El capitan freeze during install

I agree, not a good idea to run without a battery for long term use. I purchased this one used from a friend of my mother's and the only issue was the battery no longer worked. It had belonged to her late husband who rarely used it. She had it serviced/looked over by an Apple tech who said it just needed a battery but she wanted a Windows computer instead. I'm just waiting for the battery I ordered to arrive. My other pro had a swelled battery that cracked the track pad. Software update was completed while waiting for replacement battery (swollen battery was removed) and went through fine. I'm down to "about 11 minutes remaining" on the Yosemite install now, which I've read many posts that it has taken some up towards 15-18 hours with a working battery. Fingers are crossed it will go through! It's already further along than El Capitan ever got but I also had less patience with that install.

Apple took over its own downloading services about a year ago (they were using an outside service). Download times have been quirky. If it somehow decides your link is slow, the actual download can take days. In general, if you end up with a download estimate that is measured is days, you should cancel it and try for something more reasonable.

Once downloaded, the actual Install should be done in an hour or less. I am not sure what would make it stretch out more than that, except a Bad Drive.

I was upgrading from 10.6.8 to El Capitan from the App store. I downloaded the software (no progress bar but it took around an hour I guess) and then followed the instructions to install it. When it re-booted the Apple logo appeared and then the progress bar moved over by about 1mm and stopped. After two hours I got bored and switched off, re-started and it did the same thing.

I then tried running diagnostics by holding the D down immediately after powering up and after the grey screen appeared nothing happened for about 30 seconds so I released the key and it started the install again. This time it got past the hang it had previously.

I must say that this kind of unreliability is not very good. This Mac has hardly ever been used and has virtually no software on it. Why wouldn't it wok perfectly? (All my Windows 10 upgrades have worked perfectly.)

the progress bar moved over by about 1mm and stopped

That could be an indication that your boot Drive stopped responding, and may die at any moment.

¿Do you have a Trusted Backup?

Dear grant,

I have had problems logging in in El capitan 10.11.1, 10.11.2 for about a month..

So I decided to go for a clean install at 10.11.3

After some choosing the drive to install and initial installation was finished, it restarted and the grey apple logo appeared and froze at 30 percent.

I can't get into safe mode.

Recovery mode brings me finally to a blank grey screen after the loading is finished..

I don't know, is it my hard drive that is busted? I never had any problems until this El capitan update...

What do I you advise me to do?

FarisTheKnight

It is hard to say whether your problem is the Drive itself or the stuff on it.

The gray Apple is contained in the blob of software loaded brute force by the ROM routine. So seeing the gray Apple says your drive did respond with the right stuff. The File System will be initialized later.

The reason for the initial progress bar (starts from the left, proceeds to about the third point) in regular mode is that your Boot drive will not mount to begin using the File System. It does a Disk First Aid pass to try to fix the directory.

-- if the boot drive still cannot be mounted, your Mac will power off.

-- if the Boot Drive CAN be mounted, it is mounted, and the reason why it could not proceed may be lurking in the console log. You can invoke Verbose mode to see the progress messages as they roll by on the screen. The last few messages may contain clues to why you cannot proceed.

Readers would be happy to help you decode them..

Thank you grant for your quick assistance

This is an image of what appeared to me after I restarted into verbose mode, a lot of lines passed through, but these were the last until it stopped.

I hope this can identify the issue

update:

I was able to go into single mode and run a disk repair action:

/sbin/fsck -fy

At the end it gave me that "some files were modified" or something along those lines...

Is that enough to know that my hard disk is fine?

Also, is there maybe a way to reset the installation from single user mode, complete erase and new install from my bootable usb?

If you have a bootable USB Installer, simply insert it and hold down the Alt/Option key at Startup. This draws a gray screen, and over the next several minutes, adds Icons for each potentially-bootable device it finds. This code is all in ROM, and stuff on any drives is extremely unlikely to de-rail the discovery process even if the drives are junk.

Choose the USB-stick Installer, and tell it to proceed, and you will wake up running the stripped-down Installer System from the USB drive, and preparing to Install. If you choose to do so before you begin the Install, you can also get access to Installer Utilities, including Disk Utility.

🙂

Thats the problem. I cant access that anymore, after the bootable disk image appears and I choose it, loading.... and then the screen goes black and then light grey blank screen with nothing.. and the only thing I hear are the fans running in the background

So I dont know if I have any options left other than the single user mode, because all just end up taking me to that state (grey screen, including recovery mode)

safe mode doesnt open at all

FarisTheKnight

That sounds like your USB-stick Installer is damaged or your Mac has a serious Hardware issue, such as a memory problem.

Not getting to Safe Mode suggests the Mac OS X image on the drive is damaged.

I suggest you try the diagnostic, if available, then make a Genius Bar appointment. (your appointment for an evaluation is free, in warranty or out.)

After doing many disk repair functions (and all the time it says the hard disk is OK) and some NVRAM resets, I was able to get into recovery mode and did a format for the Drive "Macintosh HD" just below Toshiba xxxx and then I headed to the main menu and chose to install el capitan directly from the internet (I could not risk getting back to my usb bootable installer) and from there during the download while watching the log move endlessly, the screen went off, completely and the fans went running again...

If I open the computer now, the grey loading bar comes, and then at 70 percent goes away to give me a no entry sign against a grey screen..

I am pretty sure there is something wrong with the app, its not just hardware because I checked my drive..

Now I cant even access single user mode, because it goes corrupt at the end now (check the image below)

I dont think we have official Apple shops here where I live, we only have resellers and some may have a support and maintenance team. But the way I know it, there is little or no skill or craftsmanship in whatever field or industry here, people here tend to break things more than they fix them, a very unfortunate reality..

Is there a way I can download the last el capitan from somewhere other than the app store? because every time I download it from there something fishy happens, like the file starts halfways (not from zero) and fails to download several times,.. I have a strong feeling this happens because of that file I have, its just mutated or something..

Is there anything I can do on my own from here, before I surrender my machine to strangers who might not know what they are doing??

Is there a way I can download the last el capitan from somewhere other than the app store? because every time I download it from there something fishy happens,

That suggests you have a Hardware problem.

I am using a macbook pro from my friend to download it from the app store, download begins at 3.4 - or 4. something GB. He has Yosemite and its running fine right now while i use it.. thats how I made the bootable usb first time, from his mac

If so, is there a way I could find out which hardware part that is causing the problems?? or should I just let the maintenance folk guess by themselves? Talking into consideration its not like the genius bar that is out there in the US..

I've crated a bootable El Capitan USB stick and tried to perform a clean install on MacBook Air 11" (Early 2014). The installation is done to my thoughts. But when the Mac restarts, it is stuck in the boot screen having a progress bar about 80% complete.

As I have erased my SSD, I can't use the safe mode technique. Now what should I do?

I'm new to MacBook. Please help me out 😟