Chosen Solution

Two days ago I was on the Mac and I turned it off. I then turned it back on like 30 seconds later and I don’t know what my dad did but he tried to stop the computer from turning on or something or he was pressing the keyboard, because when I came back a while later, the loading bar on the boot up screen was frozen at 100%. I then tried again yesterday to turn it on but it never booted up, it only froze on the loading screen. I even turned it on and left the house, and around 1 hour later, the computer was STILL frozen on the same screen at 100%. So all day today, I was searching up the problem and tried everything I could to fix it, but nothing worked and it just seemed to get worse. I was following this person’s suggestions - My mac is stuck on the white startup screen!.

  • Firstly, I think I tried to repair my disk through Disk Utility by holding (cmd+r) when booting up. It said it was done and it was fine. But when I restarted my computer, it still kept on freezing.
  • I then tried resetting my NVRAM, but it still didn’t work. I then came across ANOTHER PROBLEM. I wasn’t able to boot into Safe Mode… I held down shift after I heard the startup noise (I saw on a website that if you have a wireless mac keyboard, you have to press shift after the noise). I tried releasing it when I see the grey apple logo with the loading bar and I also tried holding it down until it would enter safe mode but I was just stuck there waiting forever. Neither worked. I was thinking the problem was that I’m not pressing the shift key at the right time or something like that.
  • I THEN tried to go into single user mode and I typed /sbin/fsck -fy and it said my macintosh seems to be fine. Still wouldn’t work… I searched up how to enter safe mode using terminal as I wanted to see if my timing pressing the shift key was the problem. I was going to enter (sudo nvram boot-args="-x") in single user mode and then enter (sudo nvram boot-args=" “) once I’m in safe mode to remove the setting. But then I got scared in case safe mode doesn’t load like normal boot up and I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I didn’t want to mess everything up, so I left it. I also didn’t know whether holding (cmd+s) would allow me to go into single user mode after I set the preset boot up thing to safe mode. Later I then reset my NVRAM once or twice more and I tried repairing my disk, BUT SINCE THEN, IT HAS SAID NOTHING BUT ‘FAILED TO REPAIR’. I even went to single user terminal and wrote /sbin/fsck -fy and fsck -fy again (think they’re exactly the same) and it now says the volume has been edited. I have also reset my SMC. Now whenever I turn on my mac, instead of getting stuck on the boot up screen, the loading bar goes to about 90% and then my computer just turns off. I don’t know if there’s anything else to do now apart from purchasing an external hard-drive and making a new disk image of my mac and putting it onto the external hard-drive. And then factory resetting my mac and restoring from the disk image. I don’t even know if this will work. Will it? Could someone please help me. I’m begging you. I have my final GCSE exams (in England) in less than a month and I desperately need the computer working again. The last thing I would want to do is a full factory reset as I have family photos and important stuff on my computer. Thank you in advance and sorry for the reaaallyy long question lol, I just want to go into as much detail as I can so it will be easier for you guys to help me.

Do you have access to another Mac? I’m suspecting your drive has some issues. Ideally, you want to first salvage your apps and data if you haven’t been backing your system up. There are two ways to do this first is to connect the other system in Target Disk Mode (back to back using a Thunderbolt cable) The other is to use the other Mac to create a bootable USB Thumb drive OS installer and leverage it to boot your system. to then copy off to a second external drive. If you’ve been good in backing up then you can just get the OS installer drive setup and then reformat and install a fresh copy of OS and then restore your stuff. References: Mac startup key combinationsHow to use target disk mode to move files to another computerHow to use Time Machine to back up or restore your MacHow to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive