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+--- Thread: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac (/showthread.php?tid=242324)
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Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - Dennis S - 06-11-2020
He has 10.6.8 on it and tried to download El Capitan and got the blinking question mark.
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - rjmacs - 06-11-2020
Boot from USB El Cap installer stick.
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - d4 - 06-11-2020
He made a full back up right?
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - Dennis S - 06-11-2020
d4 wrote:
He made a full back up right?
He said he did.
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - Dennis S - 06-11-2020
We're not sure if he should be upgrading to El Capitan or High Sierra or something else.
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - Sarcany - 06-11-2020
2009 is likely to have a bad hard drive. Did the friend do any sort of health-check before trying to upgrade?
...Are you available for in-person tech support for your friend?
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - Dennis S - 06-11-2020
Sarcany wrote:
2009 is likely to have a bad hard drive. Did the friend do any sort of health-check before trying to upgrade?
...Are you available for in-person tech support for your friend?
He has been using the HD with OS 10.6.8. I am not close by and don't know enough to help him.
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - PeterW - 06-11-2020
I don’t see how merely downloading an installer could do that. Wonder what he really did.
Anyhoo, tell him to restore from the backup, make sure everything is back to normal and then try again.
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - Sarcany - 06-11-2020
Under 10.6.8, there's no Recovery volume.
If El Cap was successfully installed then there may be a Recovery volume. Can try to boot with Command+R held down to get there and run the Disk Utility's "First Aid" check on the drive.
If Recovery is unavailable then first thing I'd do is to boot to an external drive to evaluate the boot drive with SMART Utility and Disk First Aid and maybe DiskWarrior. If your friend was still running 10.6.8, I wouldn't expect your friend to have such resources.
Next option would be to bring the Mac into a certified Apple consultant for an evaluation/repair. This might not be a valid option, depending on the state of the COVID-19 quarantine in the area.
https://consultants.apple.com/us/search
Re: Friend having trouble with Late 2009 iMac - NewtonMP2100 - 06-12-2020
.....if the 2009 iMac is late all the time.....would it help to get it a watch.......????