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I have a 27 inch all in one won’t boot past pinwheel won’t allow recovery or safe-mode commands @ boot up any ideas.
 

chscag

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Welcome to our forums.

We are going to need more information: Year and model of your iMac 27". Which version of macOS it's running.

We realize that you can't boot the machine to find out the above information. We're hoping you already know it.

It does sound like your iMac may have a bad hard drive, but it could also be something else. If possible, try booting the machine from an external source: bootable USB flash drive with macOS on it. Or from another Mac using target disk mode.
 
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Also, you may need a USB keyboard, to get the keyboard shortcuts to be recognized.
 

IWT


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Taking up Bob's point on post #3; if your iMac has a chime (ie normally makes a chime sound on boot up), Bluetooth (BT) isn't recognised or activated until immediately after the first chime. Consequently, if your Keyboard is of the BT type (eg Apple Magic Keyboard), you need to reboot the iMac, wait for the chime, then immediately hold down the Shift key and keep holding it until the Apple logo appears.

Then it will take you into Safe Mode.

The same principle applies to using Command plus R to get into Recovery Mode.

There is a way round this, however. If you have the Apple Magic Keyboard, connect it via USB to the iMac (as you would to recharge the battery). This effectively converts it to a "wired" KB and you can hold down the Shift key (or Cmd plus R) from the start of the reboot.

See if that helps.

But above all, we really do need to know as much as possible about the Model, Year, Specs and Operating System (OS) as you are able to provide under your difficult circumstances.

Ian
 
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I am using a wired key board and have tried the shift and command+r no luck. I tried making a boot drive with free program Transmac. I am also trying to do this using a windows pc. When I look for drive in boot choices it dosen’t show
 
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I don't believe that is possible.
 

Raz0rEdge

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First, Transmac is not free and meant to read APFS/HFS drives or open DMG files. What exactly are you doing with that when it comes to making your iMac boot?

Please provide what you've done and are doing with _excruciating_ detail, don't leave anything out.
 
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Well I am presently downloading a copy of mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.1.dmg I then plan on using Transmac to make a bootable pen drive. I then plan to plug it in and see if I can find it to boot from
 
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Again Transmac will not work and I trust this .dmg file is not a pirated copy?

Only place to get Mac OS legally is the app Store with an account.
 
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chscag

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@Candyman:

Hopefully, you've downloaded your copy of El Capitan from Apple as that is the only legal place it can be downloaded from. Also, from past experience TransMac does not work.
 

Raz0rEdge

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Thank you for the extra info.

These instructions seem to indicate that you can do what you want to do.
 
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Rod


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Love to hear how it works out. So many people seem to get stuck on the, "well, you need another bootable source to...." catch. It always seems to come down to trying to buy a bootable USB thumb drive on Amazon or similar.
Gone are the days when you could just pop the install disc into the disk drive, assuming you could find it of course.
 
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What work for me was I installed a new 2T 7200RPM Harddrive. do not use a Green drives. Lots of confit with Apple power management.

I pick-up my 27" for $325.00 over 2 years ago. It was running very poorly on a 1.5 green drive, and had a fresh installed OSX. this drive was replaced do to a recall on the drive, the same year the iMac was built. with a 1.5T green drive, on Apple website, no green drive was ever used. Only a 1T 7200rpm. My iMac still running well and the 1.5T works well as a Back-up.

I hope this info will help and others
 

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