MacBook shut during update

[Martinww]

Hi,

my son was installing Yosemite but after an hour or so the lid of MacBook was shut by his mother. When the lid was opened 6 hours later the screen was white with slowly turning timer wheel. We've left it for a further 10 hours but still have the same screen +timer. Our internet speed is only 10Mbps but surely the update can't take that long.

Has closing the lid messed up the update process? If so what can we do?

Any non-techie replies and advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks

 

[MacInWin]

Did he back it up before he started the process? I'd suggest you try rebooting into the Recovery Partition (CMD+R) when powering up, assuming it was Mavericks before the update. If that works, I think you can then reboot back to Mavericks normally, and if that works, restart the download. If it won't reboot to Mavericks, you can reinstall Mavericks from the Recovery partition and then reboot/restart the install. I'm not sure what is going to be the state of your files and applications, but at least you've recovered the function of the machine. If he did back up, you can restore if the files are messed up.

 

[Martinww]

Thanks Jake. Rebooted using power off button, cancelled upgrade and hey presto, back to normal.
Much relieved, and lessons about backing up learnt!
Thanks