El Capitan Install Failed; Cannot Boot

[Qfxz]

My machine: mid 2007 24" iMac, 2 GB RAM Intel Duo, 667MHz, 2.8GHz, 500GB HD, superdrive, OS X 10.8

The install of El Capitan, at least what I thought was the installation, took a while. A screen shows up with the 10.11 logo stating to install click continue, agree to terms and install OS, I got the option to use disk utility, time machine or recovery or click the install button. I clicked, installation (from bootable flash drive) it stated to restart, with this done a message came that there was installation media on the destination volume, try again.

I restarted and got a progress bar (Apple logo above) which never fully finished, or it did but nothing happened. After walking away for an hour or two, I powered the machine down, restarted it with the option button to get the start up disk manager but only got the apple logo and progress bar, again. I tried to start in recovery mode, also in safe mode with the progress bar appearing after each attempt.

Obviously, I cannot access the drive to remove whatever install media is present on that disk. What options do I have at this point?

Thank you
I

 

[Cheryl]

You downloaded the El Capitan installer to your hard drive, then copied it to a flash drive creating a bootable drive. I am thinking that it detected the original download.

Try going to Recovery boot again, or if you have a bootable back up, try starting up with that.

 

[Qfxz]

You downloaded the El Capitan installer to your hard drive, then copied it to a flash drive creating a bootable drive. I am thinking that it detected the original download.

Try going to Recovery boot again, or if you have a bootable back up, try starting up with that.

Thanks Cheryl, the machine does not respond to any attempt to boot into anything, what I get is a somewhat dirty white background with the Apple logo and the progress bar below that. When I try booting to the start up disk mgr, recovery or safe mode it always ends up with the screen I just described. I need to find another Mac so I can do target disk mode then locate the original El Capitan installer and delete it then flush the trash in hope that I can restart again to install the OS. There is one person I met that rebuilds Macs whom I may persuade to help me with this I am sure this will work.

 

[Doctor X]

Allow me to be That Guy . . . you know . . . the one who asks you "did you back up your data? You did not? BWA!HA!HA!HA!HA!"

Which in the Days of Yore when "back up" meant piles of DVDs or . . . data CDs . . . or "floppy disks" and you having to come after me with a baseball bat!

To which I can only suggest in the future you spend what is now not a lot of $ to get an External HD to clone your drive. As you now know, you could have booted to that clone then fixed your main drive. Worst Case Scenario would be cloning from this most recent clone on your Ext-HD and trying again.

Fine.

So how does this at all help you now? A lot depends on whether or not you have saved your data. If you have done that, then you can trouble-shoot knowing that one you get your operating system fixed you can recover anything lost.

Pretending that you have NOT done that, get said External HD. When you get Your Friend to loan you his Mac for a day or what have you, copy your data on that Ext-HD once it gains access to your HD through Target-Disk-Mode. So now you can work on fixing your system knowing that you have not lost your data.

It reads like maybe your Installation on your Flash Drive was not complete? It seems to me if it was, you could boot off of that. No criticism, it took me a few tries to create a "bootable" disk for El Capitan.

Anyways, once you have preserved your data, you can try Disk Utility to see if it can fix the problem. If/when it does not it may just be faster to wipe the disk, format it, load El Capitan, then transfer over your data, but that is a royal pain I know.

I will stop there in fear I may be answering questions/issues you do not actually have.

--J.D.

P.S. Always clone first before upgrading anything.

P.P.S.

 

[Cheryl]

Yes, I think most of us had at one time a panic because we didn’t do a full bootable back up when a problem came up and surprised us. We learn from our mistakes or laziness in some cases.
Sometimes it may take several attempts to get into recovery mode. Try again: To start up from OS X Recovery, hold down Command (⌘)-R immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac. Release when you see the Apple logo. If you can't start up from OS X Recovery, try holding down Option-Command-R to start up from OS X Internet Recovery*.

They say third time is the charm.