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KerryXEX

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 21, 2008
13
2
Munich / Germany
Hi all,

I had quite a hard time installing the GM version, but finally resolved it yesterday. It went like this:
  • I was on El Cap Beta since first public beta and successfully installed each new beta step
  • Once (after beta 3?) boot would crash with kernel panic, due to a faulty kernel extension which could be identified via safe boot and checking the boot logs
  • Now with the install of the GM, setup went through without problems, but the first boot would show the load bar until almost 80% and then stay there forever with just the Apple logo and the status bar. Verbose mode showed nothing, just stopped at some point. Even safe mode would not boot completely.
  • I tried to reinstall again with just the same result.
  • Before restoring everything from TM (which actually is NOT everything in my case, because I don't want my 60 GB Windows VM to be backed up every day...), I did the following for a semi-clean reinstall:
    • Boot into Recovery Mode (or in my case a recovery MAC OS instance from stick)
    • RENAME the "/System" folder on the hard drive into "/System.OLD" (or whatever)
    • then start the installation again
  • That did it. The installation went through again without problems and bootet correctly after that. All users, settings and programs were still there unchanged
  • Only issue was, that my admin rights for the users were gone. So I had to activate root and assing Administration rights for the required users, then deactivate root again (described here: https://www.personalmacgeniuses.com/2013/10/31/case-of-the-missing-admin-account/#.Vfq_hrxULva
It seems to be a random error because I couldn't find any similar threads or questions anywhere. However, I had my existing OSX installation pulled through every version since 10.4 (2006!).. so maybe a semi-fresh start was quite healthy :)
 
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