Help -- recovery mode painfully slow and not working

[markoos119]

I have a 2011 iMac with El Capitan 10.11.4. Everything runs totally fine with the system, and diagnostics check out ok. I'm trying to sell it, so I need to wipe the hard drive & revert to factory settings. I'm following the commonly-published instructions, to reboot to recovery mode, use disk utiliity, etc.

The problem is that launching recovery mode either doesn't finish at all, or takes forever to launch. Just to get the language selection takes forever....I'm talking HOURS. Then if I can click on disk utility, I'll get a spinning disk forever when I try to click on the drive...literally it won't launch the dialog even 8 hours later. For some reason recovery mode is not working at all, even though the machine runs totally fine once booted normally.

Has anyone seen this behavior? Any possible fix? I don't want to sell the machine before I properly wipe the drive, so I'm really stuck.

Thanks!

 

[pigoo3]

Just to verify. To get into the Recovery Partition…are you pressing the command + r keys (2 key command) on reboot?

- Nick

 

[markoos119]

Yes, that's correct, command+r.

I also tried the 'option' boot -- and when I selected recovery partition it would hang forever as well.

 

[pigoo3]

Two more quick questions:

1. What sort of internet connection speed do you have?
2. Was the hard drive ever replaced in your iMac?

- Nick

 

[markoos119]

Internet is FIOS 150 Mbit. Speedtest returns over 100 Mb/sec.

Hard drive was never replaced. I upgraded the RAM from 4 to 16, that's the only upgrade.

 

[pigoo3]

Everything sounds good so far.

One other thing you can try is Internet Recovery. To force the computer to do this…it's a 3-key combo of command + option + r upon reboot. If everything was done properly…you should see a Earth Globe image.

- Nick

 

[markoos119]

Ok then! I haven't tried that yet. Will try that tonight and post the results....fingers crossed. Thanks very much!

 

[markoos119]

pigoo3 -- it worked! It launched with normal fast speed like I would expect. Was able to wipe the drive right away and initiate the OS X reinstallation (turns out to be Lion). Thanks for helping out!

Ferrarr -- thanks also. I carelessly misplaced this disc, so couldn't do this. The Internet recovery worked though.

 

[pigoo3]

Congrats. Glad it worked.

Good luck with the sale of the iMac…and then getting yourself something brand shiny new (if you haven't gotten something already).

- Nick