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User profile for user: Magic Ken
Magic Ken Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Old iMac will only start up in safe mode.

So, my older iMac (2009) sort of gave up the ghost a few months ago. I thought it was a simple matter of a completely full hard drive. 500G with 499.5 used. It suddenly would not start at all. I started in safe mode by holding Command-R and was successful. Now it will not start up in anything but safe mode.

I've tried everything from trying to download a new OS and repairing the disk. The disk repair says that there is nothing wrong. I've been able to hook up to the WIFI, but unable to download a fresh version of High Sierra. In fact, there is nothing that seems to work with trying to get back to booting with the hard drive.

This computer was working well with High Sierra and it's crash was a bit unexpected. I have a Time Machine backup but the safe mode is also unable to access it.

I've read about some fixes, but would like a bit of support from the folks who know about this kind of stuff.

Please offer me a bit of help if you can.

Ken.

Posted on Oct 6, 2021 9:04 AM

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User profile for user: HWTech
HWTech
User level: Level 9
60,740 points

Posted on Oct 6, 2021 5:49 PM

If Safe Mode works, then most likely you have some third party software installed that is causing a problem since Safe Mode disables Login Items and third party Startup Items. You can run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


You can also run the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect many types of drive failures so you may want to run DriveDx to check the health of the drive(s). Post the report here for each internal drive using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


You can also create a bootable macOS USB installer using the instructions in this Apple article:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


FYI, never let macOS run out of free storage space since it can either corrupt the files on the drive or it may make it impossible to mount the drive read+write meaning it is impossible to delete any files meaning the drive will need to be erased.


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User profile for user: HWTech
HWTech
User level: Level 9
60,740 points

Oct 6, 2021 5:49 PM in response to Magic Ken

If Safe Mode works, then most likely you have some third party software installed that is causing a problem since Safe Mode disables Login Items and third party Startup Items. You can run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


You can also run the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect many types of drive failures so you may want to run DriveDx to check the health of the drive(s). Post the report here for each internal drive using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


You can also create a bootable macOS USB installer using the instructions in this Apple article:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


FYI, never let macOS run out of free storage space since it can either corrupt the files on the drive or it may make it impossible to mount the drive read+write meaning it is impossible to delete any files meaning the drive will need to be erased.


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Old iMac will only start up in safe mode.

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