El Capitan failed to complete install on two separate iMacs

[macpeach55]

So as the title says, I have had the exact same problem on two iMacs.
The upgrade downloads, updates cleanly until the countdown reaches "7 minutes" before the end (about 95% along the Bar), then the machine does a reboot, & the Apple sign & progress bar come up again without the countdown, & just hangs. The newer Fusion Drive one I left for 3 Hours before giving up & restoring back to Yosemite via Time Machine. This one is stopped in exactly the same spot for 90 minutes now.
They are different iMacs - the older one is 21,5" regular HDD Mid 2011
The other is 27" has a Fusion Drive, Late 2013. The older was an upgrade to Yosemite, the newer came with it pre-installed. The only common factor is I used the older iMac Time Machine save to put all my Docs etc. on the newer one when I first got it.
One other item - after the restore on the newer iMac, Pages was corrupted & needed a re-install.
Any thoughts on how I can hunt down the rogue app or whatever that is causing the hang?
Thanks in advance for any help

 

[chabig]

I would wait at least 24 hours before I declared the computer "hung". Installation requires patience, especially when spinning hard drives are involved. If you restart the machine during an installation you might leave it in an indeterminate state. At this point, I would suggest booting to your recovery partition and installing El Capitan from scratch.

 

[macpeach55]

I would wait at least 24 hours before I declared the computer "hung". Installation requires patience, especially when spinning hard drives are involved. If you restart the machine during an installation you might leave it in an indeterminate state. At this point, I would suggest booting to your recovery partition and installing El Capitan from scratch.

Thanks for the advice - this older machine is a "spare", so I can leave it on overnight no problem.
My big concern is when I try again to upgrade the newer iMac, If it IS something in the general apps or docs etc that are on my time machine, then even if I do a clean install, when I import settings etc. I might run into exactly the problem I have now, which is why it would be great to have a way to find out what is causing the "hang". It is has to be something Yosemite is fine with but El Capitan is not, otherwise my restore would not have worked.

 

[iankb]

So as the title says, I have had the exact same problem on two iMacs.
The upgrade downloads, updates cleanly until the countdown reaches "7 minutes" before the end (about 95% along the Bar), then the machine does a reboot, & the Apple sign & progress bar come up again without the countdown, & just hangs. The newer Fusion Drive one I left for 3 Hours before giving up & restoring back to Yosemite via Time Machine. This one is stopped in exactly the same spot for 90 minutes now.
They are different iMacs - the older one is 21,5" regular HDD Mid 2011
The other is 27" has a Fusion Drive, Late 2013. The older was an upgrade to Yosemite, the newer came with it pre-installed. The only common factor is I used the older iMac Time Machine save to put all my Docs etc. on the newer one when I first got it.
One other item - after the restore on the newer iMac, Pages was corrupted & needed a re-install.
Any thoughts on how I can hunt down the rogue app or whatever that is causing the hang?
Thanks in advance for any help

Make sure that you haven't got an expired version of Kaspersky on these Macs. That's what probably caused my hang.

I think I got out of the 'endless' installation loop by restarting in safe mode. Or I just kept trying.

See my thread here ...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/inactive-kaspersky-hangs-el-capitan.1924029/

Ian.

 

[Wheelie4]

I experience the exact same thing yesterday. I had to force shutdown three different times (waited about 15 minutes after each restart before I shut it down again) and start up again before it finally brought me to the desktop. Haven't experienced any problems so far due to this.

 

[macpeach55]

Make sure that you haven't got an expired version of Kaspersky on these Macs. That's what probably caused my hang.

I think I got out of the 'endless' installation loop by restarting in safe mode. Or I just kept trying.

See my thread here ...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/inactive-kaspersky-hangs-el-capitan.1924029/

Ian.

I have Sophos AV on both machines, but I had it totally turned off on the second old machine - from your experience that might not have been enough :-(

I experience the exact same thing yesterday. I had to force shutdown three different times (waited about 15 minutes after each restart before I shut it down again) and start up again before it finally brought me to the desktop. Haven't experienced any problems so far due to this.

