Going from Mavericks to Yosemite before El Cap

I kept my iMac on Mavericks because there was a program I needed that will probably not run on Yosemite. When I updated my MBA to Yosemite it took about 30 minutes. My poor iMac has been updating to Yosemite for 2 hours, and all I have is the Apple logo and a half-filled bar. Anything I can do?

Hard to guess, but if it is only downloading and not installing, you can stop the download and re-try.

It started to install, restarted once, and now it's stuck. Can I safely do a hard shut down? There's nothing on the screen but an Apple and a bar.

Unusual for any program that works in mavericks but not in Yosemite and/or El Capitan. Power off using the rear button and reboot. Yosemite did that to me on install.

Wait it out. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more for that part of the install to finish. Don't shut it down or you may cause corruption to the drive. Hopefully, you made a CCC backup before starting the install.

At this point it's been 4 hours, with the same screen of an Apple and a 1/2 filled bar; it's going nowhere. I have a back-up on external hard drive, but not CCC. I have 1 vote for a hard shut-down and one don't do it. Not sure what to do!

Well, now you have 2 votes for starting over. 4 hours is too long. Try again.


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Thanks chscag, I did. Odd thing that when I restarted, there was Yosemite. I let it run for a bit, and then did a restart because there's a long lag between clicking on an app and the app opening. Seems to be getting better. Thank you for your time and expertise.

What you are experiencing is indexing by the new operating system.

Yep I agree, if you click on the spotlight icon you might even see "Indexing" and a sort of progress bar.
Another give away is launch pad which may say "Loading Applications"
This normal an can take a little while depending on how much data and the speed of your processor.

Rod & Harry,
Thank you both. I think all is well now.