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Sometimes (and in particular the last two times I restarted), a strange bar looking like a load bar or a copy bar appears on the restart screen, as in the image below.

enter image description here

I am running Mac OS X 10.9.5. What is it? Is it just the installation progress of updates (that install without me saying anything but that is another story) or is it something else?

Note

It has oftimes happened to me that I saw this:

enter image description here

Is it correct to call that "freezing"? If not, what is the correct name? And is it any different from hibernation aka deep sleep?

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MickG
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  • Is that in the shutdown phase, or startup? That just looks like the regular startup screen [black on newer Macs, pale grey on older] – Tetsujin Feb 08 '18 at 08:26
  • @Tetsujin Startup. The bar at the bottom is unusual to me. That is what I am asking about. – MickG Feb 08 '18 at 08:35
  • hmm... OK I've never seen wake from sleep/hibernate [I've never allowed my machines to sleep, ever] – Tetsujin Feb 08 '18 at 08:36

1 Answers1

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This is the Mac restoring from safe sleep (aka hibernation). The contents of RAM was previously copied to disk and is now being restored. For HDDs, this process can take a while.

When your Mac wakes from sleep, you might see a progress bar on its display. This is normal behavior that means your Mac is waking from Safe Sleep.

If you see a progress bar when your Mac wakes from sleep - Apple Support

grg
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  • Ah so it's because my battery ran out and I tried to awake it before it got to "freeze" (which causes the computer to display a partially grayed-ouf version of what appeared on screen before sleeping and 19 vertical tacks that go white one after the other). Or are these the same thing? But then why do two different things happen? – MickG Feb 08 '18 at 08:38
  • Note: added a pic of the 19 tacks in the post's Note. – MickG Feb 08 '18 at 08:53
  • Is it normal that this just happened after I chose Apple menu > Restart and hit enter, thus restarting the computer? – MickG Feb 14 '18 at 20:12