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Late 2013 iMac keeps rebooting

N

niallybin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 22, 2011
7
0
Hello all!

My trusty 2013 iMac seems to have finally given up!

Its a late 2013 27" iMac running Catalina

It turns on, but just continually reboots. It gets to the Apple logo but then restarts and does the same thing again, and again...

I can't boot it into Safe mode or Recovery mode. When i try those it gets to the Apple logo, progresses to about 2/3 of the bar and then freezes.

Does any one have any ideas as to what i can do?

Cant afford a replacement yet!

thanks

Niall
 
That might be a GPU failure.

Have you tried Apple’s HW diagnostic test?

It gives a lot of false negatives in my experience, but it might be worth a shot.
 
It is more than likely a hard drive fault. You could always try reinstalling MacOS through recovery
 
Juicy Box said:
That might be a GPU failure.

Have you tried Apple’s HW diagnostic test?

It gives a lot of false negatives in my experience, but it might be worth a shot.
Click to expand...
I just tried that and its says there are "No issue found"
Then it restarts into recovery mode and it gets half way through the progress bar and freezes.
I would say there are some issues!
 
TwoH said:
It is more than likely a hard drive fault. You could always try reinstalling MacOS through recovery
Click to expand...
unfortunately cant boot into recovery mode, just freezes half way through the progress bar
 
niallybin said:
I just tried that and its says there are "No issue found"
Click to expand...
As I think I mentioned already, Apple's HW Diagnostic Test gives a lot of false negatives in my experience.



niallybin said:
unfortunately cant boot into recovery mode, just freezes half way through the progress bar
Click to expand...
What buttons are you pressing?

Have you tried Internet Recovery Mode or just Recovery Mode??

Command-R = Recovery Mode using the internal recovery partition

Option-Command-R = Internet Recovery mode for the latest available OS

Shift-Option-Command-R = Internet Recovery mode for the original OS that came on your Mac
 
Juicy Box said:
As I think I mentioned already, Apple's HW Diagnostic Test gives a lot of false negatives in my experience.




What buttons are you pressing?

Have you tried Internet Recovery Mode or just Recovery Mode??

Command-R = Recovery Mode using the internal recovery partition

Option-Command-R = Internet Recovery mode for the latest available OS

Shift-Option-Command-R = Internet Recovery mode for the original OS that came on your Mac
Click to expand...
Thank you for your help

Command-R - just boots to black screen with apple logo and progress bar and then freezes half way through

Option-Command-R - goes to the Internet Recovery Screen says this may take while, then reboots to black screen with apple logo and progress bar and freezes

Shift-Option-Command-R - goes to the Internet Recovery Screen says this may take while, then reboots to grey screen with apple logo, but no progress bar. Then freezes.

I sense a pattern here...
 
Also, what are your specs, specifically what type of internal drive do you have?
 
OP:

Does the iMac have an internal fusion drive?
If so, HOW LARGE is it?
1tb?
2tb?
3tb?

I believe that back around this time, there was a problem with the HDD portion of the fusion drives, in particular the 3tb version.
Apple had a recall on these for a while, but of course now that's over.

Even if you don't have the 3tb fusion drive, the problem could be related to problems with a 1tb or 2tb fusion drive -- usually it's the HDD portion that starts "going bad".
 
Juicy Box said:
Also, what are your specs, specifically what type of internal drive do you have?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I don't have another Mac, had an old MacBook Pro but my daughter spilt a cup of tea on that one!

I think it was the 3TB fusion, but maybe the 2TB. Cant remember now!
3.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
16GB Ram
 
Fishrrman said:
OP:

Does the iMac have an internal fusion drive?
If so, HOW LARGE is it?
1tb?
2tb?
3tb?

I believe that back around this time, there was a problem with the HDD portion of the fusion drives, in particular the 3tb version.
Apple had a recall on these for a while, but of course now that's over.

Even if you don't have the 3tb fusion drive, the problem could be related to problems with a 1tb or 2tb fusion drive -- usually it's the HDD portion that starts "going bad".
Click to expand...

I think it was the 3TB fusion, but maybe the 2TB. Cant remember now!

Should i try replacing the HDD? What specs would i need for the replacement??
 
The HDD in your iMac will be a normal 3.5-inch HDD, but that is only one part of the fusion drive, which also includes a blade-type SSD, which you can replace with a PCIe NVME drive. If you want to replace one drive, I think should replace both.
 
Again, the 3tb platter-based HDDs in the fusion drive models were failure-prone.
That's what I'd be looking at first.
 
I agree, and the platter drive is fairly simple, compared to replacing the blade drive.
But, getting at anything inside is a lot of "fun", and if you want to get a nearly 10-year old Mac working again - might as well go the extra step or two, and go SSD-only. Makes an iMac like that work the way you always hoped it would...
 
niallybin said:
What could i do with another Mac?
Click to expand...
You could theoretically boot the iMac into target disk mode, potentially allowing you to diagnose the issue from the other Mac -- but this largely assumes that the root cause of your issue is the hard drive. If the cause is the video card, target disk mode won't help much.

Given that you've indicated that your other Mac is already toast and you can't convince the iMac to boot at all, even using Internet Recovery... I'd say you may have to consider a visit to your local Apple Store, if you have one nearby. Short of jumping straight to replacing the hard drive, most any measure that you could do on your own and without another Mac at hand would require you to at the very minimum be able to boot into Internet Recovery.

(I mean, you can't very well install macOS onto an external USB device in order to further diagnose the internal hard drive, if you can't even gain access to the installer itself... right?)
 
zarmanto said:
You could theoretically boot the iMac into target disk mode, potentially allowing you to diagnose the issue from the other Mac -- but this largely assumes that the root cause of your issue is the hard drive. If the cause is the video card, target disk mode won't help much.

Given that you've indicated that your other Mac is already toast and you can't convince the iMac to boot at all, even using Internet Recovery... I'd say you may have to consider a visit to your local Apple Store, if you have one nearby. Short of jumping straight to replacing the hard drive, most any measure that you could do on your own and without another Mac at hand would require you to at the very minimum be able to boot into Internet Recovery.

(I mean, you can't very well install macOS onto an external USB device in order to further diagnose the internal hard drive, if you can't even gain access to the installer itself... right?)
Click to expand...

Yes, pay a visit to your local Apple Store to buy another iMac.
Apple Store jobs are to sell new iMacs, do warranty and repair new iMacs.
They won't repair your 10-year-old iMac for you.
 
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