El Capitan won't Boot after update

Just to clarify this is what I did:

1) booted computer into restore mode by holding down Cmd + R while booting

2) closed the OS X Utilities (answer OK to "Are you sure you want to quit OS X Utilities"

3) selected "Choose Startup Disk"

4) selected Macintosh HD OS X, 10.11.1

5) selected restart

Now I can just book up my computer normally.

Thanks,

Vox

I encountered the same problem about a month ago. Tried pretty much everything referred to in this thread, and then someone directed me to a warranty extension for my MBP retina. I sent my MBP to Apple, they replaced the logic board, and had it back to me in 2 days. The machine worked for 3 days, and then the same exact issues began to happen. I can't get my machine to boot up in any way - I tried recovery, internet recovery, safe mode, select startup drive, etc. The status bar always just gets 1/3 of the way and gets stuck. The only thing that will load is the diagnostics, which finds no hardware issues repeatedly.

This is extremely frustrating.

Today I am also fooled by the El Capitan update !

I have tried all the recommended fixes from this thread, but unfortunately without any success. So I must go back to an older TimeCapsule backup now. This is a backup before Yosemite ... I'm curious whether I can at least upgrade to Yosemite again? 😕

Apple should definitely withdraw the El Capitain update until they have solved the problems!

Otherwise it is pure ashing of their customers !

😟

Today I am also fooled by the El Capitan update !

I have tried all the recommended fixes from this thread, but unfortunately without any success. So I must go back to an older TimeCapsule backup now. This is a backup before Yosemite ... I'm curious whether I can at least upgrade to Yosemite again? 😕

Apple should definitely withdraw the El Capitain update until they have solved the problems!

Otherwise it is pure ashing of their customers !

😟

I agree that the offending extension might also be a Logitech extension. I was able to restore from a Time Machine backup. I examined the Library/Extensions folder and did not find that I had the Eltima extension. I did delete the Logitech extensions and was able to successfully upgrade my Mac OS to 10.11.2

I am using a 2012 15" MBP Retina

Updated perfectly from Yosemite to El Capitan, could never instal the 10.11.1 or 10.11.2 updates without the booting issue.

After attempting several things this is what helped me.

Thanks a lot Carlos.

Macbook Air 11"/mid 2012/ i7/8G

I had this problem when all i wanted to connect my new iPhone 6S to itunes on macbook pro. I downloaded OS X El Capitan and it blacked out to a grey screen. I waited and waited and it went to a black screen with a cursor. I had to force shut down and restart to Safe Mode by pressing Shift key when restarting the computer.

In Safe mode, it worked and I checked the software for the computer has OS X El Capitan installed.

(Read a few advice to go to Terminal app and key in those texts...it didnt work for me...)

Restart a few times to confirm it works. Now it is working fine!

Hope this helps others as well since I gained from the forum.

Question: when you mentioned: boot into recovery, it was after installing el capitan?

Thanks!

This is worked for me! Thank you...

Many thanx RusFox :-) I've been struggling with my mid 2010 for about a week trying everything to restart it. Your post worked a treat.

I installed the recent El Capitan update (10.11.3) and it bricked my machine (the login screen comes up just fine, but right after logging in, the progress spinner goes on forever with nothing happening). I tried resetting PRAM, SMC, removing hardware components to isolate problems, etc. No effect. I even reinstalled El Capitan via my recovery partition, which still did nothing because it just reinstalled on top of the existing OS (a clean install would very likely fix the problem but I wanted to avoid that). But then I started looking around at the logs (/Library/Logs and ~/Library/Logs) and noticed crashes related to mdworker and lsd (/usr/libexec/lsd).

Searching the web for mentions of the lsd (launch services daemon) problem brought me to this thread: What is happening with the LSD and repeated crash?

That thread mentions deleting part of the /var/folders cache. So, from another machine on my network, I used Terminal to navigate to the bricked computer's file system. I copied the contents of /var/folders to a backup directory. Then I used "rm -rf" to delete everything under /var/folders. Some files could not be deleted, but most were removed. When I rebooted and attempted the login again, it was successful and everything is happy once more.

