HELP iMac doesn’t reboot

[Vinz-China]

Hi everybody,
Since few days my iMac doesn’t restart anymore.
When I boot it there is the apple and the loading which is very very very slow (it can take until an hour to get through it), and nothing after.
Is there any help I can get from here ?

 

[28Gauge]

My 2011 iMac started acting the same way a couple of years back. It turned out to be a failing hard drive.

 

[Vinz-China]

Hi thank you for the answer.
After watching a tutorial on YouTube, I tried to create a bootable usb installer with an extern hardrive.
But I still can’t install anything.
After I run the hardrive at the startup I have a black page with a lot of errors command lines and a grey page with no option to install the new Mac OS X. I post the pictures here. Can you tell me more if possible please ?

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hi thank you for the answer.
After watching a tutorial on YouTube, I tried to create a bootable usb installer with an extern hardrive.
But I still can’t install anything.
After I run the hardrive at the startup I have a black page with a lot of errors command lines and a grey page with no option to install the new Mac OS X. I post the pictures here. Can you tell me more if possible please ?

Do you recall which OS it was on? You can try hold CMD + R on startup to boot into the recovery partition. Also please can you confirm which model/year iMac you have?

I'm almost certain the problem will be hard-drive related or possibly graphics.

 

[Vinz-China]

Do you recall which OS it was on? You can try hold CMD + R on startup to boot into the recovery partition. Also please can you confirm which model/year iMac you have?

Thank you very much for answering.
I was using El Capitan like OS, and I can’t exactly be sure for the model, I think it is a 2007 IMac. (Very sorry to don’t remember the model, if there is anywhere I can see let me know)

I already tried yesterday CMD + R and try to recover the version, there was a timer for the download (almost 2 hours) and after this was done there was nothing in the loading bar and it freezes.

Today I tried to put the OS Sierra on an external hard drive, when I press Alt on startup I can find this hardrive but can’t install anything. Just a grey window like in picture.

And finally when I try to open the disk utility there is loading and nothing appear. I can only have access to the terminal, network utility and the restart.

 

[Vinz-China]

Do you recall which OS it was on? You can try hold CMD + R on startup to boot into the recovery partition. Also please can you confirm which model/year iMac you have?

I'm almost certain the problem will be hard-drive related or possibly graphics.

After waiting long time the hardrives finally came out.

To install El Capitan it says that I should go to the hard drive utilities and activate the journalisation.

This step is not working, any solutions ?

 

[keysofanxiety]

After waiting long time the hardrives finally came out.

To install El Capitan it says that I should go to the hard drive utilities and activate the journalisation.

This step is not working, any solutions ?

You've got the main drive selected in Disk Utility. You'll need to instead select the Macintosh HD partition and format the partition/reinstall the OS as fresh if that's what you're looking to do. Again it does sound like the hard-drive is corrupted though. Before we wipe all your data for no reason, let's go a different route.

What I'd recommend you do is plug in a USB stick and format that through Disk Utility. Once that's formatted, close Disk Utility and select Reinstall macOS/OS X. Install the operating system directly to the USB (you can do that with macOS) and then you'll have macOS through a USB stick.

This'll run slow as you can possibly imagine as you've got USB 2, however it should allow you the opportunity to install some diagnostic applications (namely SMART Utility: https://www.volitans-software.com/apps/smart-utility/) to verify if the hard-disk is corrupted. If this comes back clean, or if the OS simply won't boot via USB following its OS install, the problem's likely to be graphics.

 

[Vinz-China]

You've got the main drive selected in Disk Utility. You'll need to instead select the Macintosh HD partition and format the partition/reinstall the OS as fresh if that's what you're looking to do. Again it does sound like the hard-drive is corrupted though. Before we wipe all your data for no reason, let's go a different route.

What I'd recommend you do is plug in a USB stick and format that through Disk Utility. Once that's formatted, close Disk Utility and select Reinstall macOS/OS X. Install the operating system directly to the USB (you can do that with macOS) and then you'll have macOS through a USB stick.

This'll run slow as you can possibly imagine as you've got USB 2, however it should allow you the opportunity to install some diagnostic applications (namely SMART Utility: https://www.volitans-software.com/apps/smart-utility/) to verify if the hard-disk is corrupted. If this comes back clean, or if the OS simply won't boot via USB following its OS install, the problem's likely to be graphics.

Thank you very much for answering.
This afternoon I tried to put my external hard drive has booting hard drive with the macOS Sierra.
When I go through this hardrive, it can’t start the installation.
I just have a grey screen as I send the picture up.
Also if I want to install macOS El Capitan by the disk utility, I can see the Macintosh hard drive and my external hard drive which I can’t select to proceed the installation.
It says that I have to go to folder and accept the journalisation, and when I press folder “accept the journalisation” is in grey clear and I can’t click on.
So I can’t at all install any version or from the original hard drive or from an external one ...

 

[keysofanxiety]

Thank you very much for answering.
This afternoon I tried to put my external hard drive has booting hard drive with the macOS Sierra.
When I go through this hardrive, it can’t start the installation.
I just have a grey screen as I send the picture up.
Also if I want to install macOS El Capitan by the disk utility, I can see the Macintosh hard drive and my external hard drive which I can’t select to proceed the installation.
It says that I have to go to folder and accept the journalisation, and when I press folder “accept the journalisation” is in grey clear and I can’t click on.
So I can’t at all install any version or from the original hard drive or for an external one ...

Hi there,

If you select your external drive in Disk Utility, you will need to select Erase (Effacer for you). Once it's formatted you can install macOS directly to that drive.

 

[Vinz-China]

Hi there,

If you select your external drive in Disk Utility, you will need to select Erase (Effacer for you). Once it's formatted you can install macOS directly to that drive.

I try to go to the disk utility. It takes very long time to load, waiting since 5 minutes already.

 

[keysofanxiety]

I try to go to the disk utility. It takes very long time to load, waiting since 5 minutes already.

Yeah there's definitely something up with it. I'm 99% convinced your hard-drive's at fault as it's struggling to mount it in Disk Utility.

You'll just need to wait for it to load I'm afraid and then wipe the USB, then install macOS to that. At least when you've got macOS running as an external drive you'll be able to confirm the disk's health via diagnostics and maybe try a few things to recover your data (if you haven't got a backup).

 

[Vinz-China]

Yeah there's definitely something up with it. I'm 99% convinced your hard-drive's at fault as it's struggling to mount it in Disk Utility.

You'll just need to wait for it to load I'm afraid and then wipe the USB, then install macOS to that. At least when you've got macOS running as an external drive you'll be able to confirm the disk's health via diagnostics and maybe try a few things to recover your data (if you haven't got a backup).

Well I have no data to recover, I just would like to try to install macOS and windows if possible then run like this.

I watch a video on YouTube how to put Sierra to my extern hardrive and have this like a boot usb.

Everything work fine from my windows laptop, but when I tried to start my IMac computer with this external hardrive to launch the startup of Sierra nothing happens either.

I just have a grey screen without any installation procedures.

I join few pictures here step by step.

 

[Vinz-China]

After waiting 2 hours the hard disk utilities finally opened !!!!
Here is pictures, I can’t change anything into them, even my external hard drive.