I'm stuck!!

[tiredretired]

As the rainbow wheel continued to get worse today I decided to do a factory reset in a last ditch effort to salvage this 2017 Intel based i5 iMac running latest version of MacOS before it takes it's last trip out of a window. LOL.

In Recovery mode I wiped the hard drive and then rebooted the computer. MacOS utilities screen pops up offering me the 4 choices I'm sure you guys are familiar with. I want to do the second one, reinstall MacOS. The problem is neither the keyboard or the mouse will work, both wireless. Before I purchase a usb keyboard and mouse is there something I am not do right or neglected to do in this process? Thanx!!

 

[ferrarr]

Do you have the charging cord handy or are these battery operated models? If they are battery, then you will need an inexpensive USB keyboard and mouse. You may be able to just use a USB mouse if you have the ability to activate the virtual keyboard available on the login screen.

 

[tiredretired]

Thanx Bob.

I have the charging cord. Plugging the cable into the keyboard permits the up / down keys on the bottom right to work and scroll through the four options. Hitting the return / enter key does nothing. Plugging the cable into the mouse does nothing. Does not work a bit.

I do not get any log in screen. Restarting the iMac shows the Apple logo on a black screen and progress bar. Once complete it goes to MacOS Utilities screen without log in. No other options available.

 

[tiredretired]

OK, I discovered that hitting Tab button takes me to the next screen where I am given the opportunity to install Catalina. However, the "Continue" button needs to be selected and I am now stuck there. The tab button is not working its magic now.

 

[Slydude]

There are a couple of things that you can try that have worked for me>

My first suggestion was to try using the keyboard charging cable but you have apparently tried that. When I try that I have access to all of the keys although that seems not to be true for you. If you try to initiate the Bluetooth pairing process are you able to do that? I think I have been able to in the past.

As far as the mouse goes, Have you tried clicking the mouse rapidly three or four times in succession? Assuming that the mouse has some amount of charge left this often works.

If you can't borrow a USB keyboard, any cheap USB mouse and keyboard should work.

 

[Rod]

Ideally you should really boot from another source. You say you wiped the HD but you cant really do that from the device itself. If you had say a bootable macOS installer to start up from you would not have the issues you are having with the mouse and keyboard UNLESS it's a hardware issue as well. In that way it can be a diagnostic tool as well.
Do you have a Bootable Clone? If not, do you have another Mac available? if so you can create a bootable macOS installer, with a little help from us.

 

[ferrarr]

With the mouse plugged in, did you click the mouse to see if it clicked the cursor? You may have to turn the mouse off for it to work.

 

[tiredretired]

OK, update. I found a USB mouse and it works. So, I clicked on restore the OS but the mac says I have no internet connection and could not figure out how to log into my wifi with the options provided so I decided to try and restore from time machine. So I hooked up my external hard drive. It read everything fine, and I started restoring. When I went to bed it said 8 hours 30 mins remaining to restore. This morning the computer appears to be frozen with the black screen, Apple logo and a progress bar that appears to be 99%. Almost there. The External is not spinning and the red light is just staying on instead of flickering like it was.

I have no boot disc, stupidly but in all fairness to me I am just not smart enough to know better about these things. However I am smart enough to know this computer is not worth paying someone to fix it if it is fixable. It has never been right from day one. Not sure where to go from here.

 

[ferrarr]

Power it down, wait a minute or more, then start it up and it should continue where it froze and then restart to complete the install.

 

[tiredretired]

Thank you.

I've tried exactly that 3 times and each time the progress bar starts over and stops at the same place.

I don't have much hair, but gonna have even less before this is over. Hahahaha.

 

[tiredretired]

One final question before I pack this in and call it a day. Should I buy one of those bootable Ventura disks off eBay and "possibly" get my iMac running this way. Otherwise totally out of ideas at this point.

Thanx!!

 

[newbutter]

Have you tried resetting the NVRAM or PRAM? This is done by restarting the computer and immediately holding down the Option, Command, P, and R keys together for about 20 seconds.

If the progress bar is still getting stuck after these steps, it might be worth trying to reinstall MacOS in Internet Recovery Mode. You can enter this mode by restarting and holding down Option-Command-R as soon as the reboot begins. As far as I know, this can allow you to reinstall macOS directly from Apple's servers. This way you would not have to buy a bootable disk.

 

[tiredretired]

Thanx. I think that may be the ticket.

Right now if I try to start the iMac without the external drive connected I get a black screen with a Folder image and a Question Mark inside of it. More info for your chaps that may mean something.

 

[tiredretired]

Success!!! I downloaded a new copy of Ventura using Newbutter's advice and everything is working great. This computer has not worked this well since I do not remember when. LOL. Only odd thing is via wifi the imac is downloading around 75 while the iphones and pads will do 300. I can live with that. Easily.

I would like to thank everyone here who helped me through this. Kudos to you all.

 

[pm-r]

Success!!! I downloaded a new copy of Ventura using Newbutter's advice and everything is working great.

Congratulations on your success and your persistence.

Let's hope it keeps working that way for quite a while.



- Patrick
=======