how long does it take to install el capitan?

Power off power back on comand a R together then it should go into internet recovery mode then put your internet password on an continue hope this helps

I just re-installed El Capitan (yesterday) on my repaired 2011 MacBook Pro and it took around 25 minutes...

I have a Mid-2012, 15-in MacBook Pro and after the OS X El Capitan update downloaded successfully and the MacBook restarted it was paused at the Apple logo with the progress bar + cursor for quite some time. Every so often I would get a message below the progress bar indicating "El Capitan Installation [xx] minutes remaining" and it would disappear and come back occasionally.

All in all, after the download completed and the MacBook restarted it took about 2 to 2 1/2 hours for the installation to complete. So you may still be OK.

Hi,

I have a 2011 Desktop iMac. The El Capitan download completed, install initiated and a restart, Been looking at a Apple logo and progess bar, with no progress text, about 80% complete for the past 5 hours. I hope this will have a happy ending.....

I Have something similar. Installing El Capitan seems to get stuck at about 3/4 of the process. I have let it run all night and in the morning it still said '12 minutes'. Trying it for the second time now, seems to do the same thing. Not very happy right now :-(

iMac from 2011...

Update: the El Capitan download took 3 hours. There was no status indicator until the download was completed.

Installation took 1 1/2 hours. A window with a progress bar, and time estimate, gave a good status indication for the installation.

Having some form of download status indicator would be helpful to the non-expert computer user.

The operating system appears to be working as promised.

A Not-so Frustrated Senior Citizen

I am very late to this however , I'm upgrading my Mac from Mac OS Lion to Mac OS El Capitan , everything worked except for this ( the one shown in the picture ) i've been waiting for more or less than 1 hour and it is still stuck there , should i wait longer or ?

it's possible it completed and didn't update to tell you it's done.

If it's been three hours remove all external devices, then reboot the computer and clear both the SMC and PRAM as this article describes.

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

If that fails you should keep all external devices disconnected and reinstall the software.

if that works reconnect the devices.

If this doesn't work start a new thread and describe what you have already tried.

Mine says 32 hours when I started installing it's a joke it's still going now

It looks like this (solved) post looks at the same issue : After upgrade !! Os x al capitan

A day and a half later after numerous restarts (and Cmd-Rs) and when I wash at the point to do a fresh install it suddenly came up with a El Capitan install screen and completed from there.

On a side note I actually learned a lot and noticed that you are not completely out of the water if you do not have a backup in a case like this. With Cmd-R you can get to Terminal window in recovery mode. You can then use the tar command to compress your important files and use scp or sftp to upload them to an Internet hosting account.

I think this is another issue. I get the impression that the other post is about restarting after installation, while the issue I had was about the installation itself.

Maybe I should have had the patience of bobfromscarborough (19 hours), but I hadn't. After trying for about 7 times (2 times letting it run all night) and using the cmd+R disk help function to try and 'cure' my hard disk, I gave up and went for a clean install. Busy restoring all my files now, but on a clean computer. And that has worth as well :-).

I have a 2008-era iMac that was running Yosemite. I decided to wait until at least the first round of patches was out before upgrading. The download was painless and quick; when I started installation, the process started with the estimated time to complete as "30 minutes". Sixty minutes later, it is at 3% remaining and the installer suggested 3-minutes to go. Then, ten minutes later, "less than a minute...". Every "time" estimate seems to be wrong, at least on this system with 16GB memory which is current on all past patches before the update (and backed up before the process started). Thankfully, it did eventually complete after approximately 90 minutes for me

Kinda reminds me of the old Windows time estimates for installing things (often far off the estimate); at least for this install! But at least it worked eventually!

I have Yosemite installed on my Mac (circa 2011). I am currently trying to install onto my Mac OS X El Capitan, version 10.10.1, through the App Store. In the app heading there is a tiny window saying "Downloading". There is no other information on the status of the downloading or installation on the screen. It has been over two hours since I started the process.

How long is the download and installation supposed to take? Is there a way to find out what the status is? Downloading and installing other applications usually have a window giving an estimate of the times and status of the download/installation. Why can't the wizards of Apple do likewise?

I also had several problems trying to download iOS 9 onto my lPad. Apple used to have a reputation for being user friendly. What is happening??

Sent from my iPad

A Frustrated Senior Citizen

For me was suc*$ and the first time Apple frustrated me.... worst upgrade I made... I bought an samsung SSD to upgrade and make a clean install.... but I'm totally disappointed with this EL CAPITAN..... Take all day long to finish.... than I start Installing my adobe CS6 and I found many conflicts... terrible terrible terrible....