Mac stuck on loading bar

Hi,

I have this same problem on start up the progress bar stays on 100%. I’ve tried a few things including launching in single user mode & typing fsck -fy but it didn’t help.

I’ve read the thread & think your post sounds the best however I’ve not used Terminal so I’m a little nervous of your warning. If I’m careful do you think I should try it?

Thanks

Jane

If you carefully follow the instructions, you should be rewarded. There are only a few steps. If you know someone who is technically adept, ask that person to look at this with you. Good luck! Patrick

Thanks Patrick,

I’m still trying to sort this out. I’ve tried a few more things in the mean time:

Verbose mode : ‘too many corpses being created’

ResetPRAM

Reset SMC (now have the chime at start up which I didn’t previously have)

BUT

When I do Cmd R I get disk utilities but I don’t understand:

‘If Firevault is on, mount the disk with Disk Utility & enter password’

Can you explain more please?

Hi

First if all thanks for shedding light and ficing such a precise step by step guide on resolving this. I seem to have a peculiar case with my start up in which I get my login requirements coming up immediately after restart (on the white/grey background): my user avatar (owl face) under which is shown my user name and the password bar. When I type it in it starts the load bar under the avatar, then the screen goes white, then we are at the apple logo with the frozen loading bar.

I followed your instructions in terminal after mounting the disk, and, after putting in the second command line with the “-old” extension it seemed to accept that. Thought I was finally fixed but then when I restarted I got the login requirement with my user avatar coming up immediately again, and then the loading bar was frozen at empty after I put my password in.

Not sure if I should be super patient and leave it for hours or whether something else is up, but it seems this extra element of the login requirement at restart *before* the apple logo is uncommon/scuppering me!

Thanks for all your help

Please, how do I get to terminal in the first place? I'm currently on the "Disk Utility" part. Before this, is the CMD-R which brought me to the options of Reinstalling, Time Machine Backup, etc... I'm now in the Disk Utility part. But there's nothing that says terminal?

Sorry for blowing up the comments section in regards to your suggestion, but it has successfully worked! Thank you so much Patrick, I have such relief you have no idea. I almost started crying going through this entire forum. But your suggestion is the only thing that worked! Thank you again.

For anyone else trying: after you have completed his steps as listed.... once restarted, the mac should turn back on and continue updating (45minutes- 1hr or so) but this time FULLY updating and bringing you back to user logins screen. Basically, you will now have OS x High Sierra. Don’t worry, all your data and everything will be there still.

For those traumatized from the High Sierra upgrade, I’m not sure that I would uninstall it just because of the heartache that went along with installing it in the first place. Not sure what more problems you may have by trying to downgrade back to the older OS’s like El Capitan or Yosemite. So, just keep the High Sierra.

I’m so glad you were finally able to succeed. One thing you learn when you do a lot of troubleshooting is the importance of patience. The other is the importance of following directions exactly. Many questions can be answered with simple Google queries, such as “Mac recovery where is terminal.” I wasn’t able to respond to all of your questions, but I’m very pleased that you were able to figure things out. Way to go! Patrick

I was stuck on this for a while...using a iMac mid 2011 with macOS high sierra (10.13.4)....solved this by following the above commands...so big thanks as it saved time, energy and DATA...would like to know what causes this problem...is it some mishandling at the users end or it is a common bug of MAC OS???

Hey, you know, stuff happens. Computers and software are insanely complex systems, made by human beings. No matter how carefully they’re crafted, or how thoroughly they’re tested, sometimes things go sideways. The tiniest software mistake can cause this kind of problem. So, don’t be bent out of shape when something goes wrong. Be amazed and thankful that our technology works (quite miraculously) most of the time. Good job fixing your problem. Patrick

Rocknroll21... You are a superstar or Rockstar maybe😁

I followed you instructions above and it got me back into my iMac.

This enabled me to back everything up that hadn't been backed up.

I am very grateful for your post.

Thanks a million.

ThiloJD,

You just saved my life. A good 10 hrs. finding and implementing "solutions", none of which worked. Just about to search for the nuclear option, reformatting, when I found your absurdly simple solution. Boom! I'm booted up. I've no idea why that key combination works, but it worked perfectly.

Big thanks to you for posting that.

Did you find any solution for this issue? My macbook is on the same issue right now. Hopefully I can get help from your experiences

Hi!!

Please tell later if they were able to find any solution for this issue? Have the same Imac, and teh same problem since yesterday!!!

Thanks

Same issue. I wonder if a recent update has stuffed everyone up.

Sigh