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iMac mid 2014 has been working fine for 5 years (well, sort of since I made the mistake of upgrading to Catalina).

As of today:

  • start the mac
  • select a user from login screen
  • enter password
  • A few seconds elapse and then the cursor changes to the spinning colour wheel

At this point the UI is frozen. I have tried leaving it in this state for 24 hours to see if it clears, it does not. While in this state I can SSH into the mac and sudo kill -9 the login window daemon to get back to the user selection screen.

Tried so far:

If I can I'd like to avoid having to backup data via scp, wiping the disk and reinstalling from scratch - I've got better things to do with my life.

I also have no intention of visiting a Mac Store only to be told my a smug child that he's going to wipe the disk and reinstall.

Someone out there must know what specific breakage Apple and snuck in via auto update the night before and how to undo the damage, surely?

Hardware:

    Hardware Overview:

      Model Name: iMac
      Model Identifier: iMac14,2
      Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i7
      Processor Speed: 3.5 GHz
      Number of Processors: 1
      Total Number of Cores: 4
      L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
      L3 Cache: 8 MB
      Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
      Memory: 32 GB
      Boot ROM Version: 140.0.0.0.0
      SMC Version (system): 2.15f7
      Serial Number (system): DGKLG0SXF8JC
      Hardware UUID: 78775D43-2857-5894-88AC-36ED44B3DE84

Software:

    System Software Overview:

      System Version: macOS 10.15.2 (19C57)
      Kernel Version: Darwin 19.2.0
      Boot Volume: Macintosh HD
      Boot Mode: Normal
      Computer Name: iSpartacus2
      User Name: Richard Hodges (rhodges)
      Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
      System Integrity Protection: Enabled
      Time since boot: 23:03
klanomath
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Richard Hodges
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  • Did you already boot your Mac with SIP disabled? – klanomath Dec 26 '19 at 12:02
  • @klanomath no. Is there a way to check whether this is necessary? – Richard Hodges Dec 26 '19 at 12:15
  • @RichardHodges Without log files/a full system report it's really difficult to investigate the failure. Disabling SIP and rebooting is a first step. You may also send me the full system report (zipped) and I will have a look (klanomath(at)googlemail.com). Additional diagnostic tests might be necessary. – klanomath Dec 26 '19 at 12:25
  • If I understood the comments correctly, the problem started with Mojave and persisted with Catalina after reinstalling the OS. Out of curiosity: How did you reinstall the OS if you can't boot into a GUI? – nohillside Dec 26 '19 at 14:29
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    @nohillside the computer does boot into a GUI, it freezes after you enter your password at the login screen. I reinstalled using recovery boot. – Richard Hodges Dec 26 '19 at 17:44
  • Do you feel comfortable with creating a new user account while being logged in via SSH (see https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/348956/how-can-i-create-a-new-user-through-terminal-macos-10-14 for instance)? – nohillside Dec 26 '19 at 17:47
  • @nohillside already tried it. the new user freezes after password entry too. – Richard Hodges Dec 26 '19 at 18:03
  • Seems like some needed data or file got corrupted. said you reinstalled, but then you say you need to copy your data. I'd try installing then booting from an external drive. If I could figure out how ::: from what you tried, would point to a hardware problem, but no idea what or how. Run hardware diagnostics. – historystamp Dec 26 '19 at 22:00
  • You can use the ditto command to copy a complete directory path. You can copy files on the Unix command line interface if you placed the flash drive in a USB port before powering on your machine.

    ditto -X -rsrc /SSD/users/rastefatah/Desktop/Outlook/* /Volumes/thumb

     – historystamp Dec 26 '19 at 22:05
  • Maybe a different issue, but on same hardware, after upgrading to Catalina, it freezes during login every time, except after a fresh reboot. So every morning it freezes on login and I have to do a hard reboot. – user239558 Mar 07 '20 at 07:42

1 Answers1

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Not really a good answer. In the end I had to nuke the entire disk and reinstall from the recovery partition.

I'll stay with linux going forward.

Richard Hodges
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  • Could you be more descriptive about the approach? since I'm having the same issue with no luck – Gayan Pathirage Apr 26 '20 at 14:26
  • @GayanPathirage I booted into the recovery partition and copied some onlne instructions on how to nuke the user partition and reinstall from scratch.

    Make sure you save important data first - you will lose it.

     – Richard Hodges Apr 26 '20 at 15:43