Why does First Aid tell me that everything is ok and the iMac won’t reboot?

Question

Why does First Aid tell me that everything is ok and the iMac won’t reboot?

I have two iMacs (one at home; one at the University office). As soon as I upgraded to High Sierra, all **** broke loose. I lost data, time, money, and the first to “pack up”, because I use it on a daily basis, has to be rebooted 4-5 times a day. This has been happening for nearly two months. Today it happened to my home iMac. Apple support in Portugal advised me to downgrade to a prévios OS. Is this some kind of joke? How am I going to get my life and work back. Any ideas from all the brilliant people out there?

I would appreciate a little help, please.

A very stressed out Antonio Moreira from Portugal.

Posted on Mar 4, 2018 10:42 AM

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Answer 1

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,152 points

Mar 4, 2018 11:07 AM in response to antoniomoreira

First Aid's job is to test the drive's file and format integrity, and attempt to fix those types of errors if there are any. This has nothing to do with whether or not the OS or other software is functioning correctly.

No software is perfect. Apple's is no exception. Before performing a major upgrade, you should create full, restorable backups of every Mac you plan on upgrading. Much better (in my opinion) than a Time Machine backup is a bootable clone you can create on another drive with SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner, and even with Disk Utility. In the event of a disaster (such as this), you simply boot to the clone and clone it back to the main drive. Then you're right back where you started from and can try again.

So, if you have a backup, the first thing you should do is restore it. If not, it's going to take a lot more time to fix.

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Answer 2

Mar 4, 2018 3:03 PM in response to antoniomoreira

Don't know if First Aid is the Italian "SOS". If itbis, is useless (I personally rely on Disk Warrior. It does miracles but not yet APFS compatible. In any case, why asking help just now?

Another question: do you have a backup for each machine? If not looks a great problem, now, if you can't park your datas somewhere and install from ground. Plesase post more infos for further help (the answer isn't, as you said, downgrading to previous OSes).

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Answer 3

Mar 4, 2018 3:17 PM in response to majortom1967

I do have timemachine running, but with High Sierra, the office iMac (i7, 12 GB RAM, 1TB), decided that the only “acceptable” backup, on 14 feb was the one from 8 jan. My home iMac (i5, 16 GB RAM, 1TB), although showing various backups, including yesterday’s, only accepted making the backup from 24 feb. it is still doing it. The only thing in my favour is that I have iCloud and Dropbox. I noticed in both cases that with High Sierra the iMac assumes idle memory as used memory, and brings the processing speed to a stand still, with the beech ball going round for ages in between each command. I verified that in Activity Monitor when it allowed me to access it.

Any ideas?

Thanks ever so much for your patience and time.

Antoni

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Answer 4

Mar 4, 2018 3:35 PM in response to Csound1

I did not say it started from timemachine; only that it only accepts recovery from it. It doesn’t boot: the progress bar stalls right at the end and can stay like that for days. It happened to my office iMac.

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Answer 5

Mar 4, 2018 3:46 PM in response to Csound1

I know that. I was talking about what it accepts to do when booting. It either stalls at the end of the progress bar, which takes hours to do, or only in recovery mode, where it only accepts timemachine - not internet, bootable usb pen or dvd.

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Answer 6

Mar 5, 2018 11:01 AM in response to Csound1

Been there, done that, several times, to no avail.

The recovery from time machine lasted until this morning, 8:50 am, and I left it rebuilding Mail and came to work, where I am at the moment, using my office iMac. Fortunately, today I did not have to perform any rebooting, although at times it acts sluggish. At the moment I am running it with Word, Chrome, Mail and Calendar running, and it is fine (touch wood).

I am not sure of what I will find when I get home. One thing is for sure: the desktop, this morning, looked déjà vu and sort of dated. Not at all what it looked like when I shut it down on Saturday afternoon...

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Answer 7

Limnos

Level 10

411,223 points

Mar 4, 2018 10:45 AM in response to Csound1

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac (formerly: Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up (formerly: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X))) - http://support.apple.com/HT201262

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Answer 8

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Mar 4, 2018 3:18 PM in response to antoniomoreira

Will either of them startup in Safe Mode?

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Answer 9

Mar 4, 2018 3:22 PM in response to Csound1

No. Not even verbose or target mode. Only recovery mode, and not from the internet or from a bootable usb pen. Only from timemachine.

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Answer 10

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Mar 4, 2018 3:25 PM in response to antoniomoreira

Time Machine can not start a Mac and has nothing to do with Recovery Mode, which is started by the Mac itself.

Which Recovery Mode did it start in, local or internet?

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Answer 11

Mar 4, 2018 3:26 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Only followed instructions offered to me by Apple FAQs. And I do have backups. But High Sierra is picky and choosy as the ones it accepts to reinstall ::(

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Answer 12

Mar 4, 2018 3:31 PM in response to Limnos

Unfortunately it doesn’t work :(

Still backing up from timemachine (24 feb !), since 4 pm (it is now 11:30 pm), and with 5 hours to go, só it tells me.

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Answer 13

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Mar 4, 2018 4:07 PM in response to antoniomoreira

Boot your Mac from recovery one more time and run Disk Utility/Disk Repair from there.

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Why does First Aid tell me that everything is ok and the iMac won’t reboot?

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