it said it would finish in 1 second. After it did that for 2.5 hours I gave up and shut the machine off. I know this is a bad idea but had run out of patience. In return it trashed by OS so now I'm jumping through hoops to back up the drive then I will repartition it and do a clean install. I'm not sure I have the patience to waste any more time on El Capitan. It seems to be a very poorly written installer. Really bad form Apple!

I deleted Garage Band and then reinstalled it, and this made El Capitan start. But it is very slow in loading as I think there is a problem with Apples App store.

Open Launchpad and locate the download in progress

Hold down the cursor until the icons start to jiggle

Delete the download icon

Open App store and go to "purchased"

Restart download on a good internet connection

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This was the perfect solution. Thank you.

Deleting the download from Launchpad and starting again worked perfectly for me. 20 minute download after that.

I had this same problem for a few days.

I clicked on Store and then Check For Unfinished Downloads. El Capitan resumed downloading.