I’m just updating to El Capitan on my macbook pro(2015) and my imac(2013).
The laptop was no problem and worked fine. When the imac re started after the install it just froze on the black screen white apple logo and the progress bar is showing very little percentage.
I left it for 2 hours and it still wasn’t any different. I switched the imac off and on again (using my only it knowledge) and its still stuck.
Can someone help a not very it literate guy (read that as no bloody idea) and tell me what I should do?
Many thanks

Yep worthless now, I will give you £5 🙂

Seriously, do you have a time machine backup or boot disc?

EDIT: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203176

unfortunately not

I’ll pay £10

If you’ve no backup you should try one of the <cmd> restart options – only on ohone so hard to look it up. You mY be abke to boot into a safe mode then either see the disk or reload an older os but you may well lose your data that way. There may be a way to “mount” the imac disk from the MBP, I’ve done that with Windows PCs in the past

If you are not IT literate you will have to find someone to help. Switching it off halfway through a OS update is high risk I am afraid to say as machine is probably left in limbo

try pressing CTL + R when booting up. It should be able to recover from there.

Be patient. Before you panic. I just got an iMac recently and did an update to Yosemite and it took about 4 hours. I left it overnight the prog bar is slow

Google is your friend tonight mate. Good luck.

Can you bugger an iMac, I mean they don’t really have a gender!?

@pie buggary is not gender specific

OP keep us posted, best of luck

Can you bugger an iMac, I mean they don’t really have a gender!?

<haterz> course – every one has an arsehole attached ! 😀 </haterz>

Is that the apple stuff that “just works”. </haterz>. 😆

My 2013 iMac took ages, while my late 2008 macbook flew through. It’s ssd might have helped.

Hold down command and R to get to the disk area and repair the disk permissions.

Mine did the same and I did the above and it works.

Hopefully as simple as that.

our macbook was stuck at ’25 mins to go’ for about 2 hours. It got there in the end.

Be careful in the disk doctor…

Start with ‘alt’ key (or option) held down. Select the recovery partition once the disks show up and take it from there. If no recovery partition then re-download the update to the other Mac. Quit the installer and then search google for how to create a USB install disk. You’ll need a 16 GB USBstick for this.

I had this with my macbook….Basically there’s a compatibility issue with some extensions, for things like printers, mobile phone programs etc etc that don’t work on El capitan and prevent it from booting..

The solution is not that simple I’m afraid….I’m not particularly IT literate either but managed to follow some instructions of an Apple forum and worked out how to use terminal to move some extensions that were causing the issues…it’s straightforward enough but if you’re not sure what you’re doing, I wouldn’t advise you do it.

The Solution was to:

Hi,

Actually that didn’t work – it’s only showing system files for the Recovery Partition, not the “Macintosh HD” one, because you have FileVault enabled and you need to unlock your volume first (step 3 below):

Boot into Recovery Mode (cmd+R)
From the central menu open Disk Utility.
Then select the “Macintosh HD” partition, then “Unlock” or “Mount”
Select the Get Help Online link from the meunbar to open Safari.
Navigate back to this thread.
Select all of the writing in bold below and press cmd+C to copy it to the clipboard:
cd “/Volumes/Macintosh HD” ; ls -1 Library/Extensions/ ; find Library/Application\ Support -iname *.kext ; find System/Library/Extensions -ctime +2d -depth 2
Then go to the Utilities menu, open Terminal and press cmd+V to paste the long command into it.
Select all the output from that and press cmd+C to copy it to the clipboard.
Select the Get Help Online link from the meunbar to open the Safari again.
Navigate back to this thread.
Paste the output you copied into your reply to this post

(then the original poster, wrote some code to fix it….I edited what he wrote based on what the above churned out….I could give it a go for you….but in no way, shape or form am I a programmer!)

Alternatively, if you don’t mind losing all your documents etc/have a backup… you could do a clean install.

Can you bugger an iMac, I mean they don’t really have a gender!?

When I updated my iMac to Yosemite I ended up with it stuck mid-upgrade.

I rang the Apple tech line and they talked me through the process of getting it sorted (I’m out of warranty but it was free). They were very helpful and it took the best part of 20 mins to do.