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catalina install consistently fails

After the most recent security upgrade totally crashed my iMac, I made several attempts to recover using all the available tools, delete PRAM, safe mode which didn’t work at all, time machine which didn’t work at all, recovery mode which allowed me to finally reformat. I deleted, erased, renamed, reformatted APFS, and did a fresh install of Catalina. After many hours I get a desktop and it functions terribly.  Beyond slow…glacial… and I get 800 Mbps download speed.

Ran first aid again and again… no errors. Sometimes the HD would uncounted and sometimes it wouldn’t. I ran online diagnostics multiple times and no errors. ADP000. Reformatting and reinstalling 5 times. It takes forever and never works properly during or after. Something weird and different happens each time. 

    I checked and copied the installer logs twice. They are filled with error messages but each install has different error messages. A clean slate and fresh install should not fail every time. For instance…

    March 8 the errors began with:  

Mar 7, 2022 at 4:42:14 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: Service exited with abnormal code: 1

Mar 7, 2022 at 4:42:20 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: Failed to bootstrap path: path = /usr/libexec/locationd, error = 108: Invalid path


    March 10 began with: 

Mar 10, 2022 at 8:06:49 com.Apple.doc.launchd[1]: Service exited with abnormal code: 75

Mar 10, 2022 at 8:06:51 com.Apple.doc.launchd[1]: Service exited with abnormal code: 1

Mar 10, 2022 at 8:06:51 com.Apple.doc.launched[1]: Failed to bootstrap path: path = /use/lib exec/location and, error = 108: invalid path. 


    This is all 100% controlled by Apple’s recovery operations First Aid & Reinstall and it keeps doing different wrong things. 

    Anyone have a clue how to resolve this problem? 2013 27” iMac

Thank you for your attention. 

iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Mar 11, 2022 8:19 AM

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Posted on Mar 11, 2022 1:29 PM

If you can download and run DriveDXhttps://binaryfruit.com/drivedx You now have a fresh clean operating system with no third party apps? Right.You did a nvram reset? Command-Option-P-R keys and power button for 2 chimes. How about SMC reset. unplug the power cord and hold the power button for 10 seconds. If you choose to do another reinstall, use an ethernet cable if you can.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 11, 2022 1:29 PM in response to Les Vogt1

If you can download and run DriveDXhttps://binaryfruit.com/drivedx You now have a fresh clean operating system with no third party apps? Right.You did a nvram reset? Command-Option-P-R keys and power button for 2 chimes. How about SMC reset. unplug the power cord and hold the power button for 10 seconds. If you choose to do another reinstall, use an ethernet cable if you can.

catalina install consistently fails

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