Tried five restarts now, waiting different lengths before restart/before next shut down. Still no luck :-(

 

[Wheelie4]

Fortunately restarting worked for me but if it did not work after a few restarts I was going to do this:

"Use the built-in recovery disk to reinstall OS X while keeping your files and user settings intact."
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18872?locale=en_US

I also made a cloned backup onto an external hard drive of my internal drive before I tried updating just in case.

 

[macpeach55]

Fortunately restarting worked for me but if it did not work after a few restarts I was going to do this:

"Use the built-in recovery disk to reinstall OS X while keeping your files and user settings intact."
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18872?locale=en_US

I also made a cloned backup onto an external hard drive of my internal drive before I tried updating just in case.

Yeah, I have already gone to that - at the moment the machine is at exactly the same spot that it hung at last time. But fingers crossed - I will leave it on all night if necessary

 

[matreya]

I'd suggest at this point in doing a fresh install and using Setup Assistant to migrate your apps/settings/etc from your clone drive.

 

[macpeach55]

I'd suggest at this point in doing a fresh install and using Setup Assistant to migrate your apps/settings/etc from your clone drive.

The Bar has now made it to the end - in theory I should get to the actual Desktop soon
Yes I agree about the fresh install, but my thought is that whatever made these machines hang would be in the migrate, so a chance that the same thing would happen again right at the end.

 

[greenl1ght]

I had a very similar problem - it rebooted to a black screen with a buggy-looking progress bar (the progress bar was painted on a gray background, but the screen was black so it looked pasted in). I let it sit for a while, gave up, rebooted, same thing, let it sit for a few hours, nothing. Tried some folk remedies (safe mode, zap pram, clear smc, check recovery mode logs), tried reinstalling from Recovery mode, same crap.

Ended up reverting to Yosemite with Time Machine. Now I'm doing a CCC to external drive and then I'm going to just go for a clean install. Even if it finally fixed itself leaving it waiting for hours, I'd never trust such an install to actually be stable in use...

 

[macpeach55]

I had a very similar problem - it rebooted to a black screen with a buggy-looking progress bar (the progress bar was painted on a gray background, but the screen was black so it looked pasted in). I let it sit for a while, gave up, rebooted, same thing, let it sit for a few hours, nothing. Tried some folk remedies (safe mode, zap pram, clear smc, check recovery mode logs), tried reinstalling from Recovery mode, same crap.

Ended up reverting to Yosemite with Time Machine. Now I'm doing a CCC to external drive and then I'm going to just go for a clean install. Even if it finally fixed itself leaving it waiting for hours, I'd never trust such an install to actually be stable in use...

I really wonder what this Bug is. I can only think it relates to some app that El Cap does not like, but in the old versions this was never a problem, as the OS would simply put it in the "Incompatible Software" Folder
Do you have an anti virus programme installed? Either used or dormant? One poster had a problem with a Dormant Kasperski, & I have Sophos installed though everything switched off.

 

[thefredelement]

I really wonder what this Bug is. I can only think it relates to some app that El Cap does not like, but in the old versions this was never a problem, as the OS would simply put it in the "Incompatible Software" Folder
Do you have an anti virus programme installed? Either used or dormant? One poster had a problem with a Dormant Kasperski, & I have Sophos installed though everything switched off.

There were problems like this with 10.10 too. Hopefully they clean up the installer going forward. I have one Mac that just needs to be hard reset to complete installation and one that goes fine.

 

[macpeach55]

There were problems like this with 10.10 too. Hopefully they clean up the installer going forward. I have one Mac that just needs to be hard reset to complete installation and one that goes fine.

I second that. My "Tester" iMac is still on the start up screen after an overnight "rest" & now being on an hour - it is at the end of the Bar, but that is it.
Very boring.

 

[macpeach55]

Ok, so it stayed on the end of the Bar for four hours. Gave it another break, tried a restart, tried booting into safe mode, always the same. As this is my spare iMac (And ready to be sold), I didn't have a Time Machine Back up. Apart from a clean install, I don't see another way forward. But still worrying that both my machines would not upgrade & got stuck like this