Startup beachball, and roll back question

[IestynRoberts]

Hello all,

I've just installed the new OS X Yosemite on my brand new iMac that I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

Is there any way to check if this installed correctly? When I logged in on Mavericks, it logged me in pretty much straight away, now, I get a beach ball, and it hangs there for a good 30 seconds to a solid minute, then the beachball goes away, and I can't click anywhere. Then, for some unknown reasons, it logs me in - is anyone else experienced this as well, and have any ideas on what could be causing it?

I read in the forums that someone else was having the issues, and they solved it by switching the graphic modes from discrete to integrated - but that option doesn't seem to be in the System Prefs anymore.

Another thing - as I didn't have anything on my iMac - as it's brand new, I didn't do a back up of anything. From my current experience with Yosemite - I really feel the need to go back to Mavericks, however, Apple have since pulled the installer from the AppStore, and I haven't got access to it anymore, my iMac didn't some with any installed cd's - as there's no cd player anymore in them, so any info anyone has would be fantastic.

Thanks a lot folks.

 

[IestynRoberts]

And also, right after I switch the Mac on, it takes an age at the new 'progress bar' area - could anyone confirm that it starts off black, then switches to white? Is this 'normal'?

However, on my Mac here, it takes about 3 mins to clear this screen.
Cheers.

 

[Weaselboy]

It sounds like maybe you have something running that is conflicting with Yosemite and causing that slow startup.

As a test, try holding the shift key at boot up to get into safe mode. That stopped any startup or launch items from running. Is it better in safe mode? If it is, then start removing startup and login items to find the culprit.

 

[IestynRoberts]

Hey Weaselboy!

Thanks a lot for you reply - I tried the exact same thing, and was about to post my findings here. I re-started in Safe Mode, and found that the boot up was indeed much faster, and after looking online for un-supported apps, I found that Mcafee, just about the only thing installed on here, was the culprit. I un-installed it, and startup & log-in now is quite fast. Awesome.

Any ideas on the OS X 10.9 - Mavericks side of things?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hey Weaselboy!

Thanks a lot for you reply - I tried the exact same thing, and was about to post my findings here. I re-started in Safe Mode, and found that the boot up was indeed much faster, and after looking online for un-supported apps, I found that Mcafee, just about the only thing installed on here, was the culprit. I un-installed it, and startup & log-in now is quite fast. Awesome.

Any ideas on the OS X 10.9 - Mavericks side of things?

Thanks a lot.

You mean to get back to Mavericks? Your iMac came with Mavericks, so to get back to it you can just use Internet recovery.

Hold command-option-r at boot to get to the recovery screen. From there use Disk Util in the erase tab to format the entire disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Make sure you select the drive brand name at the very top of the left column above Macintosh HD so the entire drive gets erased.

Once that is done, quit Disk Util and click reinstall OS X. That will put Mavericks back on your machine.

Of course, all your data will be gone, so make sure you have that backed up.

 

[theSeb]

Ahhh Mcafee. They weren't satisfied with messing up Windows performance for so many years. Now they have come over to OS X

 

[IestynRoberts]

You mean to get back to Mavericks? Your iMac came with Mavericks, so to get back to it you can just use Internet recovery.

Hold command-option-r at boot to get to the recovery screen. From there use Disk Util in the erase tab to format the entire disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Make sure you select the drive brand name at the very top of the left column above Macintosh HD so the entire drive gets erased.

Once that is done, quit Disk Util and click reinstall OS X. That will put Mavericks back on your machine.

Of course, all your data will be gone, so make sure you have that backed up.

Hey, good morning.

I tried doing this last night, but without the disk utility bit - just going straight to the reinstall. It was downloading the Mavericks for about 2 hours, started to install, shut down, and then decided it couldn't do it. It gave me an error log - but it wouldn't let me save it out.

Is it 100% necessary to erase the the entire disk before reinstalling the OS X? I'm just worried that it'll error out again if I format the whole disk, and it errors out again?

Thank you kindly.

 

[IestynRoberts]

Hello, I tried again today to use the internet recovery method to get Mavericks back onto the machine, but it failed again after downloading for 2 hours.

(Does it save that installer anywhere that I can put onto a USB stick - and so that I don't have to re-download for another 2 hours in the future?)

This time, I managed to save out the error log, is anyone able to tell me what the problem is by looking at this?

Pastebin link:

 

[IestynRoberts]

See Paste bin above.

 

[IestynRoberts]

*Part 3*

[Just remembered about Pastebin - and posted it there also - incase it helps even more.

PasteBin Link

Thank you.

 

[IestynRoberts]

Something I've just thought of - when I was doing the internet recovery, I was doing it by WiFi - downloading the OS X 10.9 and all, would you folks think that could be the problem, should I try again hardwired, by getting an ethernet cable or something?

I'm not tech savvy enough to understand the error log, so I can't see what the problem was

 

[Weaselboy]

Is it 100% necessary to erase the the entire disk before reinstalling the OS X? I'm just worried that it'll error out again if I format the whole disk, and it errors out again?

Thank you kindly.

In this case, yes absolutely. Yosemite turns the drive into a core storage volume that Mavericks is not going to install on, so you need to erase the entire disk to start over.

There is a rather convoluted process here that can be used to capture the installer on an external drive if you want.

 

[Fimeg]

Oct 21 05:40:45 localhost OSInstaller[379]: X Source too new: Source version: 10.10, Destination version: 10.9.4


You'll need to format the drive first. This forum has discussed this before...at least 20 times.

 

[IestynRoberts]

Hey Weaselboy & Fimeg,

Ok perfect - thank you. I did try and search the forums before posting, but I didn't find anything on the subject.

If I now create a Time Machine back up of a few things that's already on my Mac - app and such, will it include the OS X 10.10, and try to re-install that, or does the time machine only store what I want it to store?

 

[Weaselboy]

Hey Weaselboy & Fimeg,

Ok perfect - thank you. I did try and search the forums before posting, but I didn't find anything on the subject.

If I now create a Time Machine back up of a few things that's already on my Mac - app and such, will it include the OS X 10.10, and try to re-install that, or does the time machine only store what I want it to store?

Time Machine will backup everything, including the OS. But when you move data back in you do have some control over what get moved. You can just manually enter TM on the new install and copy in what folder you want, like Documents etc.