El Capitan causing continous loop at restart...will NOT boot in safe mode, only recovery.

I did an upgrade from OS X 10.10.5 to OS X 10.11 on iMac late 2012 and experienced same issue as yours. Then I did an Erase, Format and install of OS X 10.11 (from USB Installer Disc) - all worked fine for 2 weeks and then the same problem reappeared.

I solve my problem going back to to Yosemite and will remain there until 10.11.1 or maybe 10.11.2 is released

Hello,

I have EXACTLY the same symptoms..

From 10.9.5 to 10.10 : it was not finishing the install - Then back to 10.9.5

But from 10.9.5 to 10.11.0 or 10.11.1 : it was exactly the same as it is described above

My MBP is from 2009... Then is it connected to an "old" MBP ?

COme on APPLE, repair it, many people are describing such similar symptoms... Expecting 10.11.2 !!!!!

Big thanks... But what id you do after the fresh re-installing ?

Because I did such a clean install, and then I tried :

* Import from a fresh clean time machine

* import from a bootable copy of my 10.9.5 system

And it did the same : infinite loop a startup...

And I don't want to import manually data and app... There are so many things, and also my whole environment is made of so many little things, plugins, add-ons.... I have even forgotten what they are and where they comme from... It would be too complicated trying to find and reinstall them again

Then... Big thanks if you could detail more precisely what you did after the clean instal .... Yes (;o)))

Big thanks Nicole,

But you did what I don't want to do : clean install AND manually import what you previously saved

I have plenty of apps and plugins and so and so... That would take take days ro reinstall manually and properly my whole context. That's why I want an automatic import of ma apps and datas..

Well, I guess I will wait 10.11.2 or 10.12... who knows.... First time Apple made such an awful system with no turn-around possible (and I keep being very polite regarding what I feel against apple ! )

ANyhow... Big thanls to you !

AprilNicole0604,

Recently downloaded the FULL 10.11.1 and again created a bootable install USB. Erased the SSD of MBA early 2015. Erased the SSD, installed OS X 10.11.1 CLEAN INSTALL and all worked fine. DID NOT Migrate anything over from backup. Install all app new, copied over documents and photos plus iTunes music, video tv shows from external drive and all has been working fine. No Boot-up issues.

Am holding off doing the same to iMac late 2012 until at least two more weeks to see of MBA starts to act up. If not, will do clean install 10.11.1 to iMac

To you and P.Philips: thanks for your solution! I have been pulling my hair out, metaphorically, for three days. On the phone to Apple support multiple times; reinstalled the system via recovery mode three times - and every time I shut down, I couldn't start up again except in recovery mode. One thing I noticed while running the disc utility this morning(which always said that my disc was fine): there was a note about not being able to access keychain, or something like that. I don't have the exact code, but I sent the report to Apple. I do hope they will fix it!

In the meantime, I pulled all my important files off the computer, so I feel happier about wiping the drive, if need be. I will have to reinstall many programs that I paid for (Scrivener, Scapple, Sandvox, and more). But that won't matter so much if I can get the computer working again. I'm glad yours is better.

I can confirm the following;

1. Downloaded a fresh FULL VERSION 10.11.1 and created bootable install usb.
2. Booted iMac Late 2012 from same USB install disk
3. Erased HD
4. Installed OSX 10.11.1
5. All works fine

Thanks! I have decided to take it in to a nearby repair center. They've done good work for me in the past. The reason is that I'm not sure I have a functioning operating system on my USB stick. And, after all the hours I've spent on the phone, rebooting in recovery mode, reinstalling the system, and so on, I can't face spending hours downloading the system all over again and then wiping my drive.

I expect this is exactly what they'll end up doing in the store, but they will also check my hard drive for me, which I haven't been able to do, and, if need be, they can replace the drive. I may ask them to install more RAM, while they are at it. I'll see how it goes.

But I do thank you for your help, I'm so glad this worked for you, and I'll keep you posted. I wish I had never tried to install this on my trusty iMac. Yosemite was slow, but otherwise it never gave me a single problem.

One interesting thing: I think this software glitch is somehow related to keychain. Wiping the drive and reinstalling probably works because it wipes the keychain, too.

Thanks again! I have my machine back, and it's running El Capitan beautifully, And your solution definitely works! I will be voting for you both, if that's still allowed.

You see, the tech guy in the shop found out that an old piece of software (syncmate) was booting up when El Capitan began to boot, and was causing it to hang. He was able to delete just that piece of software while saving all my other files. But, obviously, wiping the drive would have fixed the problem, though it would have been a lot of work.

If only I'd gone through and deleted all the software I didn't use any more, I might never have had the problem at all!

But - no complaints about the new system now. It runs quickly and seems very stable on both my old Macs. 🙂

Ok, this is a weird "fix" but I'm no longer hyperventilating about not being able to get past the weird rebooting thing so maybe give it a try. :-)

Background:

My Mac is a Mac Book Pro, 15 inch, Late 2011. I upgraded it to El Capitan about 2.5 weeks ago and have had issues since then when using multiple monitors, projecting, connecting to GoToMeeting. So it went bonkers the other day but I thought it was about the video connector to my second monitor. It was fine when not connected to the monitor. I shut it down at the end of the day. Then the next day, I couldn't get it to reboot beyond the endless looping. I couldn't get anything to work and I don't have any Mac media here at my home office. My Mac is a work computer and my office and support people are on the other side of the country.

What I did that worked:

• I looked at the list of Apple start up options and saw I hadn't tried a few that I hadn't seen in previous googling. The one I used was: Hold While Starting + Command-Option-R. That is OS X Recovery over the Internet.
• One thing I noticed with this restart was that it was different because the start up that endlessly loops has a weird low-res display on the start up screen that is normally a crisp white screen and I was seeing that normal crispness.
• But when I got into the choices I didn't know to do. I really didn't want to do a re-install.
• So I backed out and clicked Restart from within the Recovery Mode utility.
• And my computer restarted normally!!!!

I've since shut it down and restarted. And done a restart. And it keeps restarting correctly. I expect that I may get back to this point again as P. Phillip ran into this same thing after some time, but now I have a way to manage it until I go back to our office. I think the ultimate answer is a fresh install of El Capitan rather than an upgrade or back down to Yosemite. What a Windows-like experience this has been and that's not a good thing! But at least it's working.

Your point about doing an Erase and Clean Install of 10.11.3 is what I have done on both iMac late 2012 and early MBA 2015. Both systems are behaving great. No startup hangs or looping.

I did try a 10.10.5 upgrade to 10.11.1 without too much success so did as mentioned in first paragraph. Wiped the HD / SSD of all and clean install.

I have this happening now too... everything was working fine until I tried to run an example app in the iOS simulator. It crashed by MacBook Pro (Late 2011) running El Capitan 10.11.4. It wouldn't boot without being connected to the MagPower, so I connected it and rebooted. At first it would reboot once or twice, but then finally login. The OS was painfully slow and certain ops caused a complete crash. I tried checking the disk, resetting PRAM, removing battery and resetting SMC, NVRAM, finally ran the hardware check from internet recovery. All worked fine, but crash still continues to happen. So, I backed up, wiped the disk and installed El Capitan 10.11.4 from a bootable USB. Now, I'm stuck in the forever looping of never getting fully rebooted... once the progress bar just passes the apple, the computer turns off and starts booting all over again. None of this fixed the battery issue either... it's stuck at 76%, not charging, and won't run off of battery power.

When I run in verbose mode, I can't detect a problem. When it reboots, it says last crash error was -128 which is user cancelled action. Which is crazy.

Any ideas?