Failed to Auto select primary HDD on boot

Question

Failed to Auto select primary HDD on boot

Hi all,

I have a 2012 iMac that is having a little trouble booting up properly. The issue is, when powering on, the iMac fails to find any bootable device, and must go through the manual boot selection in order boot. Once booted, everything runs fine, and I have no other issues. I have tried searching online for a possible answer as to why it fails to find a bootable device automatically, but only find answers on how to manually select a boot drive, which works, but is a temporary fix.

Does anybody know what may be causing this, and a fix? Hopefully this issue can be fixed at home, because my warranty is long gone.

Thanks for your time!

iMac, iOS 9.2, iMac (2012)

Posted on Feb 13, 2016 1:15 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

SeaPapp

Level 7

26,486 points

Feb 13, 2016 3:11 PM in response to Brianfromnewberg

You don't mention it so I have to ask, have you gone into System Preferences -Startup Disk and selected your boot disk?

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 13, 2016 3:20 PM in response to SeaPapp

Mlike,

Thanks for your quick reply! I was able to get into the system prefences and find the startup settings. I have to mention for others looking into this problem, at the screen you choose which HDD to start from, all I saw was my primary HDD icon, but nothing to indicate it was the default bootable drive. After clicking the icon to make it highlighted, there is a button below to restart the system. It's not very clear instructions, but It works.

Brian

Reply