So my best guess is some messed up cache file was blocking the login process somehow. Here is what /var/folders had under it:

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/db

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/db-shm

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/db-wal

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.LaunchServices-134501.csstore

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.notificationcenter/db/db

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.notificationcenter/db/db-shm

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.notificationcenter/db/db-wal

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/0/com.apple.pluginkit/Annotations

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.geod/mds/mds.lock

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.geod/mds/mdsDirectory.db

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.geod/mds/mdsObject.db

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/exclusi ve

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/index.s qlite

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/index.s qlite-shm

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/index.s qlite-wal

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/thumbna ils.data

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache/thumbna ils.fraghandler

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.sandbox/sandbox-cache.db

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.sandbox/sandbox-cache.db-shm

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.sandbox/sandbox-cache.db-wal

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/com.apple.scriptmanager2.le.cache

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/mds/mds.lock

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/mds/mdsDirectory.db

./4v/w2bx3d55209d34ntq7nq01hm0000gn/C/mds/mdsObject.db_

./zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/0/com.apple.LaunchServices-1340.csstore

./zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/Cleanup At Startup/com.apple.backupd.filechecklist

./zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/Cleanup At Startup/mds.runonce

There's some stuff there (mds and LaunchServices) related to the crash reports in my Logs directories.

Thanks! This solved my problem.

After spending better part of the day trying re-installs, disk utility, examining logs, etc I found this, cleared all files/folders (after taking a backup) from the /private/var/folders (or /var/folders - its the same location) rebooted and all working happily.

I found that rm -rf in terminal would not delete some files/folders (permissions), but following the instructions in the linked article (Thanks Linc Davis!) to delete from the finder it deleted everything. Reboot and magic. The first reboot was quite slow, the second a bit faster - but since then back to normal startups. So I guess the caching does speed up boot times. So far I haven't seen any problems.

My issue: I had updated from 10.11.2 to 10.11.3 using AppStore, and after the reboot it hung about half way through the progress bar. After leaving for almost 2 hours, I rebooted hoping it would continue, but nothing. Tried several times, and leaving it for 4 hours on the off chance… nothing. Luckily I had a separate partition that I could boot from to see the filesystem I was updating. Ran the disk utility to check for errors, ensured there was sufficient disk space (increased it from 10GB free to 30GB free), and tried a few other recommendations from the earlier poster with 15 steps, including a couple of re-installs of the combo update downloaded from Apple (great suggestions, but nothing there worked for me - and I baulked at a re-install of the OS). Best I could get to was actually to login, but would hang with the spinner. Examining the system logs it showed repeated crashes of LSD in an endless loop.

I may consider clearing /var/folders before my next OS update - just in case. My experience also shows the value of having a small partition with basic OS on it just in case. I know TechTool Pro creates and eDrive (which I have used many years ago). It is better than Recovery Mode as you have the full OS and Finder to work with.

Hope anyone else stuck finds this helpful.

Glad it helped. I hope Apple considers modifying their OS X updater to automatically clean out those folders before applying updates to help prevent this issue from repeating in the future.

For myself I had tried literally everything that people had suggested and nothing helped. Finally realized I had moved iPhoto to my portable hard drive, so plugged it in and reinstalled from command-r screen and worked perfectly.

Hi all,

I know that this is an old thread and probably most people are already on el capitan but today I tried to upgrade my girlfriend's laptop from 10.8.5 Mountain lion to 10.11.3 El capitan and had the same issue, stuck on the second loading screen with a cursor, function buttons responded but no progress. (similar to the 3rd step of Linc Davis' response).

Basically as far as I understand the screen that's stuck on top can be bypassed if you connect a second screen with Thunderbolt because you force that window refresh thing that happens with a second screen. The message that was there in the background waiting to click on "deny" "allow" or "always allow" had to do with allowing the computer to use the new encrypted keychain. Once I clicked on always allow the installation continued with a message saying 12minutes remaining, it finished, restarted and then got the welcome screen, setup iCloud etc and all good.

Bottom line is if the upgrade is stuck at the grey screen with Apple and the progress bar not moving, try connecting to a second screen to see what's underneath and you might save yourself with all the trouble of going through a recovery.

I hope this helps.

Cheers