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Late 2009 27" iMac + internal SSD

E

Emen Mali

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 22, 2014
55
4
Chicago, Illinois
Family has a 27" that they want to continue to use, so I thought I would help them with upgrading the internal drive to an SSD and maxing out the memory (32gb) I installed the SSD and booted from thumb drive with High Sierra and install seemed fine... until it rebooted. The progress bar goes half way then the screen turns white. At first I thought it was the ssd, so I bought a brand new one (first one I had for a bout 6 months) and same thing. I can boot into Safe Mode but thats about it. I've the PRAM, SMC, etc.

This is the first Mac I've had trouble with upgrading anything in it. RAM appears just fine. I'd appreciate any help here.
 
Are you able to boot the iMac with an external drive? If it boots okay from an external drive, the internal drive cable may be defective. If it won't boot from an external drive, the problem may be a failed GPU.
 
High Sierra is supported on this particular iMac, so I used Apple's terminal command to create a bootable usb installer. And I did get the same problem when I set up the original internal drive as external via drive dock.

If it is the GPU, can this be fixed? reading up on ifixit's website it says you can install a iMac 2011 Graphic Card (doubles the ram) with a slight removal of some plastic.
 
It can be fixed but not an easy fix. Before you do anything, attach an external monitor or TV to the iMac (with the correct adapter) and try booting with the external drive. If the external monitor show the same white screen, then you will know for sure that the GPU is the problem.
 
I have the same model and the advise was to open terminal from the recovery partition, type " date 10101017 "and hit return then install from stick (worked) or internet. worked for this and late 2008 Macbook pro for reinstall/unsupported El Capitan, oh what joy and so easy after so much frustration. The last thing I wanted to do was touch Terminal but now we are new friends. Reset time and date to auto after reboot and and upgrade from apple. Some apps won't work with old date (10th Oct 2017 I think) showing up for certificates.
 
Last edited:
chscag said:
It can be fixed but not an easy fix. Before you do anything, attach an external monitor or TV to the iMac (with the correct adapter) and try booting with the external drive. If the external monitor show the same white screen, then you will know for sure that the GPU is the problem.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily, installs will hang for a variety of reasons, and it works in safe mode.
 
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